“Dead Souls” is the famous novel-poem by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842. The work tells the story of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, who travels across Russia with the aim of purchasing “dead souls”—serfs who have died since the last census but are still registered as living in the documents.In the novel, Gogol masterfully depicts Russian society in the first half of the 19th century, creating a vivid gallery of landowners and officials. Through satire and the grotesque, the author exposes the vices of contemporary society: greed, hypocrisy, spiritual emptiness, and moral decay.