"Who, whom?"

[Katz, Michael R.]

Dear colleagues:

I have come across this famous phrase ("Kto kogo") in Vasily Sleptsov's novel Trudnoe vremya (1865). In searching it, I find the phrase in Gogol's Revizor and the fact that Lenin adopted it as a Bolshevik slogan to explain the fundamental question of politics, who will dominate whom.

Tom Friedman's recent column in the New York Times was entitled "Who will Influence Whom?"

Does anyone know where and when the phrase first appears? Was Gogol the first? Did it then become common? Inquiring minds want to know….

Thanks in advance.

Michael Katz
Middlebury College
mkatz at middlebury.eduфоунд тче пчрасе ин Гогол'с

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