Публикация первого рассказа горького год

Maxim Gorky
Gorky in 1926 at Posillipo
Born	Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868 Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	18 June 1936 (aged 68) Gorki-10, Moscow Oblast, Soviet Union
Occupation	Prose writer, dramatist, essayist, politician, poet
Period	1892–1936
Notable works	The Lower Depths (1902) Mother (1906) My Childhood. In the World. My Universities (1913–1923) The Life of Klim Samgin (1925–1936)
Signature

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в;^[a] 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868 – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (Russian: Макси́м Го́рький), was a Russian writer and socialist political thinker and proponent.^[1] He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.^[2] Before his success as an author, he travelled widely across the Russian Empire changing jobs frequently, experiences which would later influence his writing.

Gorky’s most famous works are his early short stories, written in the 1890s («Chelkash», «Old Izergil», and «Twenty-Six Men and a Girl»); plays The Philistines (1901), The Lower Depths (1902) and Children of the Sun (1905); a poem, «The Song of the Stormy Petrel» (1901); his autobiographical trilogy, My Childhood, In the World, My Universities (1913–1923); and a novel, Mother (1906). Gorky himself judged some of these works as failures, and Mother has been frequently criticized, and Gorky himself thought of Mother as one of his biggest failures.^[3] However, there have been warmer judgements of some less-known post-revolutionary works such as the novels The Artamonov Business (1925) and The Life of Klim Samgin (1925–1936); the latter is considered Gorky’s masterpiece and has sometimes been viewed by critics as a modernist work. Unlike his pre-revolutionary writings (known for their «anti-psychologism») Gorky’s late works differ with an ambivalent portrayal of the Russian Revolution and «unmodern interest to human psychology» (as noted by D. S. Mirsky).^[4] He had associations with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, both mentioned by Gorky in his memoirs.

Gorky was active in the emerging Marxist communist and later in the Bolshevik movement. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov’s Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union (USSR). In 1932, he returned to the USSR on Joseph Stalin’s personal invitation and lived there until his death in June 1936. After his return, he was officially declared the «founder of Socialist Realism». Despite his official reputation, Gorky’s relations with the Soviet regime were rather difficult. Modern scholars consider his ideology of God-Building as distinct from the official Marxism–Leninism, and his work fits uneasily under the «Socialist Realist» label. Gorky’s work still has a controversial reputation because of his political biography, although in the last years his works are returning to European stages and being republished.^[5]

Life[edit]

Early years[edit]

Born as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov on 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod, Gorky became an orphan at the age of eleven. He was brought up by his maternal grandmother^[1] and ran away from home at the age of twelve in 1880. 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.^[1]

As a journalist working for provincial newspapers, he wrote under the pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида (Jehudiel Khlamida).^[6] He started using the pseudonym «Gorky» (from горький; literally «bitter») in 1892, when his first short story, «Makar Chudra», was published by the newspaper Kavkaz (The Caucasus) in Tiflis, where he spent several weeks doing menial jobs, mostly for the Caucasian Railway workshops.^[8][9] The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky’s first book Очерки и рассказы (Essays and Stories) in 1898 enjoyed a sensational success, and his career as a writer began. Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice (though he worked hard on style and form) than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalisation, but also their inward spark of humanity.^[1]

Political and literary development[edit]

Gorky’s reputation grew as a unique literary voice from the bottom stratum of society and as a fervent advocate of Russia’s social, political, and cultural transformation. By 1899, he was openly associating with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement, which helped make him a celebrity among both the intelligentsia and the growing numbers of «conscious» workers. At the heart of all his work was a belief in the inherent worth and potential of the human person. In his writing, he counterposed individuals, aware of their natural dignity, and inspired by energy and will, with people who succumb to the degrading conditions of life around them. Both his writings and his letters reveal a «restless man» (a frequent self-description) struggling to resolve contradictory feelings of faith and scepticism, love of life and disgust at the vulgarity and pettiness of the human world.^{[citation needed]}

In 1916, Gorky said that the teachings of the ancient Jewish sage Hillel the Elder deeply influenced his life: «In my early youth I read…the words of…Hillel, if I remember rightly: ‘If thou art not for thyself, who will be for thee? But if thou art for thyself alone, wherefore art thou’? The inner meaning of these words impressed me with its profound wisdom…The thought ate its way deep into my soul, and I say now with conviction: Hillel’s wisdom served as a strong staff on my road, which was neither even nor easy. I believe that Jewish wisdom is more all-human and universal than any other; and this not only because of its immemorial age…but because of the powerful humaneness that saturates it, because of its high estimate of man.»^[10]

He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and was arrested many times. Gorky befriended many revolutionaries and became a personal friend of Vladimir Lenin after they met in 1902. He exposed governmental control of the press (see Matvei Golovinski affair). In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary Academician of Literature, but Tsar Nicholas II ordered this annulled. In protest, Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Korolenko left the Academy.^[11]

From 1900 to 1905, Gorky’s writings became more optimistic. He became more involved in the opposition movement, for which he was again briefly imprisoned in 1901. In 1904, having severed his relationship with the Moscow Art Theatre in the wake of conflict with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Gorky returned to Nizhny Novgorod to establish a theatre of his own.^[b] Both Konstantin Stanislavski and Savva Morozov provided financial support for the venture.^[13] Stanislavski believed that Gorky’s theatre was an opportunity to develop the network of provincial theatres which he hoped would reform the art of the stage in Russia, a dream of his since the 1890s.^[13] He sent some pupils from the Art Theatre School—as well as Ioasaf Tikhomirov, who ran the school—to work there.^[13] By the autumn, however, after the censor had banned every play that the theatre proposed to stage, Gorky abandoned the project.^[13]

As a financially successful author, editor, and playwright, Gorky gave financial support to the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), as well as supporting liberal appeals to the government for civil rights and social reform. The brutal shooting of workers marching to the Tsar with a petition for reform on 9 January 1905 (known as the «Bloody Sunday»), which set in motion the Revolution of 1905, seems to have pushed Gorky more decisively toward radical solutions. He became closely associated with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov’s Bolshevik wing of the party, with Bogdanov taking responsibility for the transfer of funds from Gorky to Vpered.^[14] It is not clear whether he ever formally joined, and his relations with Lenin and the Bolsheviks would always be rocky. His most influential writings in these years were a series of political plays, most famously The Lower Depths (1902). While briefly imprisoned in Peter and Paul Fortress during the abortive 1905 Russian Revolution, Gorky wrote the play Children of the Sun, nominally set during an 1862 cholera epidemic, but universally understood to relate to present-day events. He was released from the prison after a European-wide campaign, which was supported by Marie Curie, Auguste Rodin and Anatole France, amongst others.^[15]

Gorky assisted the Moscow uprising of 1905, and after its suppression his apartment was raided by the Black Hundreds. He subsequently fled to Lake Saimaa, Finland.^[16] In 1906, the Bolsheviks sent him on a fund-raising trip to the United States with Ivan Narodny. When visiting the Adirondack Mountains, Gorky wrote Мать (Mat’, Mother), his notable novel of revolutionary conversion and struggle. His experiences in the United States—which included a scandal over his travelling with his lover (the actress Maria Andreyeva) rather than his wife—deepened his contempt for the «bourgeois soul.»

Capri years[edit]

From 1906 to 1913, Gorky lived on the island of Capri in southern Italy, partly for health reasons and partly to escape the increasingly repressive atmosphere in Russia.^[1] He continued to support the work of Russian social-democracy, especially the Bolsheviks and invited Anatoly Lunacharsky to stay with him on Capri. The two men had worked together on Literaturny Raspad which appeared in 1908. It was during this period that Gorky, along with Lunacharsky, Bogdanov and Vladimir Bazarov developed the idea of an Encyclopedia of Russian History as a socialist version of Diderot’s Encyclopédie.

In 1906, Maxim Gorky visited New York City at the invitation of Mark Twain and other writers. An invitation to the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt was withdrawn after the New York World reported that the woman accompanying Gorky was not his wife.^[17] After this was revealed all of the hotels in Manhattan refused to house the couple, and they had to stay at an apartment in Staten Island.^[16]

During a visit to Switzerland, Gorky met Lenin, who he charged spent an inordinate amount of his time feuding with other revolutionaries, writing: «He looked awful. Even his tongue seemed to have turned grey».^[18] Despite his atheism,^[19] Gorky was not a materialist.^[20] Most controversially, he articulated, along with a few other maverick Bolsheviks, a philosophy he called «God-Building» (богостроительство, bogostroitel’stvo),^[1] which sought to recapture the power of myth for the revolution and to create religious atheism that placed collective humanity where God had been and was imbued with passion, wonderment, moral certainty, and the promise of deliverance from evil, suffering, and even death. Though ‘God-Building’ was ridiculed by Lenin, Gorky retained his belief that «culture»—the moral and spiritual awareness of the value and potential of the human self—would be more critical to the revolution’s success than political or economic arrangements.

Return from exile[edit]

An amnesty granted for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty allowed Gorky to return to Russia in 1914, where he continued his social criticism, mentored other writers from the common people, and wrote a series of important cultural memoirs, including the first part of his autobiography.^[1][21] On returning to Russia, he wrote that his main impression was that «everyone is so crushed and devoid of God’s image.» The only solution, he repeatedly declared, was «culture».

After the February Revolution, Gorky visited the headquarters of the Okhrana (secret police) on Kronversky Prospekt together with Nikolai Sukhanov and Vladimir Zenisinov.^[22] Gorky described the former Okhrana headquarters, where he sought literary inspiration, as derelict, with windows broken, and papers lying all over the floor.^[23] Having dinner with Sukhanov later the same day, Gorky grimly predicted that revolution would end in «Asiatic savagery».^[24] Initially a supporter of the Socialist-Revolutionary Alexander Kerensky, Gorky switched over to the Bolsheviks after the Kornilov affair.^[25] In July 1917, Gorky wrote his own experiences of the Russian working class had been sufficient to dispel any «notions that Russian workers are the incarnation of spiritual beauty and kindness».^[26] Gorky admitted to feeling attracted to Bolshevism, but admitted to concerns about a creed that made the entire working class «sweet and reasonable — I had never known people who were really like this».^[27] Gorky wrote that he knew the poor, the «carpenters, stevedores, bricklayers», in a way that the intellectual Lenin never did, and he frankly distrusted them.^[27]

During World War I, his apartment in Petrograd was turned into a Bolshevik staff room, and his politics remained close to the Bolsheviks throughout the revolutionary period of 1917. On the day after the October Revolution of 7 November 1917, Gorky observed a gardener working the Alexander Park who had cleared snow during the February Revolution while ignoring the shots in the background, asked people during the July Days not to trample the grass and was now chopping off branches, leading Gorky to write that he was «stubborn as a mole, and apparently as blind as one too».^[28] Gorky’s relations with the Bolsheviks became strained, however, after the October Revolution. One contemporary recalled how Gorky would turn «dark and black and grim» at the mere mention of Lenin.^[29] Gorky wrote that Vladimir Lenin together with Leon Trotsky «have become poisoned with the filthy venom of power», crushing the rights of the individual to achieve their revolutionary dreams.^[29] Gorky wrote that Lenin was a «cold-blooded trickster who spares neither the honor nor the life of the proletariat. … He does not know the popular masses, he has not lived with them».^[29] Gorky went on to compare Lenin to a chemist experimenting in a laboratory with the only difference being the chemist experimented with inanimate matter to improve life while Lenin was experimenting on the «living flesh of Russia».^[29] A further strain on Gorky’s relations with the Bolsheviks occurred when his newspaper Novaya Zhizn (Новая Жизнь, «New Life«) fell prey to Bolshevik censorship during the ensuing civil war, around which time Gorky published a collection of essays critical of the Bolsheviks called Untimely Thoughts in 1918. (It would not be re-published in Russia until after the collapse 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.^{[citation needed]}

«Lenin and his associates,» Gorky wrote, «consider it possible to commit all kinds of crimes … the abolition of free speech and senseless arrests.»^[30]

He was a member of the Committee for the Struggle against Antisemitism within the Soviet government.^[31]

In 1921, he hired a secretary, Moura Budberg, who later became his mistress. In August 1921, the poet Nikolay Gumilev was arrested by the Petrograd Cheka for his monarchist views. There is a story that Gorky hurried to Moscow, obtained an order to release Gumilev from Lenin personally, but upon his return to Petrograd he found out that Gumilev had already been shot – but Nadezhda Mandelstam, a close friend of Gumilev’s widow, Anna Akhmatova wrote that: «It is true that people asked him to intervene. … Gorky had a strong dislike of Gumilev, but he nevertheless promised to do something. He could not keep his promise because the sentence of death was announced and carried out with unexpected haste, before Gorky had got round to doing anything.»^[32] In October, Gorky returned to Italy on health grounds: he had tuberculosis.

