Maxim Gorky
|
Gorky's autographed portrait |
Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov (In
Russian Алексей Максимович Пешков) (–
June 18,
1936), better known as
Maxim Gorky (Максим "орький), was a
Soviet/
Russian author, a founder of the
socialist realism literary method and a political activist. He was born in the city of
Nizhny Novgorod and died in
Moscow. From 1906 to 1913 and from 1921 to 1929 he lived abroad, mostly in
Capri; after his return to the
Soviet Union he accepted the cultural policies of the time, although he was not permitted to leave the country.
Gorky became an
orphan at the age of nine and was brought up by his grandmother, an excellent storyteller. Her death deeply affected him, and after an attempt at suicide in December 1887, he travelled on foot across the
Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing.
As a journalist working in provincial newspapers, he wrote under
pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида (Jehudiel Khlamida). He began using pseudonym Gorky (literally "bitter") in 1892, while working in
Tiflis newspaper
Кавказ (The Caucasus). Gorky's first book
Очерки и рассказы (Essays and Stories) in 1898 enjoyed a sensational success and his career as a famous writer set off.
He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and was arrested numerous times. Gorky befriended many professional revolutionaries he encountered and became
Lenin's personal friend after they met in 1902. He exposed governmental control of the press (see
Matvei Golovinski affair). In 1902, Gorky was elected the honorary Academician of Literature, but
Nicholas II ordered to annul this election. In protest,
Anton Chekhov and
Vladimir Korolenko left the Academy.
While briefly imprisoned in
Peter and Paul Fortress during the abortive
Russian Revolution of 1905, Gorky wrote the play
Children of the Sun, nominally set during an 1862
cholera epidemic, but universally understood to relate to present-day events. In 1905 he officially joined the ranks of the
Bolshevik faction in the
Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.
During
World War I, his apartment in
Petrograd was turned into a Bolshevik staff room, but his relations with the Communists turned sour. Two weeks after the
October Revolution of 1917 he wrote: "Lenin and
Trotsky don't have any idea about freedom or
human rights. They are already corrupted by dirty poison of the power, this is visible by their shameful disrespect of
freedom of speech and all other
civil liberties for which the democracy was fighting." After his newspaper
Novaya Zhizn (
Новая Жизнь, "New Life") fell prey to Lenin's repression, Gorky published a collection of essays critical of the Bolsheviks called
Untimely Thoughts in 1918. (It would not be published in Russia again until the end of the Soviet Union.) The essays call Lenin a tyrant for his senseless arrests and repression of free discourse, and an anarchist for his conspiratorial tactics; Gorky compares Lenin to both the Tsar and
Nechayev. Lenin's 1919 letters to Gorky contain threats: "My advice to you: change your surroundings, your views, your actions, otherwise life may turn away from you."
In August 1921,
Nikolai Gumilyov, his friend, fellow writer and
Anna Akhmatova's husband, was arrested by Petrograd
Cheka for his
monarchist views. Gorky hurried to Moscow, obtained the order to release Gumilyov from Lenin personally, but upon his return to Petrograd he found out that Gumilyov had already been shot. In October Gorky emigrated to
Italy on bad health grounds: he had
tuberculosis.
According to
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Gorky's return was motivated by the material interests. In
Sorrento Gorky found himself without money and without glory. He visited the USSR several times after 1929, and in
1932 Joseph Stalin personally invited him to return from the emigration for good, an offer he accepted. In June, 1929 Gorky visited
Solovki (cleaned up for this occasion) and wrote a positive article about that
Gulag camp, which had already gained ill fame in the
West.
Gorky's return from
fascist Italy was a major
propaganda victory for the Soviets. He was decorated by the
Order of Lenin and given a mansion (formerly belonged to millionaire Ryabushinsky, currently Gorky Museum) in Moscow and a
dacha in the suburbs. One of the central Moscow streets, Tverskaya, was renamed in his honor, as well as the city of his birth. The largest fixed-wing aircraft in the world in the mid-1930s, the
Tupolev ANT-20 (
photo), was also named
Maxim Gorky. It was used for propaganda purposes and often demonstratively flew over the Soviet capital.
