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Excavation of Gogol's grave. Gogol's grave at Novodevichy Cemetery

"Looting or veneration: what was missing from Gogol's coffin"

Many legends and speculations are associated with the history of the funeral and reburial of the ashes of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. According to various sources, during the exhumation of the remains of the author of Dead Souls, no skull was found, and after Gogol’s ashes were transferred to another grave, a piece of a frock coat and boot, as well as a rib and tibia, were not found.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol died in 1852 and was buried in the cemetery of the St. Daniel's Monastery in Moscow. According to the website "Fundamentals" Orthodox culture“, soon after the funeral, an ordinary bronze Orthodox cross and a tombstone made of black marble were installed on his grave, on which was placed a verse from the Holy Scriptures - a quote from the prophet Jeremiah: “I will laugh at my bitter word.”

A little later, Konstantin Aksakov, the son of Gogol’s friend Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov, installed a massive sea granite stone, specially brought by him from Crimea, on the writer’s grave. The stone was used as a base for a cross and was nicknamed Golgotha. According to the decision of the writer’s friends, a line from the Gospel was carved on it - “Hey, come, Lord Jesus!”

In 1909, on the occasion of the writer’s 100th anniversary, the burial was restored. A cast-iron lattice fence and a sarcophagus by sculptor Nikolai Andreev were installed at Gogol’s grave. The bas-reliefs on the lattice are considered unique: according to a number of sources, they were made from a lifetime image of Gogol, reports Moskovsky Komsomolets.

The reburial of Gogol's remains from the cemetery of the St. Daniel's Monastery to the Novodevichy Cemetery took place on June 1, 1931 and was associated with the decree of the city authorities to close the monastery, which was part of a large-scale reconstruction plan for Moscow. It was planned to create a reception center for street children and juvenile delinquents in the monastery building, and to destroy the monastery cemetery, after transferring the ashes of a number of significant public and cultural figures buried there, including Gogol, to the Novodevichy cemetery.

The main source by which one can judge the events that took place that day at the Svyato-Danilovsky cemetery are the written memoirs of a witness to the opening of Gogol’s grave - the writer Vladimir Lidin.

According to these memoirs, the opening of Gogol's grave occurred with great difficulty. Firstly, the writer’s grave turned out to be located at a significantly greater depth than other burials. Secondly, during excavations it was discovered that the coffin with Gogol’s body was inserted into a brick crypt of “extraordinary strength” through a hole in the wall of the crypt. The opening of the grave was completed after sunset, and therefore Lidin was unable to photograph the writer’s ashes.

For "souvenirs"

About the remains of the writer, Lidin reports the following: “There was no skull in the coffin, and Gogol’s remains began with the cervical vertebrae: the entire skeleton of the skeleton was enclosed in a well-preserved tobacco-colored frock coat; under the frock coat, even underwear with bone buttons survived; on his feet there were shoes, also completely preserved; only the grit connecting the sole to the upper had rotted on the toes, and the skin had curled up somewhat, exposing the bones of the foot. high heels, approximately 4-5 centimeters, this gives absolute reason to assume that Gogol was of short stature."

Lidin further writes: “When and under what circumstances Gogol’s skull disappeared remains a mystery. When the opening of the grave began, at a shallow depth, much higher than the crypt with a walled-up coffin, a skull was discovered, but archaeologists recognized it as belonging to a young man.”
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Repair and restoration work is being completed at the Gogol House memorial center on Nikitsky Boulevard

Lidin does not hide the fact that he “allowed himself to take a piece of Gogol’s frock coat, which a skilled bookbinder later put into the case of the first edition of Dead Souls.” According to the writer Yuri Alekhine, the first edition of Dead Souls, bound with a fragment of Gogol’s camisole, is now in the possession of Vladimir Lidin’s daughter.

Lidin cites an urban legend that Gogol’s skull was stolen by order of the famous collector and theater figure Alexei Bakhrushin by the monks of the St. Danilovsky Monastery during the restoration of Gogol’s grave, which was carried out in 1909 in connection with the 100th anniversary of the writer. Lidin also writes that “in the Bakhrushinsky Theater Museum in Moscow there are three skulls belonging to someone unknown: one of them is supposed to be ... Gogol.”

However, Leopold Yastrzhembsky, who first published Lidin’s memoirs, in his comments to the article reports that his attempts to discover in the Bakhrushin Central Theater Museum any information about a skull of unknown origin allegedly located there did not lead to anything.

Historian and specialist in the Moscow necropolis Maria Baranovskaya argued that not only the skull was preserved, but also light brown hair On him. However, another witness to the exhumation; archaeologist Alexey Smirnov; refuted this, confirming the version about Gogol’s missing skull. And the poet and translator Sergei Solovyov claimed that when the grave was opened, not only the remains of the writer, but also the coffin in general were not found, but a system of ventilation passages and pipes was allegedly discovered, arranged in case the buried person was alive, according to the website "Religion and MASS MEDIA".

According to the portal gogol.lit-info.ru, former member Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee, diplomat and writer Alexander Arosev in his diary cites the testimony of Vsevolod Ivanov that when the graves were opened in the cemetery of the St. Danilovsky Monastery, “they did not find Gogol’s head.”

However, the writer Yuri Alekhine, who in the mid-1980s conducted his own investigation into the circumstances surrounding Gogol's reburial, in an interview first published in the Russian House magazine, claims that Vladimir Lidin's numerous oral recollections of the events that took place on May 31, 1931 at the St. Danilovsky cemetery, differ significantly from the written ones. Firstly, in a personal conversation with Alekhine, Lidin did not even mention that Gogol’s skeleton was beheaded. According to his oral testimony, brought to us by Alekhine, Gogol’s skull was only “turned to one side,” which, in turn, instantly gave rise to the legend that the writer, who allegedly fell into a kind of lethargic sleep, was buried alive.

In addition, Alekhine reports that Lidin hid the facts in his written memoirs, mentioning only that he took a fragment of a frock coat from the writer’s coffin. According to Alekhine, “from the coffin, in addition to a piece of cloth, they stole a rib, a tibia and... one boot.”

Later, according to Lidin’s oral testimony, he and several other writers who were present at the opening of Gogol’s grave, for mystical reasons, secretly “buried” the stolen tibia and boot of the writer not far from his new grave at the Novodevichy cemetery.

The writer Vyacheslav Polonsky, who knew well many of the writers present at the cemetery, also speaks in his diary about the facts of looting that accompanied the opening of Gogol’s grave: “One cut off a piece of Gogol’s frock coat (Malyshkin...), another - a piece of braid from the coffin, which was preserved. And Stenich stole Gogol’s rib - he just took it and put it in his pocket.”

Later, according to Polonsky, the writer Lev Nikulin fraudulently took possession of Gogol’s rib: “Stenich... went to Nikulin, asked to keep the rib and return it to him when he went to his home in Leningrad. Nikulin made a copy of the rib from wood and, wrapped, returned it to Stenich. Returning home, Stenich gathered guests - Leningrad writers - and... solemnly presented the rib; the guests rushed to look and discovered that the rib was made of wood... Nikulin assures that he handed over the original rib and a piece of braid to some museum."

There is also an official act of opening Gogol’s grave, but it does not clarify the circumstances of the exhumation, being a formal document.

