Dead Souls (Russian: Мёртвые души, romanized: Myortvye dushi) is a 1984 Soviet television miniseries directed by Mikhail Schweitzer, based on Nikolai Gogol's epic poem of the same name.

In 1930, author Mikhail Bulgakov was commissioned to write the first adaptation of this novel for the Soviet stage at the Moscow Art Theater.

[1] The 1984 miniseries was based on the 1960 film adaptation directed by Leonid Trauberg, which was inspired the Moscow Art Theater script.

In this film, main character Chichikov travels through the countryside buying dead souls, or serfs who had deceased.

Dead Souls is a critique and satire of middle class life in Imperial Russia.