Russian society, and its vitality is but the measure of
the spiritual vitality of that society.

This unique character of Russian literature may be said to have had its
beginning with the Inspector-General. Before Gogol most Russian writers,
with few exceptions, were but weak imitators of foreign models.
The drama fashioned itself chiefly upon French patterns. The
Inspector-General and later Gogol's novel, Dead Souls, established that
tradition in Russian letters which was followed by all the great writers
from Dostoyevsky down to Gorky.

As with one blow, Gogol shattered the notions of the theatre-going
public of his day of what a comedy should be. The ordinary idea of a
play at that time in Russia seems to have been a little like our
own tired business man's. And the shock the Revizor gave those early
nineteenth-century Russian audiences is not unlike the shocks we
ourselves get when once in a while a theatrical manager is courageous
enough to produce a bold modern European play. Only the intensity of
the shock was much greater. For Gogol dared not only bid defiance to the
accepted method; he dared to introduce a subject-matter that under the
guise of humor audaciously attacked the very foundation of the state,
namely, the officialdom of the Russian bureaucracy. That is why the
Revizor marks such a revolution in the world of Russian letters. In form
it was realistic, in substance it was vital. It showed up the rottenness
and corruption of the instruments through which the Russian government
functioned. It held up to ridicule, directly, all the officials of
a typical Russian municipality, and, indirectly, pointed to the same
system of graft and corruption among the very highest servants of the
crown.

What wonder that the Inspector-General became a sort of comedy-epic in
the land of the Czars, the land where each petty town-governor is almost
an absolute despot, regulating his persecutions and extortions according
to the sage saying of the town-governor in the play, "That's the way God
made the world, and the Voltairean free-thinkers can talk against it
all they like, it won't do any good." Every subordinate in the town
administration, all the way down the line to the policemen, follow--not
always so scrupulously--the law laid down by the same authority, "Graft
no higher than your rank." As in city and town, so in village and
hamlet. It is the tragedy of Russian life, which has its roots in that
more comprehensive t