After the exhumation, the fence and sarcophagus were moved to the Novodevichy cemetery, but the cross was lost and the stone was sent to the cemetery workshop. In the early 1950s, "Calvary" was discovered by Mikhail Bulgakov's widow Elena Sergeevna, who placed the stone on the grave of her husband, a passionate admirer of Gogol, according to the website bulgakov.ru. By the way, Mikhail Bulgakov could have used rumors about the stolen head of the writer in the novel “The Master and Margarita” in the story of the missing head of the chairman of the board of MASCOLIT Berlioz.

In 1957, a bust of the writer by sculptor Nikolai Tomsky was installed on Gogol’s grave. The bust stands on a marble pedestal, on which is engraved the inscription “To the great Russian wordsmith Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol from the government Soviet Union". Thus, Gogol's will was violated - in correspondence with friends, he asked not to erect a monument over his remains.

IN Lately The possibility of dismantling the bust and replacing it with an ordinary Orthodox cross has been and continues to be actively discussed in the media.

The material was prepared by the Internet editors of www.rian.ru based on information from open sources

The opening of Gogol's grave took place on May 31, 1931. At the same time, the graves of the philosopher-publicist Alexei Khomyakov and the poet Nikolai Yazykov were opened. The opening of the graves took place in the presence of a group of famous Soviet writers. Among those present during the exhumation of Gogol were writers Vsevolod Ivanov, Vladimir Lidin, Alexander Malyshkin, Yuri Olesha, poets Vladimir Lugovskoy, Mikhail Svetlov, Ilya Selvinsky, critic and translator Valentin Stenich. In addition to the writers, historian Maria Baranovskaya, archaeologist Alexey Smirnov, and artist Alexander Tyshler were present at the reburial ceremony.
The main source by which one can judge the events that took place that day at the Svyato-Danilovsky cemetery are the written memoirs of a witness to the opening of Gogol’s grave - the writer Vladimir Lidin.
According to these memoirs, the opening of Gogol's grave occurred with great difficulty. Firstly, the writer’s grave turned out to be located at a significantly greater depth than other burials. Secondly, during excavations it was discovered that the coffin with Gogol’s body was inserted into a brick crypt of “extraordinary strength” through a hole in the wall of the crypt. The opening of the grave was completed after sunset, and therefore Lidin was unable to photograph the writer’s ashes.
About the remains of the writer, Lidin reports the following: “There was no skull in the coffin, and Gogol’s remains began with the cervical vertebrae: the entire skeleton of the skeleton was enclosed in a well-preserved tobacco-colored frock coat; Even underwear with bone buttons survived under the frock coat; on the feet there were shoes, also completely preserved; only the grit connecting the sole to the upper had rotted on the toes, and the skin had curled up somewhat, exposing the bones of the foot. The shoes were with very high heels, approximately 4-5 centimeters, this gives absolute reason to assume that Gogol was short.”
Lidin further writes: “When and under what circumstances Gogol’s skull disappeared remains a mystery. When the opening of the grave began, at a shallow depth, much higher than the crypt with a walled coffin, a skull was discovered, but archaeologists recognized it as belonging to a young man.”
Lidin does not hide the fact that he “allowed himself to take a piece of Gogol’s frock coat, which a skilled bookbinder later put into the case of the first edition of Dead Souls.” According to the writer Yuri Alekhin, the first edition of “Dead Souls”, bound with a fragment of Gogol’s camisole, is now in the possession of Vladimir Lidin’s daughter.
Lidin cites an urban legend that Gogol’s skull was stolen by order of the famous collector and theater figure Alexei Bakhrushin by the monks of the St. Danilov Monastery during the restoration of Gogol’s grave, which was carried out in 1909 in connection with the 100th anniversary of the writer. Lidin also writes that “in the Bakhrushinsky Theater Museum in Moscow there are three skulls belonging to someone unknown: one of them is supposed to be ... Gogol.”
However, Leopold Yastrzhembsky, who first published Lidin’s memoirs, in his comments to the article reports that his attempts to discover in the Bakhrushin Central Theater Museum any information about a skull of unknown origin allegedly located there did not lead to anything.
Historian and specialist in the Moscow necropolis Maria Baranovskaya claimed that not only the skull was preserved, but also the light brown hair on it. However, another witness to the exhumation, archaeologist Alexei Smirnov, denied this, confirming the version about Gogol’s missing skull. And the poet and translator Sergei Solovyov claimed that when the grave was opened, not only the remains of the writer, but also the coffin in general were not found, but allegedly a system of ventilation passages and pipes was discovered, arranged in case the buried person was alive, according to the website “Religion and MASS MEDIA".
According to the portal gogol.lit-info.ru, a former member of the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee, diplomat and writer Alexander Arosev in his diary cites the testimony of Vsevolod Ivanov that when the graves were opened in the cemetery of the St. Danilovsky Monastery, “Gogol’s head was not found "
However, the writer Yuri Alekhine, who in the mid-1980s conducted his own investigation into the circumstances surrounding Gogol’s reburial, in an interview first published in the Russian House magazine, claims that Vladimir Lidin’s numerous oral recollections of the events that took place on May 31, 1931 at the St. Danilovsky cemetery, differ significantly from the written ones. Firstly, in a personal conversation with Alekhine, Lidin did not even mention that Gogol’s skeleton was beheaded. According to his oral testimony, brought to us by Alekhine, Gogol’s skull was only “turned to one side,” which, in turn, instantly gave rise to the legend that the writer, who allegedly fell into a kind of lethargic sleep, was buried alive.
In addition, Alekhine reports that Lidin hid the facts in his written memoirs, mentioning only that he took a fragment of a frock coat from the writer’s coffin. According to Alekhine, “from the coffin, in addition to a piece of cloth, they stole a rib, a tibia and... one boot.”
Later, according to Lidin’s oral testimony, he and several other writers who were present at the opening of Gogol’s grave, for mystical reasons, secretly “buried” the stolen tibia and boot of the writer not far from his new grave at the Novodevichy cemetery.
The writer Vyacheslav Polonsky, who knew well many of the writers present at the cemetery, also speaks in his diary about the facts of looting that accompanied the opening of Gogol’s grave: “One cut off a piece of Gogol’s frock coat (Malyshkin...), the other cut off a piece of braid from the coffin, which was preserved. And Stenich stole Gogol’s rib - he just took it and put it in his pocket.”
Later, according to Polonsky, the writer Lev Nikulin fraudulently took possession of Gogol’s rib: “Stenich... went to Nikulin and asked to keep the rib and return it to him when he went to his home in Leningrad. Nikulin made a copy of the rib from wood and, wrapped, returned it to Stenich. Returning home, Stenich gathered guests - Leningrad writers - and... solemnly presented the rib, the guests rushed to look and discovered that the rib was made of wood... Nikulin assures that he handed over the original rib and a piece of braid to some museum.”

There were many circumstances in Gogol’s life that are still difficult and even impossible to explain. He led a strange lifestyle, wrote strange but brilliant works. He could not be called a healthy person, but doctors could not classify his illness.

Gogol was... a clairvoyant! Hence his striking phrase in a letter to Zhukovsky about a completely new country - the USA: “What is United States? CARRION. The person in them has weathered to the point that he’s not worth a damn.”

Realizing that there was plenty of “carrion” around and in his “native fatherland,” Gogol began to think, and for WHOM did he write the continuation of “Dead Souls” on January 1 (Old Style), 1852?