Povolzhye famine[edit]

In July 1921, Gorky published an appeal to the outside world, saying that millions of lives were menaced by crop failure. The Russian famine of 1921–22, also known as Povolzhye famine, killed an estimated 5 million, primarily affecting the Volga and Ural River regions.^[33]

Second exile[edit]

Gorky left Russia in September 1921, for Berlin. There he heard about the impending Moscow Trial of 12 Socialist Revolutionaries, which hardened his opposition to the Bolshevik regime. He wrote to Anatole France denouncing the trial as a «cynical and public preparation for the murder» of people who had fought for the freedom of the Russian people. He also wrote to the Soviet vice-premier, Alexei Rykov asking him to tell Leon Trotsky that any death sentences carried out on the defendants would be «premeditated and foul murder.»^[34] This provoked a contemptuous reaction from Lenin, who described Gorky as «always supremely spineless in politics», and Trotsky, who dismissed Gorky as an «artist whom no-one takes seriously».^[35] He was denied permission by Italy’s fascist government to return to Capri, but was permitted to settle in Sorrento, where he lived from 1922 to 1932, with an extended household that included Moura Budberg, his ex-wife Andreyeva, her lover, Pyotr Kryuchkov, who acted as Gorky’s secretary (initially a spy for Yagoda) for the remainder of his life, Gorky’s son Max Peshkov, Max’s wife, Timosha, and their two young daughters.

He wrote several successful books while there,^[36] but by 1928 he was having difficulty earning enough to keep his large household, and began to seek an accommodation with the communist regime. The General Secretary of the Communist Party Joseph Stalin was equally keen to entice Gorky back to the USSR. He paid his first visit in May 1928 – at the very time when the regime was staging its first show trial since 1922, the so-called Shakhty Trial of 53 engineers employed in the coal industry, one of whom, Pyotr Osadchy, had visited Gorky in Sorrento. In contrast to his attitude to the trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, Gorky accepted without question that the engineers were guilty, and expressed regret that in the past he had intervened on behalf of professionals who were being persecuted by the regime. During the visit, he struck up friendships with Genrikh Yagoda (deputy head of the OGPU) who vested interest in spying on Gorky, and two other OGPU officers, Semyon Firin and Matvei Pogrebinsky, who held high office in the Gulag. Pogrebinsky was Gorky’s guest in Sorrento for four weeks in 1930. The following year, Yagoda sent his brother-in-law, Leopold Averbakh to Sorrento, with instructions to induce Gorky to return to Russia permanently.^[37]

Return to Russia[edit]

Gorky’s return from Fascist Italy was a major propaganda victory for the Soviets. He was decorated with the Order of Lenin and given a mansion (formerly belonging to the millionaire Pavel Ryabushinsky, which was for many years the Gorky Museum) in Moscow and a dacha in the suburbs. The city of Nizhni Novgorod, and the surrounding province were renamed Gorky. Moscow’s main park, and one of the central Moscow streets, Tverskaya, were renamed in his honour, as was the Moscow Art Theatre. The largest fixed-wing aircraft in the world in the mid-1930s, the Tupolev ANT-20 was named Maxim Gorky in his honour.

He was also appointed President of the Union of Soviet Writers, founded in 1932, to coincide with his return to the USSR. On 11 October 1931 Gorky read his fairy tale poem «A Girl and Death» (which he wrote in 1892) to his visitors Joseph Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov and Vyacheslav Molotov, an event that was later depicted by Viktor Govorov in his painting. On that same day Stalin left his autograph on the last page of this work by Gorky: «This piece is stronger than Goethe’s Faust (love defeats death)>» Voroshilov also left a «resolution»: «I am illiterate, but I think that Comrade Stalin more than correctly defined the meaning of A. Gorky’s poems. On my own behalf, I will say: I love M. Gorky as my and my class of writer, who correctly defined our forward movement.»^[38]

As Vyacheslav Ivanov remembers, Gorky was very upset:

They wrote their resolution on his fairy tale «A Girl and Death». My father, who spoke about this episode with Gorky, insisted emphatically that Gorky was offended. Stalin and Voroshilov were drunk and fooling around.^[39]

Apologist for the gulag[edit]

In 1933, Gorky co-edited, with Averbakh and Firin, an infamous book about the White Sea-Baltic Canal, presented as an example of «successful rehabilitation of the former enemies of proletariat». For other writers, he urged that one obtained realism by extracting the basic idea from reality, but by adding the potential and desirable to it, one added romanticism with deep revolutionary potential.^[40] For himself, Gorky avoided realism. His denials that even a single prisoner died during the construction of the aforementioned canal was refuted by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who claimed thousands of prisoners froze to death not only in the evenings from the lack of adequate shelter and food, but even in the middle of the day. Most tellingly, Solzhenitsyn and Dmitry Likhachov document a visit, on June 20, 1929 to Solovki, the “original” forced labour camp, and the model upon which thousands of others were constructed. Given Gorky’s reputation, (both to the authorities and to the prisoners), the camp was transformed from one where prisoners (Zeks) were worked to death to one befitting the official Soviet idea of “transformation through labour”. Gorky did not notice the relocation of thousands of prisoners to ease the overcrowding, the new clothes on the prisoners (used to labouring in their underwear), or even the hiding of prisoners under tarpaulins, and the removal of the torture rooms. The deception was exposed when Gorky was presented with children “model prisoners”, one of who challenged Gorky if he “wanted to know the truth”. On the affirmative, the room was cleared and the 14-year-old boy recounted the truth — starvation, men worked to death, and of the pole torture, of using men instead of horses, of the summary executions, of rolling prisoners, bound to a heavy pole down stairs with hundreds of steps, of spending the night, in underwear, in the snow. Gorky never wrote about the boy, or even asked to take the boy with him. The boy was executed after Gorky left.^[41] Gorky left the room in tears, and wrote in the visitor book “I am not in a state of mind to express my impressions in just a few words. I wouldn’t want, yes, and I would likewise be ashamed to permit myself the banal praise of the remarkable energy of people who, while remaining vigilant and tireless sentinels of the Revolution, are able, at the same time, to be remarkably bold creators of culture”.^[42]

As Gorky’s biographer Pavel Basinsky notes, it was impossible for Gorky to «take the boy with him» even with his reputation of a «great proletarian writer». As he says, Gorky had to spend over 2 years to free Julia Danzas.^[43] Some of the Solovki historians doubt that there was a boy.

Gorky also helped other political prisoners (not without the influence of his wife, Yekaterina Peshkova). For example, because of Gorky’s interference Mikhail Bakhtin’s initial verdict (5 years of Solovki) was changed to 6 years of exile.

D: Mikhail Mikhailovich, have you met Gorky in person?
B: With Gorky? No. I only saw him several times, and then (there is no need to write this down), when, therefore, I was imprisoned, Gorky even sent two telegrams to the appropriate institutions …
D: Gorky?
B: Yes. In my defence.
D: Well, it just needs to be written down.
B: He knew my first book and generally heard a lot about me, and we had mutual acquaintances…
<…>
B: Well, it was… 1929.
D: Yeees. And Gorky… Then he stopped interfering.
B: So in the case… yes, in my case there were Gorky’s telegrams, his two telegrams. <…>
D: A lot of good things was made by his wife, Yekaterina Pavlovna.
B: Yes. Yekaterina Pavlovna. I didn’t know her <…> She was then the chairman of the so-called …
D: Red Cross.

B: Yes. Political Red Cross.

Hostility to homosexuality[edit]

Gorky strongly supported efforts in getting a law passed in 1934, making homosexuality a criminal offense. His attitude was coloured by the fact that some members of the Nazi Sturmabteilung were homosexual. The phrase «exterminate all homosexuals and fascism will vanish» is often attributed to him.^[45][46] He was actually quoting a popular saying. Writing in Pravda on 23 May 1934, Gorky said: «There is already a sarcastic saying: Destroy homosexuality and fascism will disappear.»^[47][48]

Gorky and the Soviet censorship[edit]

And in my opinion, he (Vladislav Khodasevich) is right when he says that the Soviet critics have made up an anti-Soviet play from The Turbin Brothers. Bulgakov is «not a brother» to me; I have not the slightest desire to defend him. But he is a talented writer, and we don’t have many people like that. So there’s no point in making them «martyrs for an idea.»

— Letter to Joseph Stalin, 1930^[49]

Gorky was following Bulgakov’s literary career since 1925, when he first read The Fatal Eggs. According to his letters, even then he admired his talent. Partly because of Gorky Bulgakov’s plays The Cabal of Hypocrites and The Days of the Turbins were allowed for staging.^[50] Gorky also tried to use his influence to allow the Moscow Art Theater production of Bulgakov’s other play, Flight.^[51] However, it was banned because of Stalin’s personal reaction.^[52]

…I strongly support the publication by Academia of the novel Demons and other contrrevolutionary novels, such as Pisemsky’s’ Troubled Seas, Leskov’s No Way Out and Krestovsky’s Marevo. I do this because I am against the transformation of legal literature into illegal literature, which is being sold «from under the counter» and which seduces young people with its «taboo»… You need to know the enemy, you need to know his ideology… The Soviet government is not afraid of anything, and least of all can frighten the publication an old novel. But … Comrade Zaslavsky with his article brought true pleasure to our enemies, and especially to the White émigrés. «They ban Dostoyevsky» they screech, grateful to Comrade Zaslavsky.

.

Anti-formalist campaign[edit]

You have a big choice of weapons. Soviet literature has every opportunity to apply these types of weapons (genres, styles, forms and methods of literary creativity) in their diversity and completeness, selecting all the best that has been created in this area by all previous eras.^[54]

Socialist realism provides artistic creativity with an exceptional opportunity for the manifestation of creative initiative, the choice of various forms, styles and genres.

Shostakovich is a young man, about 25 years old, undeniably talented, but very self-confident and very nervous. The article in Pravda hit him like a brick on the head, the guy is completely depressed. <…> «Muddle», but why? In what and how is it expressed — «muddle»? Critics must give a technical assessment of Shostakovich’s music. And what the Pravda article gave allowed a bunch of mediocre people, hack-workers, to attack Shostakovich in every possible way.

— Letter to Joseph Stalin, 1936^[55]

Conflicts with Stalinism[edit]

Gorky’s relationship with the regime got colder after his return to the Soviet Union in 1933: the Soviet authorities would never let him out in Italy again. He continued to write the propagandist articles in Pravda and glorify Stalin. However, by 1934 his relationship with the regime was getting more and more distant. Leopold Averbakh, whom Gorky regarded as a protege, was denied a role in the newly created Writers Union, and objected to interference by the Central Committee staff in the affairs of the union^{[citation needed]}; Gorky’s conception of «Socialist realism» and creation of the Writers Union, instead of ending the RAPP «literary dictatorship» and uniting the «proletarian» writers with the denounced «poputchicks» becomes a tool to increase the censorship. This conflict, which may have been exacerbated by Gorky’s despair over the early death of his son, Max, came to a head just before the first Soviet Writers Congress, in August 1934.

