Taras Bulba was created by Nikolai Gogol. Nikolai Vasil'evich Gogol (1809-1852) was one of the giants of nineteenth century Russian literature, the father of Russian prose realism and the author of Dead Souls (1842), which is often called Russia's first great novel. Taras Bulba came in the mid period of Gogol's artistic career, and although it is not one of his greater works it is the one for which he is best-known.

Taras Bulba is an older Cossack who is restive at too much peace, and so leaves to join the war with the other Dnieper Cossacks. Accompanying Taras are his two sons, Andrei and Ostap. Ostap is a scholarly type, a former seminary student, while Andrei is a leader of men and a lover of women. Taras and his sons reach the Cossack encampment at the Setch. Taras wants to attack the Turks, but a peace treaty has recently been signed with the Sultan, so the Cossacks cannot attack them. But Taras’ friend Kirdyaga, the leader of the Cossacks, suggests that they raid the coasts of Anatolia. Before they can leave they receive word that Cossacks are being persecuted by the Poles. The enraged Cossacks attack Poland, but when they reach the city of Dubno they are unable to breach its walls and begin a siege. Andrei is seduced by a Polish woman and stays with her in Dubno. Taras hears of this and is furious, but before he can ride into Dubno and punish Andrei the Cossacks hear that the Setch has been invaded by the Tatars. Half the Cossacks return to the Setch to punish the Tatars, and the other half remain at Dubno. There is a huge final battle in front of Dubno. The Poles win and most of the Cossacks are killed. Taras shoots Andrei, but Ostap is captured by the Poles and burnt at the stake. For this act Taras leads the entire Cossack nation to war on the Poles. The Poles are defeated, but Taras is eventually captured by the Poles and killed.

Taras Bulba is an unpleasant read. Not unpleasant in the sense of being shoddily written, although it is far from Gogol's best work. It is unpleasant in the sense of creating a displeasing reading experience, of licking a lollipop and finding sandpaper hidden inside it. It is a work of submerged (and not so submerged) ugliness.

Part of the problem is the prose style. Gogol was trying to create a prose epic about the Dnieper Cossacks and their vanished way of life. His approach was to use a combination of traditional declamatory epic language with a more realistic diction and prose style. The resulting union is awkward and not particularly pleasing to the eye or ear:

Cossacks! Cossacks! abandon not the flower of your army! By now Kukubenko was surrounded; only seven men were left of the Nezamaikovsky unit, and by now they were overpowered; already their chief's garments were stained with blood. Taras himself, seeing his plight, hastened to his assistance. But the Cossacks were too late: a lance had stabbed him to the heart before the enemy surrounding him were driven off. Slowly he sank into the arms of the Cossacks who supported him, and the young blood spurted out in a stream like precious wine brought in a glass vessel from the cellar by careless servants who slip at the entrance and shatter the costly flagon, the win spilling upon the ground; and the master, running up, clutches his head in despair, since he has kept it for the best moment of his life, so that, if God should grant in his old age a meeting with the comrades of his youth, they might celebrate together those old other days when men made merry otherwise and better...Kukubenko looked around and said: “I thank God that it is my lot to die before your eyes, comrades! May men better than we live after us, and may Russia, beloved of Christ, flourish forever...!” And his young soul fled. The angels received it in their arms and bore it to heaven. It will be good for him there. “Sit at my right, Kukubenko!” Christ will say to him, “thou hast not betrayed thy comrades; thou hast wrought no deed of dishonor; thou hast forsaken no man in trouble; thou hast guarded and saved My Church.”¹

The problem could be a bad translation, but more likely the translation is accurate and the blame lies with Gogol himself. This passage shows Gogol’s tendency to strain after effect, to attempt to arouse emotion and pathos and patriotism and religious fervor in the reader. Gogol’s style is not up to this task, and the modern audience is unlikely to be stirred by a paean to the Cossacks. The net effect is instead a shrill and strident screed.

The greater problem with Taras Bulba is its content. Taras Bulba is an ugly, morally vile story. It is a love song to the Cossacks, designed to justify their atrocities. It presents the message that the Cossacks are “Christ’s army” and that whatever they do is not just countenanced by God but is in fact glorious. There are extra textual problems with this, naturally. During the years of Taras Bulba–the seventeenth century–the Cossacks were merciless butchers and murderers—not chevaliers sans peur et sans reproche—authors of massacres of Jews and Poles, especially during the 1648 Khmelnytsky Uprising.

But history is not Gogol’s strength. Although he tried to make Taras Bulba a stirring piece of history he got his facts wrong. Even taken on the story’s own terms, though, Gogol utterly fails to convince. The Cossacks kill enemy soldiers but also slaughter civilians, including children, and rape women. The Cossacks bully merchants and those weaker than they, and Gogol describes this as their “high spirits.” Gogol is so enchanted with the Cossacks that he seemingly cannot bear to admit that they have any flaws and drags in the approval of God to justify their atrocities.

Taras Bulba is a story of unrestrained id and machismo, of masculinity taken to a cartoonishly grotesque degree. Gogol delights in the acts of men their virility and treats his women badly. Taras’ wife is mocked for her love of her sons and for worrying about them. The only other female character is the woman who lures Taras’ son Andrei to side of the Poles. Taras himself muses on how women make men weak. Although Gogol displays a momentary sympathy for the Taras’ wife, it quickly becomes apparent that this is a cruel joke meant to make the reader laugh at the wife rather than empathize with her. The novel is also laudatory of an array of bigotries. Jews are portrayed as oppressive, avaricious, usurious money lenders and “parasites,” and Catholics fare little better.

Contextualizing Taras Bulba and The Captain’s Daughter makes possible a better understanding of some otherwise perplexing aspects of these works (e.g., Gogol’s savage patriotism; Pushkin’s chronological games) and ultimately provides a more precise explanation of their uniqueness. Both of these novels are crucial for defining the parameters of the genre since they represent opposing models of the historical novel. Pushkin perfects the Scottian model [see: Waverley] by finding a balance of fictional and historical characters in highly specific historical settings. By contrast, Gogol stretches to the limits the notion of historical chronotope by combining events that occurred across two centuries and all but eliminating historical characters. Although he follows Hugo, like Scott he concentrates on the conflict between civilizations. While utilizing familiar models and numerous conventional elements, Gogol and Pushkin nevertheless achieve something unique. Gogol creates an epic meant to reflect the entirety of the Ukraine’s medieval history, while Pushkin presents an archetypal vision of Russian history in his brilliant portrayal of the Pugachev rebellion.²

Taras Bulba is an example of “romantic nationalism,” the post-Enlightenment movement that decreed that states and countries derive their political legitimacy from the language, culture, religion, ethnicity, and/or character of those who make up a specific polity. During the nineteenth century romantic nationalism followed the general trend of European culture by turning conservatism, resulting in such works of reactionary race hate as Taras Bulba. It is possible that Gogol was being ironic, but Taras Bulba is written with such fervor and unblinking wonderment at the glory of the Cossacks that one can only conclude that irony was not Gogol’s goal.

Print: Nikolai Vasilevitch Gogol, The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories. New York: Signet Classics, 2013.

Elena M. Katz, Neither With Them Nor Without Them: The Russian Writer and the Jew in the Age of Realism. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008.

¹ Nikolai Vasilievitch Gogol, Taras Bulba, transl. Isabel F. Hapgood (New York: T.Y. Crowell, 1886), 227-228.

² Dan Ungurianu, Plotting History: The Russian Historical Novel in the Imperial Age (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007), 76-77.