"Nevsky Prospect" is the story of Nikolai Gogol, written in 1833-1834. "Nevsky Prospect" was first published in the collection "Arabesque" (1835), and was highly praised by critics. Gogol began working on the story during the creation of "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" (about 1831). In his notebook preserved outline of the "Nevsky Prospekt" with the draft notes of "Night Before Christmas" and "Portrait".
Gogol's "Nevsky Prospect", "Diary of a Madman", "Portrait" (1835), "The Nose" (1836), "The Overcoat" (1842) refers to the cycle of the Petersburg stories. The writer himself has not united them in a particular cycle. They are all written at different times, have no common or narrator, but entered the Russian literature and culture as an artistic whole, as a cycle. This was because the stories are united by common themes (life of St. Petersburg), perspective (a reflection of social contradictions), the similarity of the main character ("little man"), the integrity of the author's position (satirical exposure of people and the vices of society).
The main theme of the story - the life of St. Petersburg and the fate of the "little man" in the big city with its social contrasts, causing discord between the ideas of the ideal and the reality. Together with the main theme reveals the indifference of people, spirituality substitute of mercantile interests, corruption of love, harmful effects of drugs on humans.
