A Terrible Vengeance (Russian: Страшная месть, romanized: Strashnaya mest') is a short Gothic horror story written by Russian author Nikolai Gogol.It was published in the second volume of his first short story collection, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, in 1832, and it was probably written in late summer 1831. The short story is written in the "ornate and agitated style" characteristic to Gogol, sometimes skirting purple prose, and was a great influence on the rhythmic prose of the modernist novelist Andrei Bely.