| Display title | Dead Souls |
| Default sort key | Dead Souls |
| Page length (in bytes) | 8,865 |
| Namespace ID | 0 |
| Page ID | 146917 |
| Page content language | en - English |
| Page content model | wikitext |
| Indexing by robots | Allowed |
| Number of redirects to this page | 0 |
| Counted as a content page | Yes |
| Number of subpages of this page | 5 (0 redirects; 5 non-redirects) |
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| Page creator | m>Import Bot |
| Date of page creation | 21:27, 1 November 2013 |
| Latest editor | Robkelk (talk | contribs) |
| Date of latest edit | 22:05, 29 April 2021 |
| Total number of edits | 14 |
| Recent number of edits (within past 180 days) | 0 |
| Recent number of distinct authors | 0 |
Description | Content |
Article description: (description)
This attribute controls the content of the description and og:description elements. | Dead Souls is the most famous novel by Russian author Nikolai Gogol. It tells the story of the ambitious guy Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, who had the idea for a great scam. Background explanation: In feudal Russia, the great landowners had to pay a tax according to the number of serfs ("souls") they owned. Said serfs were counted in special revisions, which happened not that often - less than once per decade, even. If during the time between two revisions some of these souls happened to die, bad luck, their owners'd still have to pay the tax as if they were alive. OTOH, they could mortgage the estate, with souls included, to the Russian state. Now Chichikov adds two and two and gets the idea: If he buys up a lot of dead souls - which the squires probably want to get rid off - and mortgages them to the state, he'll acquire a big fortune without hard work or risk. Well, that's the theory. In practice, the buying part alone becomes pretty hard due to the eccentricness of said squires. |