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Abstract:
Gogol’s legacy itself is the most important document of the era. It is precisely because of its importance that a sharp ideological struggle unfolded around Gogol’s works immediately after their publication. The struggle for Gogol’s legacy continued after his death, not only in criticism, but also in the memoirs dedicated to him. The article analyzes the apocryphal features in the memoirs of Gogol by S.T. Aksakov, P.V. Annenkov, A.T. Tarasenkov, in biographical works about Gogol by P.A. Kulish, V.I. Shenrok and others. Based on the study of the entire corpus of memoirs and testimonies about Gogol by his contemporaries, published in 2011–2013, and replenished in 2017–2018, a number of sources of lesser and dubious, in comparison with others, reliability are identified and characterized. All Gogol memoirists had, in one way or another, their own interest, which did not always coincide with the desire to convey the true appearance of the writer. However, in some cases, the subjective intentions of the author led to a distortion of the true appearance of the writer. Among such reasons, ideological preferences of memoirists belonging to various liberal opposition trends (Westernism, Slavophilism, Ukrainophilism, etc.), as well as the corporate interests of the medical class, are noted as the most important.