His meetings with Stalin were getting more rare. At that time he gets influenced by Lev Kamenev, who was made the director of Academia publishing House because of Gorky’s request, and Nikolai Bukharin, who had been Gorky’s friend since 1920s.^[56] On 11 August, Gorky submitted an article for publication in Pravda which attacked the deputy head of the press department, Pavel Yudin with such intemperate language that Stalin’s deputy, Lazar Kaganovich ordered its suppression, but was forced to relent after hundreds of copies of the article circulated by hand.^{[citation needed]} Gorky’s draft of the keynote speech he was due to give at the congress caused such consternation when he submitted it to the Politburo that four of its leading members – Kaganovich, Vyacheslav Molotov, Kliment Voroshilov, and Andrei Zhdanov – were sent to persuade him to make changes.^[57]

Yesterday we, having familiarized ourselves with M. Gorky’s speech to the Congress of Writers, came to the conclusion that the speech is not suitable in this form. First of all — the very construction and arrangement of the material — 3/4, if not more, is occupied by general historical and philosophical reasoning, and even then incorrect. Primitive society is presented as the ideal, and capitalism at all of its stages is portrayed as a reactionary force that hindered the development of technology and culture. It is clear that this position is non-Marxist. Soviet literature is almost not covered, but the speech is called «On Soviet Literature.» <…> …after a long talk he agreed to make some edits and changes. It seems that he is in a bad mood. <…> The point, of course, is not what he says, but how he says it. These talks have reminded me of comrade Krupskaya. I think that Kamenev plays an important role in shaping these sentiments of Gorky. <…>
Today we exchanged views and think that it is better, after making some edits, to publish it than to allow it to be read as illegal.

In his speech he calls Fyodor Dostoevsky a «medieval inquisitor», however, he admires him for «having painted with the most vivid perfection of word portraiture a type of egocentrist, a type of social degenerate in the person of the hero of his Notes from Underground» and notes him as a major figure in Russian classic literature.^[59] After the end of the congress Central Committee of the Party, in which maintained that writers the likes of Panferov, Ermilov, Fadeyev, Stavsky, and many other writers who were approved as the «masters of Socialist realism», were unworthy of membership in the Union of Soviet Writers, obviously preferring Boris Pasternak, Andrei Bely, Andrei Platonov and Artyom Vesyoly (Gorky took the latter two in his «writers brigade» because of their inability to be published,^[60] although he criticized Bely and Platonov for their techniques). He also wrote an article about Panferov’s novel Brusski: «One could, of course, not note the verbal errors and careless technique of the gifted writer, but he acts as an adviser and teacher, and he teaches the production of literary waste».^[61]

Gorky also tried to fight the Soviet censorship as it was growing more power. For example, he tried to defend an issue of Dostoevsky’s Demons.

As the conflict was becoming more visible, Gorky’s political and literary positions became weaker. Panferov wrote an answer to Gorky, in which he criticized him. David Zaslavsky published an ironical response to Gorky’s defense of Demons.

According to some sources (such as Romain Rolland’s diary), because of Gorky’s refusal to blindly obey the policies of Stalinism, he had lost the Party’ s goodwill and spent his last days under unannounced house arrest.^[62]

Death[edit]

With the increase of Stalinist repression and especially after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, Gorky was placed under unannounced house arrest in his house near Moscow in Gorki-10 (the name of the place is a completely different word in Russian unrelated to his surname). His long-serving secretary Pyotr Kryuchkov had been recruited by Yagoda as a paid informer.^[63] Before his death from a lingering illness in June 1936, he was visited at home by Stalin, Yagoda, and other leading communists, and by Moura Budberg, who had chosen not to return to the USSR with him but was permitted to stay for his funeral.

The sudden death of Gorky’s son Maxim Peshkov in May 1934 was followed by the death of Maxim Gorky himself in June 1936 from pneumonia. Speculation has long surrounded the circumstances of his death. Stalin and Molotov were among those who carried Gorky’s urn during the funeral. During the Bukharin trial in 1938 (one of the three Moscow Trials), one of the charges was that Gorky was killed by Yagoda’s NKVD agents.^[64]

In Soviet times, before and after his death, the complexities in Gorky’s life and outlook were reduced to an iconic image (echoed in heroic pictures and statues dotting the countryside): Gorky as a great Soviet writer who emerged from the common people, a loyal friend of the Bolsheviks, and the founder of the increasingly canonical «socialist realism».^[65]

Bibliography[edit]

Source: Turner, Lily; Strever, Mark (1946). Orphan Paul; A Bibliography and Chronology of Maxim Gorky. New York: Boni and Gaer. pp. 261–270.

Novels[edit]

• Goremyka Pavel, (Горемыка Павел, 1894). Published in English as Orphan Paul^[66]
• Foma Gordeyev (Фома Гордеев, 1899). Also translated as The Man Who Was Afraid
• Three of Them (Трое, 1900). Also translated as Three Men and The Three
• The Mother (Мать, 1906). First published in English, in 1906
• The Life of a Useless Man (Жизнь ненужного человека, 1908)
• A Confession (Исповедь, 1908)
• Gorodok Okurov (Городок Окуров, 1908), not translated
• The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin (Жизнь Матвея Кожемякина, 1910)
• The Artamonov Business (Дело Артамоновых, 1925). Also translated as The Artamonovs and Decadence
• The Life of Klim Samgin (Жизнь Клима Самгина, 1925–1936). Published in English as Forty Years: The Life of Clim Samghin
  • Volume I. Bystander (1930)
  • Volume II. The Magnet (1931)
  • Volume III. Other Fires (1933)
  • Volume IV. The Specter (1938)

Novellas and short stories[edit]

• Sketches and Stories (Очерки и рассказы), 1899
  • «Makar Chudra» (Макар Чудра), 1892
  • «Old Izergil» (Старуха Изергиль), 1895
  • «Chelkash» (Челкаш), 1895
  • «Konovalov» (Коновалов), 1897
  • The Orlovs (Супруги Орловы), 1897
  • Creatures That Once Were Men (Бывшие люди), 1897
  • «Malva» (Мальва), 1897
  • Varenka Olesova (Варенька Олесова), 1898
  • «Twenty-six Men and a Girl» (Двадцать шесть и одна), 1899

Plays[edit]

• The Philistines (Мещане), translated also as The Smug Citizens and The Petty Bourgeois (Мещане), 1901
• The Lower Depths (На дне), 1902
• Summerfolk (Дачники), 1904
• Children of the Sun (Дети солнца), 1905
• Barbarians (Варвары), 1905
• Enemies, 1906.
• The Last Ones (Последние), 1908. Translated also as Our Father^[c]
• Reception (Встреча), 1910. Translated also as Children
• Queer People (Чудаки), 1910. Translated also as Eccentrics
• Vassa Zheleznova (Васса Железнова), 1910, 1935 (revised version)
• The Zykovs (Зыковы), 1913
• Counterfeit Money (Фальшивая монета), 1913
• The Old Man (Старик), 1915, Revised 1922, 1924. Translated also as The Judge
• Workaholic Slovotekov (Работяга Словотеков), 1920
• Egor Bulychev (Егор Булычов и другие), 1932
• Dostigayev and Others (Достигаев и другие), 1933

Non-fiction[edit]

• My Childhood. In the World. My Universities (1913–1923)
• Chaliapin, articles in Letopis, 1917^[d]
• My Recollections of Tolstoy, 1919
• Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Andreyev, 1920–1928
• Fragments from My Diary (Заметки из дневника), 1924
• V.I. Lenin (В.И. Ленин), reminiscence, 1924–1931
• The I.V. Stalin White Sea – Baltic Sea Canal, 1934 (editor-in-chief)
• Literary Portraits [c.1935].^[68]

Essays[edit]

• O karamazovshchine (О карамазовщине, On Karamazovism/On Karamazovshchina), 1915, not translated
• Untimely Thoughts. Notes on Revolution and Culture (Несвоевременные мысли. Заметки о революции и культуре), 1918
• On the Russian Peasantry (О русском крестьянстве), 1922

Poems[edit]

• «The Song of the Stormy Petrel» (Песня о Буревестнике), 1901
• «Song of a Falcon» (Песня о Соколе), 1902. Also referred to as a short story

Autobiography[edit]

• My Childhood (Детство), Part I, 1913–1914
• In the World (В людях), Part II, 1916
• My Universities (Мои университеты), Part III, 1923

Collections[edit]

• Sketches and Stories, three volumes, 1898–1899
• Creatures That Once Were Men, stories in English translation (1905). This contained an introduction by G. K. Chesterton^[69] The Russian title, Бывшие люди (literally «Former people») gained popularity as an expression in reference to people who severely dropped in their social status
• Tales of Italy (Сказки об Италии), 1911–1913
• Through Russia (По Руси), 1923
• Stories 1922-1924 (Рассказы 1922-1924 годов), 1925

Commemoration[edit]

• In almost every large settlement of the states of the former USSR, there was^[70] or is Gorky Street. In 2013, 2110 streets, avenues and lanes in Russia were named «Gorky», and another 395 were named «Maxim Gorky».^[71]
• Gorky was the name of Nizhny Novgorod from 1932 to 1990.
• Gorkovsky suburban railway line, Moscow
• Gorkovskoye village of Novoorsky District of Orenburg Oblast
• Gorky village in the Leningrad oblast
• Gorkovsky village (Volgograd) (formerly Voroponovo)
• Village n.a. Maxim Gorky, Kameshkovsky District of Vladimir Oblast
• Gorkovskoye village is the district center of Omsk Oblast (formerly Ikonnikovo)
• Maxim Gorky village, Znamensky District of Omsk Oblast
• Village n.a. Maxim Gorky, Krutinsky District of Omsk Oblast
• In Nizhny Novgorod the Central District Children’s Library, the Academic Drama Theater, a street, as well as a square are named after Maxim Gorky. And the most important attraction there is the museum-apartment of Maxim Gorky
• Drama theaters in the following cities are named after Maxim Gorky: Moscow (MAT, 1932), Vladivostok (Primorsky Gorky Drama Theater — PGDT), Berlin (Maxim Gorki Theater), Baku (ASTYZ), Astana (Russian Drama Theater named after M. Gorky), Tula (Tula Academic Theatre), Minsk (Theater named after M. Gorky), Rostov-on-Don (Rostov Drama Theater named after M. Gorky), Krasnodar, Samara (Samara Drama Theater named after M. Gorky), Orenburg (Orenburg Regional Drama Theater), Volgograd (Volgograd Regional Drama Theater), Magadan (Magadan Regional Music and Drama Theater), Simferopol (KARDT), Kustanay, Kudymkar (Komi- Perm National Drama Theater), Young Spectator Theater in Lviv, as well as in Saint Petersburg from 1932 to 1992 (DB). Also, the name was given to the Interregional Russian Drama Theater of the Fergana Valley, the Tashkent State Academic Theater, the Tula Regional Drama Theater, and the Nur-Sultan Regional Drama Theater.
• Palaces of Culture n.a. Maxim Gorky were built in Nevinnomyssk, Rovenky, Novosibirsk and Saint Petersburg
• Universities: Maxim Gorky Literature Institute, Ural State University, Donetsk National Medical University, Minsk State Pedagogical Institute, Omsk State Pedagogical University, until 1993 Turkmen State University in Ashgabat was named after Maxim Gorky (now named after Magtymguly Pyragy), Sukhum State University was named after Maxim Gorky, National University of Kharkiv was named after Gorky in 1936–1999, Ulyanovsk Agricultural Institute, Uman Agricultural Institute, Kazan Order of the Badge of Honor The institute was named after Maxim Gorky until it was granted the status of an academy in 1995 (now Kazan State Agrarian University), the Mari Polytechnic Institute and Perm State University named after Maxim Gorky (1934–1993)
• The following cities have parks named after Maxim Gorky: Rostov-on-Don, Taganrog, Saratov, Minsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kharkiv, Odessa, Melitopol, Moscow, Alma-Ata

