True, the impact of Ukrainian culture on Gogol's works has been examined before--but never as seriously or with a more sharply defined point of view, namely, the twofold skewing of that impact. On the one hand, "Russophile" commentators from Vissarion to Belinsky to Vladimir Nabokov have (wrongly) viewed Gogol's Ukrainian birthplace and ancestry as incidental details in the larger portrait of an authentically Russian patriot and genius. On the other hand, Gogol himself helped obscure his Ukrainian birthright by abandoning the (allegedly) affectionate satire of his Dikanka and Mirgorod for the aggressively anti-Russian (according to Bojanowska) satire of his major Russian phase. The author sometimes overstates her case, but her basic argument seems irrefutable: Gogol's enduring pro-Ukranian sympathies have indeed been neglected.

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