The “abyss of the fall of human souls” in the Nikolaev Russian Empire, captured by Gogol, inevitably led to the idea that almost the entire population of the country was “directly heading” to... Hell.

And a damn question arose for a thinking writer: “What to do?”

Even after death, his body did not find rest (the skull mysteriously disappeared from the grave)…

Since childhood, Gogol was not distinguished by good health and diligence; he was “unusually thin and weak”, with an elongated face and big nose. The Lyceum management in 1824 repeatedly punished him for “untidiness, buffoonery, stubbornness and disobedience.”

Gogol himself recognized the paradoxical nature of his character and believed that it contained “a terrible mixture of contradictions, stubbornness, daring arrogance and the most abject humility.”

As for health, he also had strange illnesses. Gogol had a special view of his body and believed that it was structured completely differently than other people. He believed that his stomach was upside down and constantly complained of pain. He constantly talked about the stomach, believing that this topic was interesting to everyone. As Princess V.N. wrote Repin: “We constantly lived in his stomach”...

His next “attack” was strange seizures: he fell into a somnambulistic state when his pulse almost died down, but all this was accompanied by excitement, fears, and numbness. Gogol was very afraid that he would be buried alive when he was considered dead. After another attack, he wrote a will in which he demanded “not to bury the body until the first signs of decomposition.”

But the feeling of serious illness did not leave Gogol. Beginning in 1836, productivity began to decline. Creative inspirations became rare, and he sank deeper and deeper into the abyss of depression and hypochondria. His faith became frantic, filled with mystical ideas, which prompted him to undertake religious “deeds.”

On the night of February 8-9, 1852, Gogol heard voices telling him that he would soon die. He tried to give the papers with the manuscript of the second volume of Dead Souls to gr. A.P. Tolstoy, but he did not take it, so as not to strengthen Gogol’s thoughts about his imminent death. Then Gogol burned the manuscript! After February 12, Gogol's condition deteriorated sharply. On February 21, during another severe attack, Gogol died.

Gogol was buried in the cemetery of the Danilovsky Monastery in Moscow. But immediately after his death, terrible rumors spread throughout the city that he was buried alive.

Lethargic sleep, medical error or suicide? The mystery of Gogol's death

The mystery of the death of the greatest classic of literature, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, has haunted scientists, historians, and researchers for more than a century and a half. How did the writer really die?

Main versions of what happened.

Sopor

The most common version. The rumor about the supposedly terrible death of the writer, buried alive, turned out to be so tenacious that many still consider it an absolutely proven fact.

Partly, rumors about his burial alive were created, without knowing it... Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. The fact is that the writer was subject to fainting and somnambulistic states. Therefore, the classic was very afraid that during one of his attacks he would be mistaken for dead and buried.

This fact is almost unanimously denied by modern historians.

“During the exhumation, which was carried out in conditions of a certain secrecy, only about 20 people gathered at Gogol’s grave...,” writes an associate professor at the Perm Medical Academy in his article “The Mystery of Gogol’s Death” Mikhail Davidov. - Writer V. Lidin became essentially the only source of information about Gogol’s exhumation. At first he talked about the reburial to students of the Literary Institute and his acquaintances, and later left written memories. Lidin's stories were untrue and contradictory. It was he who claimed that the writer’s oak coffin was well preserved, the upholstery of the coffin was torn and scratched from the inside, and in the coffin lay a skeleton, unnaturally twisted, with the skull turned to one side. So, with the light hand of Lidin, who is inexhaustible in inventions, the terrible legend that the writer was buried alive began to walk around Moscow.

To understand the inconsistency of the lethargic dream version, it is enough to think about the following fact: the exhumation was carried out 79 years after the burial! It is known that the decomposition of a body in a grave occurs incredibly quickly, and after just a few years all that remains of it is bone, and the discovered bones no longer have close connections with each other. It is not clear how, after eight decades, they could establish some kind of “twisting of the body”... And what remains of the wooden coffin and upholstery material after 79 years of being in the ground? They change so much (rot, fragment) that it is absolutely impossible to establish the fact of “scratching” the inner lining of the coffin.”

And according to the recollections of the sculptor Ramazanov, who removed the writer’s death mask, post-mortem changes and the beginning of the process of tissue decomposition were clearly visible on the face of the deceased.

However, Gogol's version of lethargic sleep is still alive.

On May 31, 1931, twenty to thirty people gathered at Gogol’s grave, among whom were: historian M. Baranovskaya, writers Vs. Ivanov, V. Lugovskoy, Y. Olesha, M. Svetlov, V. Lidin and others. It was Lidin who became perhaps the only source of information about the reburial of Gogol. With his light hand, terrible legends about Gogol began to walk around Moscow.

“The coffin was not found right away,” he told the students of the Literary Institute, “for some reason it turned out to be not where they were digging, but somewhat further away, to the side.” And when they pulled it out of the ground - covered in lime, seemingly strong, made of oak boards - and opened it, bewilderment was mixed with the heartfelt trembling of those present. In the fob lay a skeleton with its skull turned to one side. No one found an explanation for this. Someone superstitious probably thought then: “The publican is like not alive during life, and not dead after death—this strange, great man.”

Lidin’s stories stirred up old rumors that Gogol was afraid of being buried alive in a state of lethargic sleep and seven years before his death he bequeathed: “My body should not be buried until obvious signs of decomposition appear. I mention this because even during the illness itself, moments of vital numbness came over me, my heart and pulse stopped beating.” What the exhumers saw in 1931 seemed to indicate that Gogol’s behest was not fulfilled, that he was buried in a lethargic state, he woke up in a coffin and experienced nightmarish minutes of dying again...

To be fair, it must be said that Lida’s version did not inspire confidence. The sculptor N. Ramazanov, who removed Gogol’s death mask, recalled: “I did not suddenly decide to take off the mask, but the prepared coffin... finally, the constantly arriving crowd of those who wanted to say goodbye to the dear deceased forced me and my old man, who pointed out the traces of destruction, to hurry... .” There was also an explanation for the rotation of the skull: the side boards of the coffin were the first to rot, the lid lowers under the weight of the soil, presses on the dead man’s head, and it turns to one side on the so-called “Atlas vertebra.”

Then Lidin launched new version. In his written memoirs about the exhumation, he told new story, even more terrible and mysterious than his oral stories. “This is what Gogol’s ashes were,” he wrote, “there was no skull in the coffin, and Gogol’s remains began with the cervical vertebrae; the entire skeleton of the skeleton was enclosed in a well-preserved tobacco-colored frock coat... When and under what circumstances Gogol’s skull disappeared remains a mystery. When the opening of the grave began, a skull was discovered at a shallow depth, much higher than the crypt with a walled coffin, but archaeologists recognized it as belonging to a young man.”

This new invention of Lidin required new hypotheses. When could Gogol's skull disappear from the coffin? Who could need it? And what kind of fuss is being raised around the remains of the great writer?

They remembered that in 1908, when a heavy stone was installed on the grave, it was necessary to build a brick crypt over the coffin to strengthen the base. It was then that mysterious attackers could steal the writer’s skull. As for the interested parties, it was not without reason that rumors circulated around Moscow that the unique collection of A. A. Bakhrushin, a passionate collector of theatrical memorabilia, secretly contained the skulls of Shchepkin and Gogol...