Monuments[edit]

Monuments of Maxim Gorky are installed in many cities. Among them:

• In Russia — Borisoglebsk, Arzamas, Volgograd, Voronezh, Vyborg, Dobrinka, Izhevsk, Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, Nevinnomyssk, Nizhny Novgorod, Orenburg, Penza, Pechora, Rostov-on-Don, Rubtsovsk, Rylsk, Ryazan, St. Petersburg, Sarov, Sochi, Taganrog, Khabarovsk, Chelyabinsk, Ufa, Yartsevo.
• In Belarus — Dobrush, Minsk. Mogilev, Gorky Park, bust.
• In Ukraine — Donetsk, Kryvyi Rih, Melitopol, Kharkiv, Yalta, Yasynuvata
• In Azerbaijan — Baku
• In Kazakhstan — Alma-Ata, Zyryanovsk, Kostanay
• In Georgia — Tbilisi
• In Moldova — Chisinaus, Leovo
• In Italy — Sorrento
• In India — Gorky Sadan,^[72] Kolkata

On 6 December 2022 the City Council of the Ukrainian city Dnipro decided to remove from the city all monuments to figures of Russian culture and history, in particular it was mentioned that the monuments to Gorky, Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lomonosov would be removed from the public space of the city.^[73] The monument of Gorky that been erected in 1977 was dismantled on 26 December 2022.^[74]

Philately[edit]

Maxim Gorky is depicted on postage stamps: Albania (1986),^[75] Vietnam (1968)^[76] India (1968),^[77] Maldives (2018),^[78] and many more. Some of them can be found below.

• Maxim Gorky postage stamps

• 

  Postage stamp USSR, 1932

• 

  Postage stamp USSR, 1932

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, 1943

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, 1943

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, «10 years since the death of M. Gorky» (1946, 30 kopeeks)

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, «10 years since the death of M. Gorky» (1946, 60 kopeeks)

• 

  Postage stamp, GDR, 1953

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, 1956

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, 1958

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, 1959

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, 1968

• 

  Postage stamp, Russia, «Rusiia. XX век. Culture» (2000, 1,30 rubles)

In 2018, FSUE Russian Post released a miniature sheet dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the writer.

Numismatics[edit]

• In 1988, a 1 ruble coin was issued in the USSR, dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the writer.
• In 2018, on the 150th anniversary of the writer’s birthday, the Bank of Russia issued a commemorative silver coin with a face value of 2 rubles in the series “Outstanding Personalities of Russia”.

Depictions and adaptations[edit]

• In 1912, the Italian composer Giacomo Orefice based his opera Radda on the character of Radda in Gorky’s 1892 short story Makar Chudra.
• In 1932, German playwright Bertolt Brecht published his play The Mother, which was based on Gorky’s 1906 novel Mother. The same novel was also adapted for an opera by Valery Zhelobinsky in 1938.
• In 1938–1939, Gorky’s three-part autobiography was released by Soyuzdetfilm as three feature films: The Childhood of Maxim Gorky, My Apprenticeship and My Universities, all three directed by Mark Donskoy.
• In 1975, Gorky’s 1908 play The Last Ones (Последние), had its New York debut at the Manhattan Theater Club, under the alternative English title Our Father, directed by Keith Fowler.
• In 1985, Gorky’s 1906 play Enemies was translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair and Jeremy Brooks and directed in London by Ann Pennington in association with the Internationalist Theatre at the tail end of the British miners’ strike of 1984–1985. Gorky’s «pseudo-populism» is done away with in this production by the actors speaking «without distinctive accents and consequently without populist sentiment».^[79]

See also[edit]

• FK Sloboda Tuzla football club from Bosnia and Herzegovina, originally called FK Gorki
• Gorky Park in Moscow and Park of Maxim Gorky in Kharkiv, Ukraine
• Maxim Gorky Literature Institute
• Palace of Culture named after Maxim Gorky, Novosibirsk
• Soviet cruiser Maxim Gorky, a Project 26bis (or Kirov-class) light cruiser, which served from 1940 to 1956 and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner in 1944
• Tupolev ANT-20 aircraft, nicknamed «Maxim Gorky»
• Znanie Publishers

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Sources[edit]

• Banham, Martin, ed. 1998. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43437-8.
• Benedetti, Jean (1999). Stanislavski : His Life and Art : a Biography (3rd, rev. and expanded ed.). London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-52520-1. OCLC 1109272008.
• McSmith, Andy (2015). Fear and the Muse Kept Watch, The Russian Masters – from Akhmatova and Pasternak to Shostakovich and Eisenstein – under Stalin. New York: The New Press. ISBN 9781620970799. OCLC 907678164.
• Moynahan, Brian (1992). Comrades : 1917 — Russia in Revolution. Boston: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-58698-6. OCLC 1028562793 – via Internet Archvive.
• Worrall, Nick. 1996. The Moscow Art Theatre. Theatre Production Studies ser. London and NY: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-05598-9.
• Figes, Orlando: A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891–1924 The Bodley Head, London. (2014) ISBN 978-0-14-024364-2

Further reading[edit]

• Figes, Orlando (June 1996). «Maxim Gorky and the Russian revolution». History Today. 46 (6): 16. ISSN 0018-2753. EBSCOhost 9606240213.
• Tovah Yedlin. Maxim Gorky: A Political Biography

External links[edit]

• Maxim Gorky Archive at marxists.org
• Works by Maxim Gorky at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Maxim Gorky at Internet Archive
• Works by Maxim Gorky at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Newspaper clippings about Maxim Gorky in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Maxim Gorky
Gorky in 1926 at Posillipo
Born	Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868 Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	18 June 1936 (aged 68) Gorki-10, Moscow Oblast, Soviet Union
Occupation	Prose writer, dramatist, essayist, politician, poet
Period	1892–1936
Notable works	The Lower Depths (1902) Mother (1906) My Childhood. In the World. My Universities (1913–1923) The Life of Klim Samgin (1925–1936)
Signature

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в;^[a] 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868 – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (Russian: Макси́м Го́рький), was a Russian writer and socialist political thinker and proponent.^[1] He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.^[2] Before his success as an author, he travelled widely across the Russian Empire changing jobs frequently, experiences which would later influence his writing.

Gorky’s most famous works are his early short stories, written in the 1890s («Chelkash», «Old Izergil», and «Twenty-Six Men and a Girl»); plays The Philistines (1901), The Lower Depths (1902) and Children of the Sun (1905); a poem, «The Song of the Stormy Petrel» (1901); his autobiographical trilogy, My Childhood, In the World, My Universities (1913–1923); and a novel, Mother (1906). Gorky himself judged some of these works as failures, and Mother has been frequently criticized, and Gorky himself thought of Mother as one of his biggest failures.^[3] However, there have been warmer judgements of some less-known post-revolutionary works such as the novels The Artamonov Business (1925) and The Life of Klim Samgin (1925–1936); the latter is considered Gorky’s masterpiece and has sometimes been viewed by critics as a modernist work. Unlike his pre-revolutionary writings (known for their «anti-psychologism») Gorky’s late works differ with an ambivalent portrayal of the Russian Revolution and «unmodern interest to human psychology» (as noted by D. S. Mirsky).^[4] He had associations with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, both mentioned by Gorky in his memoirs.

Gorky was active in the emerging Marxist communist and later in the Bolshevik movement. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov’s Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union (USSR). In 1932, he returned to the USSR on Joseph Stalin’s personal invitation and lived there until his death in June 1936. After his return, he was officially declared the «founder of Socialist Realism». Despite his official reputation, Gorky’s relations with the Soviet regime were rather difficult. Modern scholars consider his ideology of God-Building as distinct from the official Marxism–Leninism, and his work fits uneasily under the «Socialist Realist» label. Gorky’s work still has a controversial reputation because of his political biography, although in the last years his works are returning to European stages and being republished.^[5]

Life[edit]

Early years[edit]

Born as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov on 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod, Gorky became an orphan at the age of eleven. He was brought up by his maternal grandmother^[1] and ran away from home at the age of twelve in 1880. 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.^[1]

As a journalist working for provincial newspapers, he wrote under the pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида (Jehudiel Khlamida).^[6] He started using the pseudonym «Gorky» (from горький; literally «bitter») in 1892, when his first short story, «Makar Chudra», was published by the newspaper Kavkaz (The Caucasus) in Tiflis, where he spent several weeks doing menial jobs, mostly for the Caucasian Railway workshops.^[8][9] The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky’s first book Очерки и рассказы (Essays and Stories) in 1898 enjoyed a sensational success, and his career as a writer began. Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice (though he worked hard on style and form) than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalisation, but also their inward spark of humanity.^[1]

Political and literary development[edit]

Gorky’s reputation grew as a unique literary voice from the bottom stratum of society and as a fervent advocate of Russia’s social, political, and cultural transformation. By 1899, he was openly associating with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement, which helped make him a celebrity among both the intelligentsia and the growing numbers of «conscious» workers. At the heart of all his work was a belief in the inherent worth and potential of the human person. In his writing, he counterposed individuals, aware of their natural dignity, and inspired by energy and will, with people who succumb to the degrading conditions of life around them. Both his writings and his letters reveal a «restless man» (a frequent self-description) struggling to resolve contradictory feelings of faith and scepticism, love of life and disgust at the vulgarity and pettiness of the human world.^{[citation needed]}

In 1916, Gorky said that the teachings of the ancient Jewish sage Hillel the Elder deeply influenced his life: «In my early youth I read…the words of…Hillel, if I remember rightly: ‘If thou art not for thyself, who will be for thee? But if thou art for thyself alone, wherefore art thou’? The inner meaning of these words impressed me with its profound wisdom…The thought ate its way deep into my soul, and I say now with conviction: Hillel’s wisdom served as a strong staff on my road, which was neither even nor easy. I believe that Jewish wisdom is more all-human and universal than any other; and this not only because of its immemorial age…but because of the powerful humaneness that saturates it, because of its high estimate of man.»^[10]

He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and was arrested many times. Gorky befriended many revolutionaries and became a personal friend of Vladimir Lenin after they met in 1902. He exposed governmental control of the press (see Matvei Golovinski affair). In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary Academician of Literature, but Tsar Nicholas II ordered this annulled. In protest, Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Korolenko left the Academy.^[11]

From 1900 to 1905, Gorky’s writings became more optimistic. He became more involved in the opposition movement, for which he was again briefly imprisoned in 1901. In 1904, having severed his relationship with the Moscow Art Theatre in the wake of conflict with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Gorky returned to Nizhny Novgorod to establish a theatre of his own.^[b] Both Konstantin Stanislavski and Savva Morozov provided financial support for the venture.^[13] Stanislavski believed that Gorky’s theatre was an opportunity to develop the network of provincial theatres which he hoped would reform the art of the stage in Russia, a dream of his since the 1890s.^[13] He sent some pupils from the Art Theatre School—as well as Ioasaf Tikhomirov, who ran the school—to work there.^[13] By the autumn, however, after the censor had banned every play that the theatre proposed to stage, Gorky abandoned the project.^[13]

As a financially successful author, editor, and playwright, Gorky gave financial support to the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), as well as supporting liberal appeals to the government for civil rights and social reform. The brutal shooting of workers marching to the Tsar with a petition for reform on 9 January 1905 (known as the «Bloody Sunday»), which set in motion the Revolution of 1905, seems to have pushed Gorky more decisively toward radical solutions. He became closely associated with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov’s Bolshevik wing of the party, with Bogdanov taking responsibility for the transfer of funds from Gorky to Vpered.^[14] It is not clear whether he ever formally joined, and his relations with Lenin and the Bolsheviks would always be rocky. His most influential writings in these years were a series of political plays, most famously The Lower Depths (1902). While briefly imprisoned in Peter and Paul Fortress during the abortive 1905 Russian Revolution, Gorky wrote the play Children of the Sun, nominally set during an 1862 cholera epidemic, but universally understood to relate to present-day events. He was released from the prison after a European-wide campaign, which was supported by Marie Curie, Auguste Rodin and Anatole France, amongst others.^[15]

Gorky assisted the Moscow uprising of 1905, and after its suppression his apartment was raided by the Black Hundreds. He subsequently fled to Lake Saimaa, Finland.^[16] In 1906, the Bolsheviks sent him on a fund-raising trip to the United States with Ivan Narodny. When visiting the Adirondack Mountains, Gorky wrote Мать (Mat’, Mother), his notable novel of revolutionary conversion and struggle. His experiences in the United States—which included a scandal over his travelling with his lover (the actress Maria Andreyeva) rather than his wife—deepened his contempt for the «bourgeois soul.»

