Nikolai Gogol Russian author Nikolai Gogol was born in Velikie Sorochintsy, in what is now Ukraine, on March 20, 1809. His parents, Maria Ivanovna and Vasilii Afanas’evich Gogol-Ianovsky owned land; though the family was not rich, they were relatively well off. Gogol was the first infant in the family to survive, though Maria Ivanovna and…