And Lidin, inexhaustible in inventions, amazed listeners with new sensational details: they say, when the writer’s ashes were taken from the Danilov Monastery to Novodevichy, some of those present at the reburial could not resist and grabbed some relics for themselves as souvenirs. One allegedly stole Gogol's rib, another - a shin bone, a third - a boot. Lidin himself even showed the guests a volume of the lifetime edition of Gogol’s works, in the binding of which he had inserted a piece of fabric that he had torn from the frock coat lying in Gogol’s coffin.

In 1931, the remains were exhumed to transfer the writer’s body to the Novodevichy cemetery. But then a surprise awaited those present at the exhumation - there was no skull in the coffin! The monks of the monastery said during interrogation that on the eve of the centenary of Gogol’s birth in 1909, restoration of the grave of the great classic was carried out at the cemetery. During restoration work, Moscow collector and millionaire Alexei Bakhrushin, an extravagant personality of those times, appeared at the cemetery. Presumably, it was he who decided to commit sacrilege by paying gravediggers to steal the skull. Bakhrushin himself died in 1929 and forever took the secret of the current location of the skull to his grave.

The merchant crowned the writer's head with a silver wreath and placed it in a special rosewood casket with a glass window. However, “finding the relic” did not bring happiness to the collector - Bakhrushin began to have troubles in business and in his family. Moscow inhabitants associated these events with “a blasphemous disturbance of the peace of a mystical writer.”

Bakhrushin himself was not happy with his “exhibit.” But where should he put it? Throw it away? Sacrilege! Giving to someone means publicly
admit to desecrating a grave, incur shame and prison! Bury it back? Difficult, since the crypt was solidly bricked by order of Bakhrushin.

The unfortunate merchant was rescued by chance... Rumors about Gogol’s skull reached Nikolai Vasilyevich’s nephew, Lieutenant navy Yanovsky. The latter decided to “restore justice”: to obtain the skull of a famous relative by any means and bury it, as required by the Orthodox faith. In this way, Gogol’s remains will be “calmed.”

Yanovsky came to Bakhrushin without an invitation, put a revolver on the table and said: “There are two cartridges here. One in the barrel is for you, if you don’t give me Nikolai Vasilyevich’s skull, the other in the drum is for me, if I have to kill you. Make up your mind!

Bakhrushin was not afraid. On the contrary, I gladly gave away the “exhibit.” But Yanovsky was unable to carry out his intention for a number of reasons. Gogol's skull, according to one version, came to Italy in the spring of 1911, where it was kept in the house of naval captain Borghese. And in the summer of the same year, the relic skull was stolen. And now it is unknown what happened to him... Whether this is true or not, history is silent. Only the absence of a skull has been officially confirmed - this is stated in the NKVD documents.

According to rumors, at one time a secret group was formed whose purpose was to search for Gogol’s skull. But nothing is known about the results of its activities - all documents on this topic were destroyed.

According to legends, the one who owns Gogol's skull can directly communicate with dark forces, fulfill any desires and rule the world. They say that today it is kept in the personal collection of a famous oligarch, one of the Forbes five. But even if this is true, it will probably never be announced publicly.

A ceremonial bust was placed over the new grave by order of Stalin. The mystery of the death of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol has not yet been solved.

When in 1931 Gogol’s ashes were transferred to the Novodevichye cemetery and the sculptor Tomsky made a bust of Gogol with a gold inscription under it “From the Soviet Government”, a symbol stone with a cross was not needed... Only tombstone made of black marble with an epitaph from the prophet Jeremiah: “They will laugh at my bitter word.” And “Golgotha”, along with a white marble bust of Gogol on a column, was thrown into a pit.

This multi-ton stone, at the request of Bulgakov’s widow, was with difficulty removed and dragged along the boards to the grave of the creator of the mystical creation “The Master and Margarita”, placing the top down... So Gogol “gave over” his crossstone to Bulgakov.

By the way, in 1931, during the opening of the coffin of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, Soviet writers revealed their “dead souls”: they robbed the deceased, tearing off shreds from the frock coat of the great “soul-loving” writer, from his boots “as a keepsake”... They did not even hesitate to take some bones... Soon these “creators of new Soviet literature” fully experienced what the merchant-fetishist Bakhrushin did...

Suicide

IN recent months In his life, Gogol experienced a severe mental crisis. The writer was shocked by the death of his close friend, Ekaterina Mikhailovna Khomyakova, who died suddenly from a rapidly developing disease at the age of 35. The classic stopped writing, spent most of his time praying and fasting furiously. Gogol was overcome by the fear of death; the writer reported to his acquaintances that he heard voices telling him that he would soon die.

It was during that feverish period, when the writer was semi-delirious, that he burned the manuscript of the second volume of Dead Souls. It is believed that he did this largely under pressure from his confessor, Archpriest Matthew of Konstantinovsky, who was the only person who read this unpublished work and advised us to destroy the records.

The writer's depressive state intensified. He grew weaker, slept very little and ate practically nothing. In fact, the writer voluntarily extinguished himself from the light.

According to the doctor's testimony Tarasenkova, observed Nikolai Vasilyevich, in the last period of his life he “at once” aged in a month. By February 10, Gogol’s strength had already left him so much that he could no longer leave the house. On February 20, the writer fell into a feverish state, did not recognize anyone and kept whispering some kind of prayer. A council of doctors gathered at the patient’s bedside prescribes “forced treatment” for him. For example, bloodletting using leeches. Despite all efforts, at 8 a.m. on February 21, he was gone.

However, most researchers do not support the version that the writer deliberately “starved himself to death,” that is, essentially committed suicide. And for a fatal outcome, an adult must not eat for 40 days. Gogol refused food for about three weeks, and even then periodically allowed himself to eat a few spoons oat soup and drink linden tea.
CONTACTS WITH ANGELS

There is a version that the mental disorder could not have happened due to illness, but “on religious grounds.” As they would say these days, he was drawn into a sect. The writer, being an atheist, began to believe in God, think about religion and wait for the end of the world.

It is known: having joined the “Martyrs of Hell” sect, Gogol spent almost all his time in an improvised church, where, in the company of parishioners, he tried to “establish contact” with angels, praying and fasting, bringing himself to such a state that he began to have hallucinations, during which he saw devils, babies with wings and women whose vestments resembled the Virgin Mary.

Gogol spent all his money savings to go, together with his mentor and a group of sectarians like him, to Jerusalem to the Holy Sepulcher and to meet the end of times on the holy land.

The organization of the trip takes place in the strictest secrecy, the writer informs his family and friends that he is going for treatment, only a few will know that he is going to stand at the origins of a new humanity. Leaving, he asks everyone he knew for forgiveness and says that he will never see them again.

The trip took place in February 1848, but no miracle happened - the apocalypse did not happen. Some historians claim that the organizer of the pilgrimage planned to give the sectarians an alcoholic drink containing poison so that everyone would go to the next world at once, but the alcohol dissolved the poison and it did not work.

Having suffered a fiasco, he allegedly fled, abandoning his followers, who, in turn, returned home, barely scraping together enough money for the return trip. However, there is no documentary evidence of this.

Gogol returned home. His trip did not bring mental relief; on the contrary, it only worsened the situation. He becomes withdrawn, strange in communication, capricious and unkempt in clothes.
As Granovsky later recalled, a black cat suddenly approached the grave into which the coffin had already been lowered.