Capri years[edit]

From 1906 to 1913, Gorky lived on the island of Capri in southern Italy, partly for health reasons and partly to escape the increasingly repressive atmosphere in Russia.^[1] He continued to support the work of Russian social-democracy, especially the Bolsheviks and invited Anatoly Lunacharsky to stay with him on Capri. The two men had worked together on Literaturny Raspad which appeared in 1908. It was during this period that Gorky, along with Lunacharsky, Bogdanov and Vladimir Bazarov developed the idea of an Encyclopedia of Russian History as a socialist version of Diderot’s Encyclopédie.

In 1906, Maxim Gorky visited New York City at the invitation of Mark Twain and other writers. An invitation to the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt was withdrawn after the New York World reported that the woman accompanying Gorky was not his wife.^[17] After this was revealed all of the hotels in Manhattan refused to house the couple, and they had to stay at an apartment in Staten Island.^[16]

During a visit to Switzerland, Gorky met Lenin, who he charged spent an inordinate amount of his time feuding with other revolutionaries, writing: «He looked awful. Even his tongue seemed to have turned grey».^[18] Despite his atheism,^[19] Gorky was not a materialist.^[20] Most controversially, he articulated, along with a few other maverick Bolsheviks, a philosophy he called «God-Building» (богостроительство, bogostroitel’stvo),^[1] which sought to recapture the power of myth for the revolution and to create religious atheism that placed collective humanity where God had been and was imbued with passion, wonderment, moral certainty, and the promise of deliverance from evil, suffering, and even death. Though ‘God-Building’ was ridiculed by Lenin, Gorky retained his belief that «culture»—the moral and spiritual awareness of the value and potential of the human self—would be more critical to the revolution’s success than political or economic arrangements.

Return from exile[edit]

An amnesty granted for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty allowed Gorky to return to Russia in 1914, where he continued his social criticism, mentored other writers from the common people, and wrote a series of important cultural memoirs, including the first part of his autobiography.^[1][21] On returning to Russia, he wrote that his main impression was that «everyone is so crushed and devoid of God’s image.» The only solution, he repeatedly declared, was «culture».

After the February Revolution, Gorky visited the headquarters of the Okhrana (secret police) on Kronversky Prospekt together with Nikolai Sukhanov and Vladimir Zenisinov.^[22] Gorky described the former Okhrana headquarters, where he sought literary inspiration, as derelict, with windows broken, and papers lying all over the floor.^[23] Having dinner with Sukhanov later the same day, Gorky grimly predicted that revolution would end in «Asiatic savagery».^[24] Initially a supporter of the Socialist-Revolutionary Alexander Kerensky, Gorky switched over to the Bolsheviks after the Kornilov affair.^[25] In July 1917, Gorky wrote his own experiences of the Russian working class had been sufficient to dispel any «notions that Russian workers are the incarnation of spiritual beauty and kindness».^[26] Gorky admitted to feeling attracted to Bolshevism, but admitted to concerns about a creed that made the entire working class «sweet and reasonable — I had never known people who were really like this».^[27] Gorky wrote that he knew the poor, the «carpenters, stevedores, bricklayers», in a way that the intellectual Lenin never did, and he frankly distrusted them.^[27]

During World War I, his apartment in Petrograd was turned into a Bolshevik staff room, and his politics remained close to the Bolsheviks throughout the revolutionary period of 1917. On the day after the October Revolution of 7 November 1917, Gorky observed a gardener working the Alexander Park who had cleared snow during the February Revolution while ignoring the shots in the background, asked people during the July Days not to trample the grass and was now chopping off branches, leading Gorky to write that he was «stubborn as a mole, and apparently as blind as one too».^[28] Gorky’s relations with the Bolsheviks became strained, however, after the October Revolution. One contemporary recalled how Gorky would turn «dark and black and grim» at the mere mention of Lenin.^[29] Gorky wrote that Vladimir Lenin together with Leon Trotsky «have become poisoned with the filthy venom of power», crushing the rights of the individual to achieve their revolutionary dreams.^[29] Gorky wrote that Lenin was a «cold-blooded trickster who spares neither the honor nor the life of the proletariat. … He does not know the popular masses, he has not lived with them».^[29] Gorky went on to compare Lenin to a chemist experimenting in a laboratory with the only difference being the chemist experimented with inanimate matter to improve life while Lenin was experimenting on the «living flesh of Russia».^[29] A further strain on Gorky’s relations with the Bolsheviks occurred when his newspaper Novaya Zhizn (Новая Жизнь, «New Life«) fell prey to Bolshevik censorship during the ensuing civil war, around which time Gorky published a collection of essays critical of the Bolsheviks called Untimely Thoughts in 1918. (It would not be re-published in Russia until after the collapse 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.^{[citation needed]}

«Lenin and his associates,» Gorky wrote, «consider it possible to commit all kinds of crimes … the abolition of free speech and senseless arrests.»^[30]

He was a member of the Committee for the Struggle against Antisemitism within the Soviet government.^[31]

In 1921, he hired a secretary, Moura Budberg, who later became his mistress. In August 1921, the poet Nikolay Gumilev was arrested by the Petrograd Cheka for his monarchist views. There is a story that Gorky hurried to Moscow, obtained an order to release Gumilev from Lenin personally, but upon his return to Petrograd he found out that Gumilev had already been shot – but Nadezhda Mandelstam, a close friend of Gumilev’s widow, Anna Akhmatova wrote that: «It is true that people asked him to intervene. … Gorky had a strong dislike of Gumilev, but he nevertheless promised to do something. He could not keep his promise because the sentence of death was announced and carried out with unexpected haste, before Gorky had got round to doing anything.»^[32] In October, Gorky returned to Italy on health grounds: he had tuberculosis.

Povolzhye famine[edit]

In July 1921, Gorky published an appeal to the outside world, saying that millions of lives were menaced by crop failure. The Russian famine of 1921–22, also known as Povolzhye famine, killed an estimated 5 million, primarily affecting the Volga and Ural River regions.^[33]

Second exile[edit]

Gorky left Russia in September 1921, for Berlin. There he heard about the impending Moscow Trial of 12 Socialist Revolutionaries, which hardened his opposition to the Bolshevik regime. He wrote to Anatole France denouncing the trial as a «cynical and public preparation for the murder» of people who had fought for the freedom of the Russian people. He also wrote to the Soviet vice-premier, Alexei Rykov asking him to tell Leon Trotsky that any death sentences carried out on the defendants would be «premeditated and foul murder.»^[34] This provoked a contemptuous reaction from Lenin, who described Gorky as «always supremely spineless in politics», and Trotsky, who dismissed Gorky as an «artist whom no-one takes seriously».^[35] He was denied permission by Italy’s fascist government to return to Capri, but was permitted to settle in Sorrento, where he lived from 1922 to 1932, with an extended household that included Moura Budberg, his ex-wife Andreyeva, her lover, Pyotr Kryuchkov, who acted as Gorky’s secretary (initially a spy for Yagoda) for the remainder of his life, Gorky’s son Max Peshkov, Max’s wife, Timosha, and their two young daughters.

He wrote several successful books while there,^[36] but by 1928 he was having difficulty earning enough to keep his large household, and began to seek an accommodation with the communist regime. The General Secretary of the Communist Party Joseph Stalin was equally keen to entice Gorky back to the USSR. He paid his first visit in May 1928 – at the very time when the regime was staging its first show trial since 1922, the so-called Shakhty Trial of 53 engineers employed in the coal industry, one of whom, Pyotr Osadchy, had visited Gorky in Sorrento. In contrast to his attitude to the trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, Gorky accepted without question that the engineers were guilty, and expressed regret that in the past he had intervened on behalf of professionals who were being persecuted by the regime. During the visit, he struck up friendships with Genrikh Yagoda (deputy head of the OGPU) who vested interest in spying on Gorky, and two other OGPU officers, Semyon Firin and Matvei Pogrebinsky, who held high office in the Gulag. Pogrebinsky was Gorky’s guest in Sorrento for four weeks in 1930. The following year, Yagoda sent his brother-in-law, Leopold Averbakh to Sorrento, with instructions to induce Gorky to return to Russia permanently.^[37]

Return to Russia[edit]

Gorky’s return from Fascist Italy was a major propaganda victory for the Soviets. He was decorated with the Order of Lenin and given a mansion (formerly belonging to the millionaire Pavel Ryabushinsky, which was for many years the Gorky Museum) in Moscow and a dacha in the suburbs. The city of Nizhni Novgorod, and the surrounding province were renamed Gorky. Moscow’s main park, and one of the central Moscow streets, Tverskaya, were renamed in his honour, as was the Moscow Art Theatre. The largest fixed-wing aircraft in the world in the mid-1930s, the Tupolev ANT-20 was named Maxim Gorky in his honour.

He was also appointed President of the Union of Soviet Writers, founded in 1932, to coincide with his return to the USSR. On 11 October 1931 Gorky read his fairy tale poem «A Girl and Death» (which he wrote in 1892) to his visitors Joseph Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov and Vyacheslav Molotov, an event that was later depicted by Viktor Govorov in his painting. On that same day Stalin left his autograph on the last page of this work by Gorky: «This piece is stronger than Goethe’s Faust (love defeats death)>» Voroshilov also left a «resolution»: «I am illiterate, but I think that Comrade Stalin more than correctly defined the meaning of A. Gorky’s poems. On my own behalf, I will say: I love M. Gorky as my and my class of writer, who correctly defined our forward movement.»^[38]

As Vyacheslav Ivanov remembers, Gorky was very upset:

They wrote their resolution on his fairy tale «A Girl and Death». My father, who spoke about this episode with Gorky, insisted emphatically that Gorky was offended. Stalin and Voroshilov were drunk and fooling around.^[39]

Apologist for the gulag[edit]

In 1933, Gorky co-edited, with Averbakh and Firin, an infamous book about the White Sea-Baltic Canal, presented as an example of «successful rehabilitation of the former enemies of proletariat». For other writers, he urged that one obtained realism by extracting the basic idea from reality, but by adding the potential and desirable to it, one added romanticism with deep revolutionary potential.^[40] For himself, Gorky avoided realism. His denials that even a single prisoner died during the construction of the aforementioned canal was refuted by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who claimed thousands of prisoners froze to death not only in the evenings from the lack of adequate shelter and food, but even in the middle of the day. Most tellingly, Solzhenitsyn and Dmitry Likhachov document a visit, on June 20, 1929 to Solovki, the “original” forced labour camp, and the model upon which thousands of others were constructed. Given Gorky’s reputation, (both to the authorities and to the prisoners), the camp was transformed from one where prisoners (Zeks) were worked to death to one befitting the official Soviet idea of “transformation through labour”. Gorky did not notice the relocation of thousands of prisoners to ease the overcrowding, the new clothes on the prisoners (used to labouring in their underwear), or even the hiding of prisoners under tarpaulins, and the removal of the torture rooms. The deception was exposed when Gorky was presented with children “model prisoners”, one of who challenged Gorky if he “wanted to know the truth”. On the affirmative, the room was cleared and the 14-year-old boy recounted the truth — starvation, men worked to death, and of the pole torture, of using men instead of horses, of the summary executions, of rolling prisoners, bound to a heavy pole down stairs with hundreds of steps, of spending the night, in underwear, in the snow. Gorky never wrote about the boy, or even asked to take the boy with him. The boy was executed after Gorky left.^[41] Gorky left the room in tears, and wrote in the visitor book “I am not in a state of mind to express my impressions in just a few words. I wouldn’t want, yes, and I would likewise be ashamed to permit myself the banal praise of the remarkable energy of people who, while remaining vigilant and tireless sentinels of the Revolution, are able, at the same time, to be remarkably bold creators of culture”.^[42]

As Gorky’s biographer Pavel Basinsky notes, it was impossible for Gorky to «take the boy with him» even with his reputation of a «great proletarian writer». As he says, Gorky had to spend over 2 years to free Julia Danzas.^[43] Some of the Solovki historians doubt that there was a boy.

