Two choices. N. V. Gogol and count A. K. Tolstoy as descendants of little Russian hetmans

The political views of two Russian classics, N. V. Gogol and Count A. K. Tolstoy, are compared. Aleksey Tolstoy's attitude towards Russian statehood is compared with Gogol's unchanging monarchist position on this issue. The basis for comparison is not only the fact that the writers were contemporaries, but also the fact that both had representatives of the Cossack foremen in their family - Ukrainian hetmans. On the example of two Russian writers - hetman's descendants - it is shown how a firm position on the issue of statehood determines the personal fate of a person. The article analyzes the difference in approaches to the high patriotic service of Count Tolstoy, a friend of the Heir, a childhood friend of Emperor Alexander II, and Gogol, who became close in the 1830s with another friend of the Tsarevich, Count I. M. Vielgorsky, who then intended to take the place of an educator at the Court - under the son of the Heir, Grand Duke Nikolai Alexandrovich. The ideological and political context is restored, which makes it possible to adequately assess Tolstoy's well-known review of Gogol in a letter to his cousin L. M. Zhemchuzhnikov in 1852. A conclusion is made about the consistent position of the creator of “Taras Bulba” regarding the historical future of Little Russia as part of a united Russia.