No one knew where he came from at the cemetery, and church workers reported that they had never seen him either in the church or in the surrounding area.

“You can’t help but believe in mysticism,” the professor would later write. “The women gasped, believing that the writer’s soul had entered the cat.”

When the burial was completed, the cat disappeared as suddenly as it appeared, no one saw him leave.

Medical error

DRAMA IN A HOUSE ON NIKITSKY BOULEVARD

Gogol spent the last four years of his life in Moscow in a house on Nikitsky Boulevard.

Gogol met the owners of the house - Count Alexander Petrovich and Countess Anna Georgievna Tolstoy in the late 30s, the acquaintance grew into a close friendship, and the count and his wife did everything to ensure that the writer lived freely and comfortably in their house. It was in this house on Nikitsky Boulevard that Gogol’s final drama took place.

On the night from Friday to Saturday (February 8-9), after another vigil, he, exhausted, dozed off on the sofa and suddenly saw himself dead and heard some mysterious voices.

On Monday, February 11, Gogol became so exhausted that he could not walk and went to bed. He received friends who came to see him reluctantly, spoke little and dozed off. But I still found the strength to defend the service in Count Tolstoy’s home church. At 3 o'clock in the morning from February 11 to 12, after fervent prayer, he called Semyon to him, ordered him to go up to the second floor, open the stove valves and bring a briefcase from the closet. Taking a bunch of notebooks out of it, Gogol put them in the fireplace and lit them with a candle. Semyon begged him on his knees not to burn the manuscripts, but the writer stopped him: “It’s none of your business! Pray!” Sitting on a chair in front of the fire, he waited until everything burned down, stood up, crossed himself, kissed Semyon, returned to his room, lay down on the sofa and cried.

“That's what I did! - he said to Tolstoy the next morning, - I wanted to burn some things that had been prepared for a long time, but I burned everything. How strong the evil one is - this is what he has brought me to! And I understood and presented a lot of useful things there... I thought I would send out a notebook to my friends as a souvenir: let them do what they wanted. Now everything is gone."

AGONY

Stunned by what had happened, the count hastened to call the famous Moscow doctor F. Inozemtsev to Gogol, who at first suspected the writer of typhus, but then abandoned his diagnosis and advised the patient to simply lie down. But the doctor’s equanimity did not reassure Tolstoy, and he asked his good friend, psychopathologist A. Tarasenkov, to come. However, Gogol did not want to accept Tarasenkov, who arrived on Wednesday 13 February. “You have to leave me,” he said to the count, “I know that I have to die”...

Tarasenkov convinced Gogol to start eating normally in order to regain strength, but the patient was indifferent to his admonitions. At the insistence of the doctors, Tolstoy asked Metropolitan Philaret to influence Gogol and strengthen his confidence in the doctors. But nothing had any effect on Gogol; to all persuasion he quietly and meekly answered: “Leave me alone; I feel good." He stopped taking care of himself, didn’t wash, didn’t comb his hair, didn’t dress. He ate crumbs - bread, prosphora, gruel, prunes. I drank water with red wine and linden tea.

On Monday, February 17, he went to bed in a robe and boots and never got up again. In bed, he began the sacraments of repentance, communion and blessing of oil, listened to all the gospels in full consciousness, holding a candle in his hands and crying. “If God wills me to live longer, I will live,” he said to his friends who urged him to undergo treatment. On this day, he was examined by the doctor A. Over, invited by Tolstoy. He didn't give any advice and postponed the conversation until the next day.

Doctor Klimenkov appeared on stage, striking those present with his rudeness and insolence. He shouted his questions to Gogol, as if there was a deaf or unconscious person in front of him, trying to forcibly feel his pulse. "Leave me!" - Gogol told him and turned away.

Klimenkov insisted on active treatment: bloodletting, wrapping in wet cold sheets, etc. But Tarasenkov suggested postponing everything to the next day.

On February 20, a council gathered: Over, Klimenkov, Sokologorsky, Tarasenkov and the Moscow medical luminary Evenius. In the presence of Tolstoy, Khomyakov and other Gogol acquaintances, Over outlined the medical history to Evenius, emphasizing the oddities in the patient’s behavior, allegedly indicating that “his consciousness is not in its natural state.” “Leave the patient without benefits or treat him as a person who does not control himself?” asked Over. “Yes, we need to force-feed him,” Evenius said importantly.

After this, the doctors entered the patient and began to question him, examine him, and feel him. Moans and screams of the patient were heard from the room. “Don’t bother me, for God’s sake!” - he finally shouted. But they no longer paid attention to him. It was decided to put two leeches on Gogol’s nose and do a cold douse on his head in a warm bath. Klimenkov undertook to carry out all these procedures, and Tarasenkov hastened to leave, “so as not to witness the torment of the sufferer.”

When he returned three hours later, Gogol had already been taken out of the bath, six leeches hung from his nostrils, which he tried to tear off, but the doctors forcibly held his hands. At about seven in the evening, Over and Klimenkov arrived again and ordered to maintain the bleeding as long as possible, put mustard plasters on the limbs, a front sight on the back of the head, ice on the head, and a decoction of marshmallow root with cherry laurel water inside. “Their treatment was inexorable,” recalled Tarasenkov, “they gave orders as if he were crazy, shouted in front of him as if in front of a corpse. Klimenkov pestered him, crushed him, tossed him around, poured some caustic alcohol on his head...”

After their departure, Tarasenkov stayed until midnight. The patient's pulse dropped, breathing became intermittent. He could no longer turn on his own; he lay quietly and calmly when he was not treated. Asked for a drink. By the evening he began to lose his memory, muttering indistinctly: “Come on, come on! Well, what then? At the eleventh hour he suddenly shouted loudly: “The ladder, quickly, give me the ladder!” I tried to get up. He was lifted out of bed and sat on a chair. But he was already so weak that his head could not hold up and fell, like that of a newborn child. After this outburst, Gogol fell into a deep faint, around midnight his legs began to get cold, and Tarasenkov ordered jugs of hot water to be applied to them...

Tarasenkov left so that, as he wrote, he would not encounter the medical executioner Klimenkov, who, as they later said, tortured the dying Gogol all night, giving him calomel, covering his body with hot bread, causing Gogol to moan and scream shrilly. He died without regaining consciousness at 8 a.m. on Thursday, February 21. When Tarasenkov arrived at Nikitsky Boulevard at ten o’clock in the morning, the deceased was already lying on the table, dressed in the frock coat in which he usually wore.

Each of the three versions of the writer’s death has its adherents and opponents. One way or another, this mystery has not yet been solved.

“I’ll tell you without exaggeration,” he also wrote Ivan Turgenev Aksakov, - since I can remember, nothing has made such a depressing impression on me as the death of Gogol... This strange death - historical event and is not immediately clear; This is a mystery, a heavy, formidable mystery - we must try to unravel it... But the one who unravels it will not find anything gratifying in it.”

“I looked at the deceased for a long time,” wrote Tarasenkov, “it seemed to me that his face did not express suffering, but calmness, a clear thought carried into the coffin.” “Shame on the one who is attracted to the rotting dust...”