Gorky also helped other political prisoners (not without the influence of his wife, Yekaterina Peshkova). For example, because of Gorky’s interference Mikhail Bakhtin’s initial verdict (5 years of Solovki) was changed to 6 years of exile.

D: Mikhail Mikhailovich, have you met Gorky in person?
B: With Gorky? No. I only saw him several times, and then (there is no need to write this down), when, therefore, I was imprisoned, Gorky even sent two telegrams to the appropriate institutions …
D: Gorky?
B: Yes. In my defence.
D: Well, it just needs to be written down.
B: He knew my first book and generally heard a lot about me, and we had mutual acquaintances…
<…>
B: Well, it was… 1929.
D: Yeees. And Gorky… Then he stopped interfering.
B: So in the case… yes, in my case there were Gorky’s telegrams, his two telegrams. <…>
D: A lot of good things was made by his wife, Yekaterina Pavlovna.
B: Yes. Yekaterina Pavlovna. I didn’t know her <…> She was then the chairman of the so-called …
D: Red Cross.

B: Yes. Political Red Cross.

Hostility to homosexuality[edit]

Gorky strongly supported efforts in getting a law passed in 1934, making homosexuality a criminal offense. His attitude was coloured by the fact that some members of the Nazi Sturmabteilung were homosexual. The phrase «exterminate all homosexuals and fascism will vanish» is often attributed to him.^[45][46] He was actually quoting a popular saying. Writing in Pravda on 23 May 1934, Gorky said: «There is already a sarcastic saying: Destroy homosexuality and fascism will disappear.»^[47][48]

Gorky and the Soviet censorship[edit]

And in my opinion, he (Vladislav Khodasevich) is right when he says that the Soviet critics have made up an anti-Soviet play from The Turbin Brothers. Bulgakov is «not a brother» to me; I have not the slightest desire to defend him. But he is a talented writer, and we don’t have many people like that. So there’s no point in making them «martyrs for an idea.»

— Letter to Joseph Stalin, 1930^[49]

Gorky was following Bulgakov’s literary career since 1925, when he first read The Fatal Eggs. According to his letters, even then he admired his talent. Partly because of Gorky Bulgakov’s plays The Cabal of Hypocrites and The Days of the Turbins were allowed for staging.^[50] Gorky also tried to use his influence to allow the Moscow Art Theater production of Bulgakov’s other play, Flight.^[51] However, it was banned because of Stalin’s personal reaction.^[52]

…I strongly support the publication by Academia of the novel Demons and other contrrevolutionary novels, such as Pisemsky’s’ Troubled Seas, Leskov’s No Way Out and Krestovsky’s Marevo. I do this because I am against the transformation of legal literature into illegal literature, which is being sold «from under the counter» and which seduces young people with its «taboo»… You need to know the enemy, you need to know his ideology… The Soviet government is not afraid of anything, and least of all can frighten the publication an old novel. But … Comrade Zaslavsky with his article brought true pleasure to our enemies, and especially to the White émigrés. «They ban Dostoyevsky» they screech, grateful to Comrade Zaslavsky.

.

Anti-formalist campaign[edit]

You have a big choice of weapons. Soviet literature has every opportunity to apply these types of weapons (genres, styles, forms and methods of literary creativity) in their diversity and completeness, selecting all the best that has been created in this area by all previous eras.^[54]

Socialist realism provides artistic creativity with an exceptional opportunity for the manifestation of creative initiative, the choice of various forms, styles and genres.

Shostakovich is a young man, about 25 years old, undeniably talented, but very self-confident and very nervous. The article in Pravda hit him like a brick on the head, the guy is completely depressed. <…> «Muddle», but why? In what and how is it expressed — «muddle»? Critics must give a technical assessment of Shostakovich’s music. And what the Pravda article gave allowed a bunch of mediocre people, hack-workers, to attack Shostakovich in every possible way.

— Letter to Joseph Stalin, 1936^[55]

Conflicts with Stalinism[edit]

Gorky’s relationship with the regime got colder after his return to the Soviet Union in 1933: the Soviet authorities would never let him out in Italy again. He continued to write the propagandist articles in Pravda and glorify Stalin. However, by 1934 his relationship with the regime was getting more and more distant. Leopold Averbakh, whom Gorky regarded as a protege, was denied a role in the newly created Writers Union, and objected to interference by the Central Committee staff in the affairs of the union^{[citation needed]}; Gorky’s conception of «Socialist realism» and creation of the Writers Union, instead of ending the RAPP «literary dictatorship» and uniting the «proletarian» writers with the denounced «poputchicks» becomes a tool to increase the censorship. This conflict, which may have been exacerbated by Gorky’s despair over the early death of his son, Max, came to a head just before the first Soviet Writers Congress, in August 1934.

His meetings with Stalin were getting more rare. At that time he gets influenced by Lev Kamenev, who was made the director of Academia publishing House because of Gorky’s request, and Nikolai Bukharin, who had been Gorky’s friend since 1920s.^[56] On 11 August, Gorky submitted an article for publication in Pravda which attacked the deputy head of the press department, Pavel Yudin with such intemperate language that Stalin’s deputy, Lazar Kaganovich ordered its suppression, but was forced to relent after hundreds of copies of the article circulated by hand.^{[citation needed]} Gorky’s draft of the keynote speech he was due to give at the congress caused such consternation when he submitted it to the Politburo that four of its leading members – Kaganovich, Vyacheslav Molotov, Kliment Voroshilov, and Andrei Zhdanov – were sent to persuade him to make changes.^[57]

Yesterday we, having familiarized ourselves with M. Gorky’s speech to the Congress of Writers, came to the conclusion that the speech is not suitable in this form. First of all — the very construction and arrangement of the material — 3/4, if not more, is occupied by general historical and philosophical reasoning, and even then incorrect. Primitive society is presented as the ideal, and capitalism at all of its stages is portrayed as a reactionary force that hindered the development of technology and culture. It is clear that this position is non-Marxist. Soviet literature is almost not covered, but the speech is called «On Soviet Literature.» <…> …after a long talk he agreed to make some edits and changes. It seems that he is in a bad mood. <…> The point, of course, is not what he says, but how he says it. These talks have reminded me of comrade Krupskaya. I think that Kamenev plays an important role in shaping these sentiments of Gorky. <…>
Today we exchanged views and think that it is better, after making some edits, to publish it than to allow it to be read as illegal.

In his speech he calls Fyodor Dostoevsky a «medieval inquisitor», however, he admires him for «having painted with the most vivid perfection of word portraiture a type of egocentrist, a type of social degenerate in the person of the hero of his Notes from Underground» and notes him as a major figure in Russian classic literature.^[59] After the end of the congress Central Committee of the Party, in which maintained that writers the likes of Panferov, Ermilov, Fadeyev, Stavsky, and many other writers who were approved as the «masters of Socialist realism», were unworthy of membership in the Union of Soviet Writers, obviously preferring Boris Pasternak, Andrei Bely, Andrei Platonov and Artyom Vesyoly (Gorky took the latter two in his «writers brigade» because of their inability to be published,^[60] although he criticized Bely and Platonov for their techniques). He also wrote an article about Panferov’s novel Brusski: «One could, of course, not note the verbal errors and careless technique of the gifted writer, but he acts as an adviser and teacher, and he teaches the production of literary waste».^[61]

Gorky also tried to fight the Soviet censorship as it was growing more power. For example, he tried to defend an issue of Dostoevsky’s Demons.

As the conflict was becoming more visible, Gorky’s political and literary positions became weaker. Panferov wrote an answer to Gorky, in which he criticized him. David Zaslavsky published an ironical response to Gorky’s defense of Demons.

According to some sources (such as Romain Rolland’s diary), because of Gorky’s refusal to blindly obey the policies of Stalinism, he had lost the Party’ s goodwill and spent his last days under unannounced house arrest.^[62]

Death[edit]

With the increase of Stalinist repression and especially after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, Gorky was placed under unannounced house arrest in his house near Moscow in Gorki-10 (the name of the place is a completely different word in Russian unrelated to his surname). His long-serving secretary Pyotr Kryuchkov had been recruited by Yagoda as a paid informer.^[63] Before his death from a lingering illness in June 1936, he was visited at home by Stalin, Yagoda, and other leading communists, and by Moura Budberg, who had chosen not to return to the USSR with him but was permitted to stay for his funeral.

The sudden death of Gorky’s son Maxim Peshkov in May 1934 was followed by the death of Maxim Gorky himself in June 1936 from pneumonia. Speculation has long surrounded the circumstances of his death. Stalin and Molotov were among those who carried Gorky’s urn during the funeral. During the Bukharin trial in 1938 (one of the three Moscow Trials), one of the charges was that Gorky was killed by Yagoda’s NKVD agents.^[64]

In Soviet times, before and after his death, the complexities in Gorky’s life and outlook were reduced to an iconic image (echoed in heroic pictures and statues dotting the countryside): Gorky as a great Soviet writer who emerged from the common people, a loyal friend of the Bolsheviks, and the founder of the increasingly canonical «socialist realism».^[65]

Bibliography[edit]

Source: Turner, Lily; Strever, Mark (1946). Orphan Paul; A Bibliography and Chronology of Maxim Gorky. New York: Boni and Gaer. pp. 261–270.

