writes, "who made me look at the thing seriously. I saw
that in my writings I laughed vainly, for nothing, myself
not knowing why. If I was to laugh, then I had better
laugh over things that are really to be laughed at. In
the Inspector-General I resolved to gather together all
the bad in Russia I then knew into one heap, all the injustice
that was practised in those places and in those
human relations in which more than in anything justice
is demanded of men, and to have one big laugh over it
all. But that, as is well known, produced an outburst
of excitement. Through my laughter, which never before
came to me with such force, the reader sensed profound
sorrow. I myself felt that my laughter was no
longer the same as it had been, that in my writings I
could no longer be the same as in the past, and that the
need to divert myself with innocent, careless scenes had
ended along with my young years."

With the strict censorship that existed in the reign
of Czar Nicholas I, it required powerful influence to
obtain permission for the production of the comedy.
This Gogol received through the instrumentality of his
friend, Zhukovsky, who succeeded in gaining the Czar's
personal intercession. Nicholas himself was present at
the first production in April, 1836, and laughed and applauded,
and is said to have remarked, "Everybody gets
it, and I most of all."

Naturally official Russia did not relish this innovation
in dramatic art, and indignation ran high among them