Gogol's ashes were buried at noon on February 24, 1852 by parish priest Alexei Sokolov and deacon John Pushkin. And after 79 years, he was secretly, thieves removed from the grave: the Danilov Monastery was transformed into a colony for juvenile delinquents, and therefore its necropolis was subject to liquidation. It was decided to move only a few of the graves dearest to the Russian heart to the old cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent. Among these lucky ones, along with Yazykov, Aksakovs and Khomyakovs, was Gogol...

In his will, Gogol shamed those who “would be attracted by any attention to rotting dust that is no longer mine.” But the flighty descendants were not ashamed, they violated the writer’s will, and with unclean hands they began to stir up the “rotting dust” for fun. They also did not respect his covenant not to erect any monument on his grave.

The Aksakovs brought to Moscow from the shores of the Black Sea a stone shaped like Golgotha, the hill on which Jesus Christ was crucified. This stone became the basis for the cross on Gogol's grave. Next to him on the grave was a black stone in the shape of a truncated pyramid with inscriptions on the edges.

These stones and the cross were taken somewhere the day before the opening of Gogol’s burial and sunk into oblivion. Only in the early 50s, the widow of Mikhail Bulgakov accidentally discovered Gogol’s Calvary stone in the lapidary barn and managed to install it on the grave of her husband, the creator of “The Master and Margarita.”

No less mysterious and mystical is the fate of the Moscow monuments to Gogol. The idea of the need for such a monument was born in 1880 during the celebrations of the opening of the monument to Pushkin on Tverskoy Boulevard. And 29 years later, on the centenary of the birth of Nikolai Vasilyevich on April 26, 1909, a monument created by the sculptor N. Andreev was unveiled on Prechistensky Boulevard. This sculpture, depicting a deeply dejected Gogol at the moment of his deep thoughts, caused mixed reviews. Some enthusiastically praised her, others fiercely condemned her. But everyone agreed: Andreev managed to create a work of the highest artistic merit.

The controversy surrounding the original author's interpretation of the image of Gogol did not continue to subside in Soviet times, which did not tolerate the spirit of decline and despondency even among the great writers of the past. Socialist Moscow needed a different Gogol - clear, bright, calm. Not the Gogol of “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” but the Gogol of “Taras Bulba,” “The Inspector General,” and “Dead Souls.”

In 1935, the All-Union Committee for Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR announced a competition for a new monument to Gogol in Moscow, which marked the beginning of developments interrupted by the Great Patriotic War. She slowed down, but did not stop these works, in which the greatest masters of sculpture participated - M. Manizer, S. Merkurov, E. Vuchetich, N. Tomsky.

In 1952, on the centenary of Gogol’s death, a new monument was erected on the site of the St. Andrew’s monument, created by the sculptor N. Tomsky and the architect S. Golubovsky. St. Andrew's monument was moved to the territory of the Donskoy Monastery, where it stood until 1959, when, at the request of the USSR Ministry of Culture, it was installed in front of Tolstoy's house on Nikitsky Boulevard, where Nikolai Vasilyevich lived and died. It took Andreev’s creation seven years to cross Arbat Square!

Disputes around Moscow monuments to Gogol continue even now. Some Muscovites tend to see the removal of monuments as a manifestation of Soviet totalitarianism and party dictatorship. But everything that is done is done for the better, and Moscow today has not one, but two monuments to Gogol, equally precious for Russia in moments of both decline and enlightenment of the spirit.

One of the most mystical personalities in Russian literature is N.V. Gogol. During his lifetime he was a secretive person and took with him many secrets. But he left behind brilliant works in which fantasy and reality, the beautiful and the repulsive, the funny and the tragic are intertwined.

Here witches fly on a broomstick, boys and ladies fall in love with each other, the imaginary auditor takes on a pompous appearance, Viy raises his leaden eyelids and runs away from And the writer unexpectedly bids us farewell, leaving us in admiration and bewilderment. Today we will talk about his last charade, left to his descendants - the secret of Gogol’s grave.

The writer's childhood

Gogol was born in the Poltava province on March 1, 1809. Before him, two dead boys had already been born in the family, so the parents prayed to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker for the birth of the third and named the first-born in his honor. Gogol was a sickly child, they fussed over him a lot and loved him more than other children.

From his mother he inherited religiosity and a penchant for premonitions. From my father - suspiciousness and love for the theater. The boy was attracted by secrets, horror stories, prophetic dreams.

At the age of 10, he and his younger brother Ivan were sent to the Poltava School. But the training did not last long. His brother died, which greatly shocked little Nikolai. He was transferred to Nizhyn gymnasium. Among his peers, the boy was distinguished by his love of practical jokes and secrecy, for which he was called Mysterious Carlo. This is how the writer Gogol grew up. His work and personal life were largely determined by his first childhood impressions.

Is Gogol's artistic world the creation of a mad genius?

The writer’s works surprise with their phantasmagoric nature. Horrifying sorcerers come to life on their pages (" Terrible revenge"), witches rise at night, led by the monster Viy. But along with evil spirits, caricatures of modern society. A new auditor comes to the city, Chichikov buys dead souls, and shows Russian life with utmost honesty. And next to it is the absurdity of Nevsky Prospekt and the famous Nose. How were these images born in the head of the writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol?

Creativity researchers are still at a loss. Many theories are connected with the writer's madness. It is known that he suffered from painful conditions, during which mood swings, extreme despair, and fainting were observed. Perhaps it was disturbed thinking that prompted Gogol to write such bright, unusual works? After all, after suffering, periods of creative inspiration followed.

However, psychiatrists who studied Gogol's work find no signs of insanity. In their opinion, the writer suffered from depression. Hopeless sadness and special sensitivity are characteristic of many brilliant individuals. This is what helps them become more deeply aware of the surrounding reality, show it from unexpected sides, amazing the reader.

The writer was a shy and private person. In addition, he had a good sense of humor and loved practical jokes. All this gave rise to many legends about him. Thus, excessive religiosity suggests that Gogol could be a member of a sect.

Even more controversial is the fact that the writer was not married. There is a legend that in the 1840s he proposed to Countess A.M. Vilegorskaya, but was refused. There was also a rumor about Nikolai Vasilyevich’s platonic love for the married lady A. O. Smirnova-Rosset. But these are all rumors. As well as conversations about Gogol’s homosexual tendencies, which he allegedly tried to get rid of through austerities and prayers.

The death of the writer raises many questions. Gloomy thoughts and forebodings overwhelmed him after finishing the second volume of Dead Souls in 1852. In those days, he communicated with his confessor Matvey Konstantinovsky. The latter convinced Gogol to give up his sinful literary activity and devote more time to spiritual quests.

A week before Lent, the writer subjects himself to the most severe asceticism. He hardly eats or sleeps, which negatively affects his health. That night he burns papers in the fireplace (presumably the second volume of Dead Souls). Since February 18, Gogol has not gotten out of bed and is preparing for death. On February 20, doctors decide to begin compulsory treatment. On the morning of February 21, the writer dies.