Novels[edit]

• Goremyka Pavel, (Горемыка Павел, 1894). Published in English as Orphan Paul^[66]
• Foma Gordeyev (Фома Гордеев, 1899). Also translated as The Man Who Was Afraid
• Three of Them (Трое, 1900). Also translated as Three Men and The Three
• The Mother (Мать, 1906). First published in English, in 1906
• The Life of a Useless Man (Жизнь ненужного человека, 1908)
• A Confession (Исповедь, 1908)
• Gorodok Okurov (Городок Окуров, 1908), not translated
• The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin (Жизнь Матвея Кожемякина, 1910)
• The Artamonov Business (Дело Артамоновых, 1925). Also translated as The Artamonovs and Decadence
• The Life of Klim Samgin (Жизнь Клима Самгина, 1925–1936). Published in English as Forty Years: The Life of Clim Samghin
  • Volume I. Bystander (1930)
  • Volume II. The Magnet (1931)
  • Volume III. Other Fires (1933)
  • Volume IV. The Specter (1938)

Novellas and short stories[edit]

• Sketches and Stories (Очерки и рассказы), 1899
  • «Makar Chudra» (Макар Чудра), 1892
  • «Old Izergil» (Старуха Изергиль), 1895
  • «Chelkash» (Челкаш), 1895
  • «Konovalov» (Коновалов), 1897
  • The Orlovs (Супруги Орловы), 1897
  • Creatures That Once Were Men (Бывшие люди), 1897
  • «Malva» (Мальва), 1897
  • Varenka Olesova (Варенька Олесова), 1898
  • «Twenty-six Men and a Girl» (Двадцать шесть и одна), 1899

Plays[edit]

• The Philistines (Мещане), translated also as The Smug Citizens and The Petty Bourgeois (Мещане), 1901
• The Lower Depths (На дне), 1902
• Summerfolk (Дачники), 1904
• Children of the Sun (Дети солнца), 1905
• Barbarians (Варвары), 1905
• Enemies, 1906.
• The Last Ones (Последние), 1908. Translated also as Our Father^[c]
• Reception (Встреча), 1910. Translated also as Children
• Queer People (Чудаки), 1910. Translated also as Eccentrics
• Vassa Zheleznova (Васса Железнова), 1910, 1935 (revised version)
• The Zykovs (Зыковы), 1913
• Counterfeit Money (Фальшивая монета), 1913
• The Old Man (Старик), 1915, Revised 1922, 1924. Translated also as The Judge
• Workaholic Slovotekov (Работяга Словотеков), 1920
• Egor Bulychev (Егор Булычов и другие), 1932
• Dostigayev and Others (Достигаев и другие), 1933

Non-fiction[edit]

• My Childhood. In the World. My Universities (1913–1923)
• Chaliapin, articles in Letopis, 1917^[d]
• My Recollections of Tolstoy, 1919
• Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Andreyev, 1920–1928
• Fragments from My Diary (Заметки из дневника), 1924
• V.I. Lenin (В.И. Ленин), reminiscence, 1924–1931
• The I.V. Stalin White Sea – Baltic Sea Canal, 1934 (editor-in-chief)
• Literary Portraits [c.1935].^[68]

Essays[edit]

• O karamazovshchine (О карамазовщине, On Karamazovism/On Karamazovshchina), 1915, not translated
• Untimely Thoughts. Notes on Revolution and Culture (Несвоевременные мысли. Заметки о революции и культуре), 1918
• On the Russian Peasantry (О русском крестьянстве), 1922

Poems[edit]

• «The Song of the Stormy Petrel» (Песня о Буревестнике), 1901
• «Song of a Falcon» (Песня о Соколе), 1902. Also referred to as a short story

Autobiography[edit]

• My Childhood (Детство), Part I, 1913–1914
• In the World (В людях), Part II, 1916
• My Universities (Мои университеты), Part III, 1923

Collections[edit]

• Sketches and Stories, three volumes, 1898–1899
• Creatures That Once Were Men, stories in English translation (1905). This contained an introduction by G. K. Chesterton^[69] The Russian title, Бывшие люди (literally «Former people») gained popularity as an expression in reference to people who severely dropped in their social status
• Tales of Italy (Сказки об Италии), 1911–1913
• Through Russia (По Руси), 1923
• Stories 1922-1924 (Рассказы 1922-1924 годов), 1925

Commemoration[edit]

• In almost every large settlement of the states of the former USSR, there was^[70] or is Gorky Street. In 2013, 2110 streets, avenues and lanes in Russia were named «Gorky», and another 395 were named «Maxim Gorky».^[71]
• Gorky was the name of Nizhny Novgorod from 1932 to 1990.
• Gorkovsky suburban railway line, Moscow
• Gorkovskoye village of Novoorsky District of Orenburg Oblast
• Gorky village in the Leningrad oblast
• Gorkovsky village (Volgograd) (formerly Voroponovo)
• Village n.a. Maxim Gorky, Kameshkovsky District of Vladimir Oblast
• Gorkovskoye village is the district center of Omsk Oblast (formerly Ikonnikovo)
• Maxim Gorky village, Znamensky District of Omsk Oblast
• Village n.a. Maxim Gorky, Krutinsky District of Omsk Oblast
• In Nizhny Novgorod the Central District Children’s Library, the Academic Drama Theater, a street, as well as a square are named after Maxim Gorky. And the most important attraction there is the museum-apartment of Maxim Gorky
• Drama theaters in the following cities are named after Maxim Gorky: Moscow (MAT, 1932), Vladivostok (Primorsky Gorky Drama Theater — PGDT), Berlin (Maxim Gorki Theater), Baku (ASTYZ), Astana (Russian Drama Theater named after M. Gorky), Tula (Tula Academic Theatre), Minsk (Theater named after M. Gorky), Rostov-on-Don (Rostov Drama Theater named after M. Gorky), Krasnodar, Samara (Samara Drama Theater named after M. Gorky), Orenburg (Orenburg Regional Drama Theater), Volgograd (Volgograd Regional Drama Theater), Magadan (Magadan Regional Music and Drama Theater), Simferopol (KARDT), Kustanay, Kudymkar (Komi- Perm National Drama Theater), Young Spectator Theater in Lviv, as well as in Saint Petersburg from 1932 to 1992 (DB). Also, the name was given to the Interregional Russian Drama Theater of the Fergana Valley, the Tashkent State Academic Theater, the Tula Regional Drama Theater, and the Nur-Sultan Regional Drama Theater.
• Palaces of Culture n.a. Maxim Gorky were built in Nevinnomyssk, Rovenky, Novosibirsk and Saint Petersburg
• Universities: Maxim Gorky Literature Institute, Ural State University, Donetsk National Medical University, Minsk State Pedagogical Institute, Omsk State Pedagogical University, until 1993 Turkmen State University in Ashgabat was named after Maxim Gorky (now named after Magtymguly Pyragy), Sukhum State University was named after Maxim Gorky, National University of Kharkiv was named after Gorky in 1936–1999, Ulyanovsk Agricultural Institute, Uman Agricultural Institute, Kazan Order of the Badge of Honor The institute was named after Maxim Gorky until it was granted the status of an academy in 1995 (now Kazan State Agrarian University), the Mari Polytechnic Institute and Perm State University named after Maxim Gorky (1934–1993)
• The following cities have parks named after Maxim Gorky: Rostov-on-Don, Taganrog, Saratov, Minsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kharkiv, Odessa, Melitopol, Moscow, Alma-Ata

Monuments[edit]

Monuments of Maxim Gorky are installed in many cities. Among them:

• In Russia — Borisoglebsk, Arzamas, Volgograd, Voronezh, Vyborg, Dobrinka, Izhevsk, Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, Nevinnomyssk, Nizhny Novgorod, Orenburg, Penza, Pechora, Rostov-on-Don, Rubtsovsk, Rylsk, Ryazan, St. Petersburg, Sarov, Sochi, Taganrog, Khabarovsk, Chelyabinsk, Ufa, Yartsevo.
• In Belarus — Dobrush, Minsk. Mogilev, Gorky Park, bust.
• In Ukraine — Donetsk, Kryvyi Rih, Melitopol, Kharkiv, Yalta, Yasynuvata
• In Azerbaijan — Baku
• In Kazakhstan — Alma-Ata, Zyryanovsk, Kostanay
• In Georgia — Tbilisi
• In Moldova — Chisinaus, Leovo
• In Italy — Sorrento
• In India — Gorky Sadan,^[72] Kolkata

On 6 December 2022 the City Council of the Ukrainian city Dnipro decided to remove from the city all monuments to figures of Russian culture and history, in particular it was mentioned that the monuments to Gorky, Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lomonosov would be removed from the public space of the city.^[73] The monument of Gorky that been erected in 1977 was dismantled on 26 December 2022.^[74]

Philately[edit]

Maxim Gorky is depicted on postage stamps: Albania (1986),^[75] Vietnam (1968)^[76] India (1968),^[77] Maldives (2018),^[78] and many more. Some of them can be found below.

• Maxim Gorky postage stamps

• 

  Postage stamp USSR, 1932

• 

  Postage stamp USSR, 1932

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, 1943

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, 1943

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, «10 years since the death of M. Gorky» (1946, 30 kopeeks)

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, «10 years since the death of M. Gorky» (1946, 60 kopeeks)

• 

  Postage stamp, GDR, 1953

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, 1956

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, 1958

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, 1959

• 

  Postage stamp, the USSR, 1968

• 

  Postage stamp, Russia, «Rusiia. XX век. Culture» (2000, 1,30 rubles)

In 2018, FSUE Russian Post released a miniature sheet dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the writer.

Numismatics[edit]

• In 1988, a 1 ruble coin was issued in the USSR, dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the writer.
• In 2018, on the 150th anniversary of the writer’s birthday, the Bank of Russia issued a commemorative silver coin with a face value of 2 rubles in the series “Outstanding Personalities of Russia”.

Depictions and adaptations[edit]

• In 1912, the Italian composer Giacomo Orefice based his opera Radda on the character of Radda in Gorky’s 1892 short story Makar Chudra.
• In 1932, German playwright Bertolt Brecht published his play The Mother, which was based on Gorky’s 1906 novel Mother. The same novel was also adapted for an opera by Valery Zhelobinsky in 1938.
• In 1938–1939, Gorky’s three-part autobiography was released by Soyuzdetfilm as three feature films: The Childhood of Maxim Gorky, My Apprenticeship and My Universities, all three directed by Mark Donskoy.
• In 1975, Gorky’s 1908 play The Last Ones (Последние), had its New York debut at the Manhattan Theater Club, under the alternative English title Our Father, directed by Keith Fowler.
• In 1985, Gorky’s 1906 play Enemies was translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair and Jeremy Brooks and directed in London by Ann Pennington in association with the Internationalist Theatre at the tail end of the British miners’ strike of 1984–1985. Gorky’s «pseudo-populism» is done away with in this production by the actors speaking «without distinctive accents and consequently without populist sentiment».^[79]

See also[edit]

• FK Sloboda Tuzla football club from Bosnia and Herzegovina, originally called FK Gorki
• Gorky Park in Moscow and Park of Maxim Gorky in Kharkiv, Ukraine
• Maxim Gorky Literature Institute
• Palace of Culture named after Maxim Gorky, Novosibirsk
• Soviet cruiser Maxim Gorky, a Project 26bis (or Kirov-class) light cruiser, which served from 1940 to 1956 and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner in 1944
• Tupolev ANT-20 aircraft, nicknamed «Maxim Gorky»
• Znanie Publishers

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Sources[edit]

• Banham, Martin, ed. 1998. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43437-8.
• Benedetti, Jean (1999). Stanislavski : His Life and Art : a Biography (3rd, rev. and expanded ed.). London: Methuen. ISBN 0-413-52520-1. OCLC 1109272008.
• McSmith, Andy (2015). Fear and the Muse Kept Watch, The Russian Masters – from Akhmatova and Pasternak to Shostakovich and Eisenstein – under Stalin. New York: The New Press. ISBN 9781620970799. OCLC 907678164.
• Moynahan, Brian (1992). Comrades : 1917 — Russia in Revolution. Boston: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-58698-6. OCLC 1028562793 – via Internet Archvive.
• Worrall, Nick. 1996. The Moscow Art Theatre. Theatre Production Studies ser. London and NY: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-05598-9.
• Figes, Orlando: A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891–1924 The Bodley Head, London. (2014) ISBN 978-0-14-024364-2

Further reading[edit]

• Figes, Orlando (June 1996). «Maxim Gorky and the Russian revolution». History Today. 46 (6): 16. ISSN 0018-2753. EBSCOhost 9606240213.
• Tovah Yedlin. Maxim Gorky: A Political Biography

External links[edit]

• Maxim Gorky Archive at marxists.org
• Works by Maxim Gorky at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Maxim Gorky at Internet Archive
• Works by Maxim Gorky at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Newspaper clippings about Maxim Gorky in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Алексей Максимович Горький

«Как это ни удивительно, до сих пор никто не имеет
о многом в жизни Горького точного представления.
Кто знает его биографию достоверно?»

