Russia “forcibly enrolled” the prose writer, playwright, classic of literature Nikolai Gogol as a Russian writer, while he is in fact a Ukrainian. This was announced on April 1 by the Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine Oleksandr Tkachenko on his Facebook page.
According to him, Gogol belonged to the Ukrainian Cossack noble family of Gogolev-Yanovsky. Ostap Gogol, hetman of Right-Bank Ukraine, is considered his ancestor. He stressed that the Russian side and its “pocket historians” question this fact.
Tkachenko compared two materials about the writer on Wikipedia and came to the conclusion that the presentation of information about Gogol differs in content. He called on the citizens of Ukraine to love and read the literature that belongs to the country. In particular, Nikolai Gogol, he said.
At the same time, the Ukrainian minister was not embarrassed by the fact that Gogol was born in the Russian Empire, lived in St. Petersburg and created his own works in Russian.
Representatives of the official Kiev often make dubious statements about historical facts.
Earlier, on March 11, ex-President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko called on the World Economic Forum (WEF) to change the description of Princess Olga as the progenitor of Russia. In his opinion, “Russia with its capital in Kiev existed on the territory of modern Ukraine, Belarus and Russia,” which supposedly suggests that Princess Olga cannot be considered the ancestor of Russia.
In addition, the former head of the SBU, Colonel-General Igor Smeshko, said that the territory of present-day Ukraine has been a metropolis since ancient times, and all the other lands of Rus adjoined it. In response, Russian Senator Aleksey Pushkov noted that in Ukraine they simply rave about the “Ukrainian empire” and “civilizing role” in relation to Russia, and the reason is that Ukraine, as a new formation, is sorely lacking in historical legitimacy.