Causes of death

People still wonder how the writer Gogol died. He was only 42 years old. Despite poor health recently, no one expected such an outcome. Doctors were unable to make an accurate diagnosis. All this gave rise to many rumors. Let's look at some of them:

Suicide. Before his death, Gogol voluntarily refused to eat and prayed instead of sleeping. He consciously prepared for death, forbade himself to be treated, and did not listen to the admonitions of his friends. Perhaps he died of his own free will? However, for a religious person who fears hell and the devil, this is not possible.
Mental illness. Perhaps the reason for Gogol’s behavior was a clouding of his mind? Shortly before tragic events Ekaterina Khomyakova, the sister of the writer’s close friend, to whom he was attached, died. On February 8-9, Nikolai Vasilyevich dreamed own death. All this could have shaken his unstable psyche and led to excessively harsh asceticism, the consequences of which were terrifying.
Incorrect treatment. Gogol could not be diagnosed for a long time, suspecting either intestinal typhus or inflammation of the stomach. Finally, a council of doctors decided that the patient had meningitis and subjected him to bloodletting, warm baths, and cold douses that were unacceptable for such a diagnosis. All this undermined the body, which was already weakened by long abstinence from food. The writer died of heart failure.
Poisoning. According to other sources, doctors could provoke intoxication of the body by prescribing calomel to Gogol three times. This was due to the fact that various specialists were invited to the writer who did not know about other appointments. As a result, the patient died from an overdose.

Funeral

Be that as it may, the burial took place on February 24. It was public, although the writer's friends objected to this. Gogol's grave was originally located in Moscow on the territory of the St. Danilov Monastery. The coffin was brought here in their arms after the funeral service in the church of the martyr Titiana.

According to eyewitnesses, a black cat suddenly appeared at the place where Gogol’s grave is located. This caused a lot of talk. Suggestions began to spread that the writer’s soul had transmigrated into a mystical animal. After the burial, the cat disappeared without a trace.

Nikolai Vasilyevich forbade erecting a monument on his grave, so a cross was erected with a quote from the Bible: “I will laugh at my bitter word.” Its basis was granite stone brought from Crimea by K. Aksakov (“Golgotha”). In 1909, in honor of the centenary of the writer’s birth, the grave was restored. A cast iron fence was installed, as well as a sarcophagus.

Opening of Gogol's grave

In 1930, the Danilovsky Monastery was closed. In its place, it was decided to set up a reception center for juvenile delinquents. The cemetery was urgently reconstructed. In 1931, the graves of such outstanding people, like Gogol, Khomyakov, Yazykov and others, were opened and transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery.

This happened in the presence of representatives of the cultural intelligentsia. According to the memoirs of the writer V. Lidin, they arrived at the place where Gogol was buried on May 31. The work took the whole day, since the coffin was deep and inserted into the crypt through a special side hole. The remains were discovered after dusk, so no photographs were taken. The NKVD archives contain an autopsy report, which does not contain anything unusual.

However, according to rumors, this was done in order to not make a fuss. The picture that revealed itself to those present shocked everyone. A terrible rumor immediately spread across Moscow. What did the people who were present at the Danilovsky cemetery see that day?

Buried alive

In oral conversations, V. Lidin said that Gogol lay in the grave with his head turned. Moreover, the lining of the coffin was scratched from the inside. All this gave rise to terrible assumptions. What if the writer fell into a lethargic sleep and was buried alive? Perhaps, having woken up, he tried to get out of the grave?

Interest was fueled by the fact that Gogol suffered from tophephobia - the fear of being buried alive. In 1839, in Rome, he suffered severe malaria, which led to brain damage. Since then, the writer has experienced fainting spells, turning into prolonged sleep. He was very afraid that in this state he would be mistaken for dead and buried ahead of time. Therefore, I stopped sleeping in bed, preferring to doze half-sitting on the sofa or in a chair.

In his will, Gogol ordered not to bury him until obvious signs of death appeared. So is it possible that the writer’s will was not fulfilled? Is it true that Gogol turned over in his grave? Experts assure that this is impossible. As evidence, they point to the following facts:

Gogol's death was recorded by five the best doctors that time.
Nikolai Ramazanov, who filmed the great namesake, knew about his fears. In his memoirs, he states: the writer, unfortunately, slept in an eternal sleep.
The skull could have been rotated due to the displacement of the coffin lid, which often happens over time, or while being carried by hand to the burial site.
It was impossible to see the scratches on the upholstery, which had decayed over 80 years. This is too long.
V. Lidin's oral stories contradict his written memories. After all, according to the latter, Gogol’s body was found without a skull. In the coffin lay only a skeleton in a frock coat.

Legend of the Lost Skull

In addition to V. Lidin, the archaeologist A. Smirnov and V. Ivanov, who were present at the autopsy, also mention Gogol’s headless body. But should we believe them? After all, the historian M. Baranovskaya, who stood next to them, saw not only the skull, but also the light brown hair preserved on it. And the writer S. Solovyov did not see either the coffin or the ashes, but he found ventilation pipes in the crypt in case the deceased was resurrected and needed something to breathe.

Nevertheless, the story about the missing skull was so “in the spirit” of the author Viy that it was developed. According to legend, in 1909, during the restoration of Gogol’s grave, collector A. Bakhrushin persuaded the monks of the Danilovsky Monastery to steal the writer’s head. Behind good reward they sawed off the skull, and it took its place in the theater museum of the new owner.

He kept it secretly, in the pathologist's bag, among the medical instruments. When he passed away in 1929, Bakhrushin took with him the secret of the whereabouts of Gogol’s skull. However, could the story of the great phantasmagorist who was Nikolai Vasilyevich end here? Of course, a sequel was invented for it, worthy of the pen of the master himself.

Ghost Train

One day, Gogol’s great-nephew, naval lieutenant Yanovsky, came to Bakhrushin. He heard about the stolen skull and, threatening with a loaded weapon, demanded that it be returned to his family. Bakhrushin gave away the relic. Yanovsky decided to bury the skull in Italy, which Gogol loved very much and considered his second home.

In 1911, ships from Rome arrived in Sevastopol. Their goal was to collect the remains of their compatriots who died during the Crimean campaign. Yanovsky persuaded the captain of one of the ships, Borgose, to take with him a casket with a skull and hand it over to the Russian ambassador in Italy. He had to bury him according to the Orthodox rite.

However, Borghose did not have time to meet with the ambassador and set off on another voyage, leaving the unusual casket in his house. Younger brother Captain, a student at the University of Rome, discovered the skull and decided to scare his friends. He had a trip to fun company through the longest tunnel of its time on the Rome Express. The young rake took the skull with him. Before the train entered the mountains, he opened the casket.

Immediately the train was enveloped in an unusual fog, and panic began among those present. Borghose Jr. and another passenger jumped off the train at full speed. The rest disappeared along with the Roman Express and Gogol's skull. The search for the train was unsuccessful, and they hastened to wall up the tunnel. But in subsequent years the train was seen in different countries, including in Poltava, the writer’s homeland, and in Crimea.

Is it possible that where Gogol was buried, only his ashes are found? While the writer's spirit wanders around the world on a ghostly train, never finding peace?

Last refuge

Gogol himself wanted to rest in peace. Therefore, we will leave the legends to science fiction lovers and move to the Novodevichy cemetery, where the remains of the writer were reburied on June 1, 1931. It is known that before the next burial, admirers of Nikolai Vasilyevich’s talent stole pieces of the coat, shoes and even bones of the deceased “as souvenirs”. V. Lidin admitted that he personally took a piece of clothing and placed it in the binding of “Dead Souls” of the first edition. All this, of course, is terrible.

