The plot of Dead Souls is simple enough, and is said to have been suggested by an actual episode.
It was the day of serfdom in Russia, and a man's standing was often judged by the numbers of "souls" he possessed.

There was a periodical census of serfs, say once every ten or twenty years.

This being the case, an owner had to pay a tax on every "soul" registered at the last census, though some of the serfs might have died in the meantime.
Nevertheless, the system had its material advantages, inasmuch as an owner might borrow money from a bank on the "dead souls" no less than on the living ones.

The plan of Chichikov, Gogol's hero-villain, was therefore to make a journey through Russia and buy up the "dead souls," at reduced rates of course, saving their owners the government tax, and acquiring for himself a list of fictitious serfs, which he meant to mortgage to a bank for a considerable sum.

With this money he would buy an estate and some real life serfs, and make the beginning of a fortune.
Obviously, this plot, which is really no plot at all but merely a ruse to enable Chichikov to go across Russia in a troika, with Selifan the coachman as a sort of Russian Sancho Panza, gives Gogol a magnificent opportunity to reveal his genius as a painter of Russian panorama, peopled with characteristic native types commonplace enough but drawn in comic relief.