Chichikov, a mid-level Imperial Russian bureaucrat, schemes to line his own pockets by buying "dead souls from the landowners of a small town and then representing the souls as alive in order to secure a loan.

When his scheme is revealed, Chichikov flees before he can be arrested, taking his plot to another unsuspecting town.

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Nikolai Gogol was a Russian novelist and playwright born in what is now considered part of the modern Ukraine. By the time he was 15, Gogol worked as an amateur writer for both Russian and Ukrainian scripts, and then turned his attention and talent to prose. His short-story collections were immediately successful and his first novel, The Government Inspector, was well-received. Gogol went on to publish numerous acclaimed works, including Dead Souls, The Portrait, Marriage, and a revision of Taras Bulba. He died in 1852 while working on the second part of Dead Souls.