Along with the coffin, the fence and the Calvary stone, which served as the basis for the cross, were transported to the Novodevichy cemetery. The cross itself was not installed in the new place, since the Soviet government was far from religion. Where he is now is unknown. Moreover, in 1952, a bust of Gogol by N.V. Tomsky was erected on the site of the grave. This was done contrary to the will of the writer, who, as a believer, called not to honor his ashes, but to pray for his soul.

Golgotha was sent to the lapidary workshop. The widow of Mikhail Bulgakov found the stone there. Her husband considered himself a student of Gogol. In difficult moments, he often went to his monument and repeated: “Teacher, cover me with your cast-iron overcoat.” The woman decided to install a stone on Bulgakov’s grave so that Gogol would invisibly protect him even after his death.

In 2009, for the 200th anniversary of Nikolai Vasilyevich, it was decided to return his burial place to its original appearance. The monument was dismantled and transferred to the Historical Museum. A black stone with a bronze cross was again installed on Gogol’s grave at the Novodevichy cemetery. How to find this place to honor the memory of the great writer? The grave is located in the old part of the cemetery. From the central alley you should turn right and find the 12th row, section No. 2.

Gogol's grave, as well as his work, is fraught with many secrets. It is unlikely that it will be possible to solve them all, and is it necessary? The writer left a covenant with his loved ones: not to grieve for him, not to associate him with the ashes that worms gnaw, and not to worry about the burial place. He wanted to immortalize himself not in a granite monument, but in his work.

There is probably no writer whose name would be associated with so much mysticism and fables as with Nikolai Gogol. Everyone knows the legend that all his life he was afraid of being buried alive, which is what happened as a result...

The writer’s fears of being buried alive in the ground were not invented by his descendants - they have documentary evidence.

In 1839, Gogol, while in Rome, fell ill with malaria, and, judging by the consequences, the disease affected the writer’s brain. He began to regularly experience seizures and fainting, which is typical of malarial encephalitis. In 1845, Gogol wrote to his sister Lisa:

“My body reached a terrible state of cold: neither day nor night I could do nothing to warm myself up. My face turned yellow all over, and my hands were swollen and blackened and were like ice, this frightened me. I’m afraid that at one point I’ll cool down completely and they’ll bury me alive without noticing that my heart is still beating.”

There is another interesting mention: Gogol’s friend, the pharmacist Boris Yablonsky, in his diaries, without naming Nikolai Vasilyevich’s name (as researchers believe, for ethical reasons), writes that a certain person often visited him and asked him to pick up medicines for fear.

“He speaks very mysteriously about his fears,” writes the pharmacist. - He says that he has prophetic dreams in which he is buried alive. And while awake, he imagines that one day while he sleeps, those around him will take him for dead and bury him, and he, waking up, will start calling for help, beating against the lid of the coffin until the oxygen runs out... I prescribed him sedative pills, which are recommended for improving sleep in mental disorders.”

Gogol’s mental disorders are also confirmed by his inappropriate behavior - everyone knows that he destroyed the second volume of “Dead Souls” - a book on which he worked quite a lot long time, the writer burned.

CONTACTS WITH ANGELS

Gogol spent all his money savings to go, together with his mentor and a group of sectarians like him, to Jerusalem to the Holy Sepulcher and to meet the end of times on the holy land.

Gogol returned home. His trip did not bring mental relief; on the contrary, it only worsened the situation. He becomes withdrawn, strange in communication, capricious and unkempt in clothes.

A CAT CAME TO THE FUNERAL

At the same time, Gogol creates his strangest work, “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” which begins with ominously mystical words: “Being in the full presence of memory and common sense, I express here my last will. I bequeath my body not to be buried until obvious signs of decomposition appear... I mention this because even during the illness itself, moments of vital numbness came over me, my heart and pulse stopped beating.”

These lines combined with scary stories, which followed the opening of the writer’s grave during the reburial of his remains many years later, gave rise to terrible rumors that Gogol was buried alive, that he woke up in a coffin, underground, and, in desperation trying to get out, died from mortal fear and suffocation. But was it really so?

In February 1852, Gogol informed his servant Semyon that due to weakness he constantly wanted to sleep, and warned: if he feels unwell, do not call doctors, do not give him pills - wait until he gets enough sleep and gets back on his feet.

The frightened servant secretly reports this to the doctors at the medical institution where the writer was observed. On February 20, a medical council of 7 doctors decided to compulsorily treat Gogol. They took him to the hospital conscious, he talked with the team of doctors, constantly whispering: “Just don’t bury him!”

At the same time, according to eyewitnesses, he was completely exhausted due to exhaustion and loss of strength, he could not walk, and on the way to the clinic he completely “fell into unconsciousness.”

The next morning, February 21, 1852, the writer died. Remembering his parting words, the body of the deceased was examined by 5 doctors, all unanimously diagnosed death.

On the initiative of Moscow State University professor Timofey Granovsky, the funeral was held as a public funeral; the writer was buried in the university church of the martyr Tatiana. The funeral took place on Sunday afternoon at the Danilov Monastery cemetery in Moscow.

As Granovsky later recalled, a black cat suddenly approached the grave into which the coffin had already been lowered.

No one knew where he came from at the cemetery, and church workers reported that they had never seen him either in the church or in the surrounding area.

“You can’t help but believe in mysticism,” the professor would later write. “The women gasped, believing that the writer’s soul had entered the cat.”

When the burial was completed, the cat disappeared as suddenly as it appeared, no one saw him leave.

THE MYSTERY OF THE OPENING OF THE COFFIN

In June 1931, the cemetery of the St. Daniel's Monastery was abolished. The ashes of Gogol and a number of other famous historical figures, by order of Lazar Kaganovich, were transferred to the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent.

During the reburial, something happened that mystics argue about to this day. The lid of Gogol's coffin was scratched from the inside, which was confirmed by an official examination report drawn up by NKVD officers, which is now stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature. There are evidence of 8 deep scratches that could have been made by fingernails.

Rumors that the writer's body was lying on its side have not been confirmed, but dozens of people saw something more sinister.

As Vladimir Lidin, a professor at the Literary Institute, who was present at the opening of the grave, writes in his memoirs “Transferring Gogol’s Ashes,” “... the grave was opened almost the whole day. She turned out to be significantly greater depth than ordinary burials (almost 5 meters), as if someone was deliberately trying to drag her into the bowels of the earth...

The top boards of the coffin were rotten, but the side boards with preserved foil, metal corners and handles, and partially surviving bluish-purple braiding were intact.

There was no skull in the coffin! Gogol's remains began with the cervical vertebrae: the entire skeleton was enclosed in a well-preserved tobacco-colored frock coat; Even underwear with bone buttons survived under the frock coat; there were shoes on my feet...

The shoes were with very high heels, approximately 4-5 centimeters, this gives absolute reason to assume that Gogol was of short stature.”

When and under what circumstances Gogol's skull disappeared remains a mystery.

One of the versions is expressed by the same Vladimir Lidin: in 1909, when during the installation of the monument to Gogol on Prechistensky Boulevard in Moscow, the writer’s grave was being restored, one of the most famous collectors in Moscow and Russia, Alexei Bakhrushin, who is also the founder of the Theater Museum, allegedly persuaded the monks of the monastery to a lot of money to get Gogol's skull for him, since, according to legend, it has magical powers.

Whether this is true or not, history is silent. Only the absence of a skull has been officially confirmed - this is stated in the NKVD documents.

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