In 1933 Gorky edited an infamous book about the
Belomorkanal, presented as an example of "successful rehabilitation of the former
enemies of proletariat."
 |
Older Gorky. Artistic rendering. |
With the step-up of
Stalinist repressions and especially after the assassination of
Sergei Kirov in December 1934, Gorky was placed under unannounced
house arrest in his Moscow house. He was supplied daily with a special edition of the newspaper
Pravda containing no news about arrests or purges .
The sudden death of his son Maxim Peshkov in May 1935 was followed by the death of Maxim Gorky in June 1936. Both died under suspicious circumstances, but speculations that they were poisoned have never been proven. Stalin and
Molotov were among those who hand-carried Gorky's coffin during the funerals.
During the
Bukharin trials in 1938, one of the charges brought up was that Gorky was killed by
Yagoda's
NKVD agents.
Gorky's city of birth was renamed back into Nizhny Novgorod in 1990.
* Makar Chudra (Макар Чудра), short story, 1892
* Chelkash (Челкаш)
* Petit-Bourgeois (Мещане)
* Malva
* Creatures That Once Were Men
* Twenty-six Men and a Girl
* Foma Gordeyev (Фома "ордеев), novel, 1899
* Three of Them (Трое), 1900
* A Confession (Исповедь), 1908
* Okurov City ("ородок Окуров), novel, 1908
|
Gorky Reading to Stalin and Molotov (1940). |
* The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin (Жизнь Матвея Кожемякина)
*
Children of the Sun ("ети солнца), drama, 1905
* Enemies, drama, 1906
* Mother (Мать), novel, 1907
* The Lasts, drama, 1908
* Children, drama, 1910
*
The Lower Depths (На дне), 1902
* Childhood ("етство), 1913–1914
* The Old Man, drama, 1915
* In the World (' людях), 1916
*
Song of a Storm petrel (Песня о Буревестнике)
* Untimely Thoughts, articles, 1918
* Song of a Falcon (Песня о Соколе),short story, 1902
* My Universities (Мои университеты), 1923
* The Artamonov Business ("ело Артамоновых), 1927
* Life of Klim Samgin (Жизнь Клима Самгина), epopeia, 1927-36
* Reminiscences of Tolstoy (1919), Chekhov (1905-21), and Andreyev
* V.I.Lenin ('.И.Ленин), reminiscence, 1924-31
* The
I.V.Stalin White Sea - Baltic Sea Canal, 1934 (editor-in-chief)
*The
Gorky Trilogy is a series of three feature films—
The Childhood of Maxim Gorky,
My Apprenticeship, and
My Universities—directed by
Mark Donskoy, filmed in the Soviet Union, released 1938-1940. The trilogy was adapted from Gorky's autobiography.
* "Если враг не сдается, его уничтожают" (If the enemy doesn't surrender, he shall be exterminated!)
* "When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is duty, life is slavery."
*
Maxim Gorky (aircraft)*
Asteroid 2768 Gorky, named after the writer
*
Ekaterina Peshkova Gorky's first wife
*
Zinovy Peshkov*
Gorky ParkWorks:*
Children of the Sun*
The Lower Depths*
Song of a Storm petrel (in original Russian and English translation)
*
Brief biography*
Maxim Gorky Internet Archive at Marxists.org
*
"Anton Chekhov: Fragments of Recollections" by Maxim Gorky
*
Some works of Maxim Gorky in the original Russian*
The Song of the Stormy Petrel in original Russian*
The Song of the Storm-Finch translated into English by Alice Stone Blackwell
*
Free ebook of Maxim Gorky at
Project Gutenberg*
Informative review of Gorky's short fiction*
Maxim Gorky Institute Of Writing (Russian Site)*
Text of Gorky Essay on Coney Island
