UKRAINIANS MARK BICENTENNIAL OF GOGOL'S BIRTH

April 01, 2009

KYIV, April 1, 2009 (RFE/RL) -- An exhibition has opened in the Ukrainian capital to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of the writer Nikolai Gogol.

Gogol's personal letters, essays, and short stories, some of them never seen by the public, are on display at a two-week exhibition that began in Kyiv on March 31.

Olha Hinzburg, the chief of Ukraine's State Committee on Archives, told RFE/RL that on display at the exhibition are draft manuscripts of Gogol's most famous novels.

Armenia's Ambassador to Kyiv, Djivan Movsesian, said at the opening of the exhibition that the first language into which Gogol's works were translated was Armenian.

Similar exhibitions are being held in Moscow and Gogol's native town of Nizhyn, which is in today's Ukraine.

Both Russians and Ukrainians claim the writer, best known for his masterpieces "Dead Souls" and "The Nose," as their own.