И.А. Бунин, Воспоминания

Ранние годы в «автобиографиях» М. Горького

     Действительно, о ранних годах Алексея Максимовича Горького (Пешкова) известно лишь из написанных им самим автобиографий (существуют в нескольких вариантах) и художественных произведений — автобиографической трилогии: «Детство», «В людях», «Мои университеты».

     Насколько «свинцовые мерзости дикой русской жизни», изложенные в упомянутых произведениях, соответствуют реальности, а насколько являются литературным вымыслом автора – неизвестно и по сей день. Мы можем лишь сопоставлять тексты ранних автобиографий Горького с другими его художественными текстами, но говорить о достоверности этих сведений также не приходится.

     По воспоминаниям Владислава Ходасевича, Горький как-то со смехом рассказывал, как один ловкий нижегородский издатель «книг для народа» уговаривал его написать свою биографию, приговаривая: «Жизнь ваша, Алексей Максимович, — чистые денежки».

     Похоже, что писатель воспользовался этим советом, но прерогативу заработать эти «денежки» оставил за собой.

     В своей первой автобиографии 1897 года, написанной по просьбе литературоведа и библиографа С.А.Венгерова, М.Горький так писал о своих родителях:

     «Отец — сын солдата, мать — мещанка. Дед со стороны отца был офицером, разжалован Николаем Первым за жестокое обращение с нижними чинами. Это был человек настолько крутой, что мой отец с десятилетнего возраста до семнадцати лет пять раз бегал от него. Последний раз отцу удалось убежать из семьи своей навсегда, — он пешком пришёл из Тобольска в Нижний и здесь поступил в ученики к драпировщику. Очевидно, у него были способности и он был грамотен, ибо уже двадцати двух лет пароходство Колчина (ныне Карповой) назначило его управляющим своей конторой в Астрахань, где в 1873 году он и умер от холеры, которой заразился от меня. По рассказам бабушки, отец был умный, добрый и очень весёлый человек.»

Горький А.М. Полное собрание сочинений, т. 23, с. 269

     В последующих автобиографиях писателя существует очень большая путаница в датах и несоответствия документально подтверждённым фактам. Даже с днём и годом своего рождения Горький не может определиться однозначно. В автобиографии 1897 года он указывает дату 14 марта 1869 года, в следующем варианте (1899 год) – «родился 14 марта то ли 1867, то ли 1868 года».

     Документально установлено, что А.М. Пешков родился 16 (28) марта 1868 года в городе Нижний Новгород. Отец — столяр-краснодеревщик Максим Савватиевич Пешков (1839-1871), сын офицера, разжалованного в солдаты. Мать — Варвара Васильевна (1844-1879), урожденная Каширина, дочь состоятельного купца, владельца красильного заведения, который был цеховым старшиной и не раз избирался депутатом Нижегородской думы. Несмотря на то, что родители Горького обвенчались вопреки желанию отца невесты, конфликт между семьями вскоре был благополучно разрешен. Весной 1871 года М.С.Пешков был назначен управляющим конторой пароходства Колчина, и молодая семья переехала из Нижнего Новгорода в Астрахань. Вскоре отец умер от холеры, и мать с Алексеем возвратились в Нижний.

     Дату смерти отца и возвращения матери в семью Кашириных сам Горький относит сперва к лету 1873 года, потом — к осени 1871. В автобиографиях разнятся и сведения о жизни Горького «в людях». Например, в одном варианте он сбежал из магазина обуви, где работал «мальчиком», в другом, повторённом позднее в повести «В людях» (1916), обварился щами и его от сапожника забрал дед и т.д., и т.п.…

     В автобиографических произведениях, написанных уже зрелым писателем, в период с 1912 по 1925 год, литературный вымысел тесно переплетён с детскими воспоминаниями и ранними впечатлениями ещё несформировавшейся личности. Словно движимый давними детскими обидами, которые за всю жизнь оказался не в состоянии пережить, Горький подчас намеренно сгущает краски, добавляет излишнего драматизма, пытаясь снова и снова оправдать однажды избранный псевдоним.

     В Автобиографии 1897 года почти тридцатилетний писатель позволяет себе так выразиться о родной матери:

     «Мать моя на мою жизнь никакого влияния не имела, ибо, считая меня причиной смерти отца, не любила меня и, вскоре выйдя замуж второй раз, уже совершенно сдала меня на руки деда.»

     Неужели он всерьёз полагал, что взрослая женщина могла считать маленького сына причиной смерти любимого человека? Обвинять ребёнка в своей несложившейся личной жизни?

     В повести «Детство» (1912-1913) Горький выполняет явный социальный заказ русской прогрессивной общественности начала ХХ века: хорошим литературным языком описывает бедствия народа, не забывая присовокупить сюда и личные детские обиды.

     Стоит вспомнить, с какой нарочитой антипатией описан на страницах повести отчим Алёши Пешкова Максимов, который не дал мальчику ничего хорошего, но и не сделал ничего плохого. Второй брак матери однозначно расценен героем «Детства» как предательство, а сам писатель не пожалел ни язвительности, ни мрачных красок для описания родственников отчима – обедневших дворян. Варваре Васильевне Пешковой-Максимовой на страницах произведений её знаменитого сына отказано даже в той светлой, во многом мифологизированной памяти, которая сохранилась к рано умершему отцу.

     Дед Горького, всеми уважаемый цеховой старшина В. В. Каширин, и вовсе предстаёт перед читателем в образе некоего монстра, которым можно пугать непослушных детей. Скорее всего, Василий Васильевич имел взрывной, деспотичный характер и был мало приятен в общении, но внука он по-своему любил, искренне заботился об его воспитании и образовании. Дед сам обучил шестилетнего Алёшу сначала церковно-славянской грамоте, затем – современной, гражданской. В 1877 году он отдал внука в Нижегородское Кунавинское училище, где тот проучился до 1879 года, получив при переходе в III класс похвальную грамоту за «отличные перед прочими успехи в науках и благонравие». То есть, два класса училища будущий писатель всё-таки закончил, да ещё и с отличием. В одной из своих автобиографий Горький уверяет, что посещал школу около пяти месяцев, получал одни «двойки», учёбу, книги и любые печатные тексты, вплоть до паспорта, искренне ненавидел.

     Что это? Обида на своё не такое уж «беспросветное» прошлое? Добровольное самоуничижение или способ уверить читателя в том, что и «от осинки родятся апельсинки»? Желание представить себя абсолютным «самородком», человеком, который сделал себя сам, было присуще многим «пролетарским» писателям и поэтам. Даже С.А. Есенин, получив приличное образование в учительской школе, работал корректором в московской типографии, посещал занятия в народном университете Шанявского, но всю жизнь, повинуясь политической моде, стремился выставить себя безграмотным «мужиком» и деревенщиной…

     Единственным светлым пятном на фоне всеобщего «тёмного царства» автобиографических повестей Горького выступают отношения с бабушкой, Акулиной Ивановной. Очевидно, эта безграмотная, но добрая и честная женщина смогла полностью заменить в сознании мальчика «предавшую» его мать. Она отдала внуку всю свою любовь и участие, быть может, разбудила в душе будущего писателя стремление видеть красоту за окружающей его серой действительностью.

     Дед Каширин вскоре разорился: раздел семейного предприятия с сыновьями и последующие неудачи в делах привели его к полной нищете. Не умея пережить удар судьбы, он заболел душевной болезнью. Одиннадцатилетний Алёша вынужден был оставить училище и отправиться «в люди», то есть обучаться какому-нибудь ремеслу.

     С 1879 по 1884 год он побывал «мальчиком» в обувной лавке, учеником в чертёжной и иконописной мастерских, судомойкой на камбузах пароходов «Пермь» и «Добрый». Здесь произошло событие, которое сам Алексей Максимович склонен считать «стартовым» на своём пути к Максиму Горькому: знакомство с поваром по фамилии Смурый. Этот замечательный в своем роде кок, несмотря на малограмотность, был одержим страстью к собиранию книг, преимущественно в кожаных переплётах. Диапазон его «кожаного» собрания оказался весьма своеобразен — от готических романов Анны Радклиф и поэм Некрасова до литературы на малорусском языке. Благодаря этой, по словам писателя, «самой странной библиотеке в мире» (Автобиография, 1897), Алёша Пешков пристрастился к чтению и «читал все, что попадало под руку»: Гоголя, Некрасова, Скотта, Дюма, Флобера, Бальзака, Диккенса, журналы «Современник» и «Искра», лубочные книжки и франкмасонскую литературу.

     Однако, если верить самому же Горькому, читать книги он начал гораздо раньше. В его автобиографии есть упоминание, что с десяти лет будущий писатель вёл дневник, в который заносил впечатления не только от жизни, но и от прочитанных книг. Согласитесь, трудно представить себе подростка, живущего убогой жизнью прислуги, торговца, посудомойки, но одновременно ведущего дневниковые записи, читающего серьёзную литературу и мечтающего поступить в университет.

     Подобные фантазийные «несостыковки», достойные воплощения в советском кинематографе середины 1930-х годов («Светлый путь», «Весёлые ребята» и т.д.), постоянно присутствуют на страницах «автобиографических» произведений М.Горького.

     В 1912-1917 годах, ещё до Главполитпросвета и Наркомпроса, революционный писатель уже прочно встал на путь, названный впоследствии «соцреализмом». Он отлично знал, что и как следует отображать в своих произведениях, чтобы вписаться в грядущую действительность.

     В 1884 году «босяк» Алексей Пешков на самом деле отправился в Казань с намерением поступить в университет:

     «После 15 лет возымел я свирепое желание учиться, с какою целью поехал в Казань, предполагая, что науки желающим даром преподаются. Оказалось, что оное не принято, вследствие чего я поступил в крендельное заведение, по 3 рубля в месяц. Это — самая тяжкая работа из всех, опробованных мною. В Казани близко сошёлся и долго жил с «бывшими людьми»: зри «Коновалов» и «Бывшие люди». Работал на Устье, пилил дрова, таскал грузы…»

Автобиография, 1899

     Откуда пятнадцатилетний Пешков узнал о существовании университета, почему решил, что его туда могут принять – тоже загадка. Живя в Казани, он общался не только с «бывшими людьми» — бродягами и проститутками. В 1885 году подручный пекаря Пешков начал посещать кружки самообразования (чаще – марксистского толка), студенческие сходки, пользоваться библиотекой нелегальных книг и прокламаций при булочной Деренкова, который взял его на работу. Вскоре появился и наставник — один из первых марксистов в России Николай Федосеев…

     И вдруг, уже нащупав «судьбоносную» революционную жилу, 12 декабря 1887 года Алексей Пешков пытается покончить с собой (простреливает себе легкое). Причину этого одни биографы находят в его неразделённой любви к сестре Деренкова Марии, другие — в начавшихся репрессиях против студенческих кружков. Эти объяснения представляются формальными, поскольку совсем не подходят к психофизическому складу Алексея Пешкова. По природе своей он был борец, и все препоны на пути только освежали его силы.

     Некоторые биографы Горького считают, что причиной его неудачного самоубийства могла быть внутренняя борьба в душе молодого человека. Под влиянием бессистемно прочитанных книг и марксистских идей шла переформировка сознания будущего писателя, вытеснение из него того мальчика, который начал жизнь с церковно-славянской грамоты, а тут навалился бес рационалистического материализма…

      Этот «бес» мелькнул, кстати, в прощальной записке Алексея:

     «В смерти моей прошу обвинить немецкого поэта Гейне, выдумавшего зубную боль в сердце… Останки мои прошу взрезать и рассмотреть, какой черт сидел во мне последнее время».

     Чтобы осилить избранный путь, Алексею Пешкову предстояло стать другим человеком, и он им стал. Здесь невольно приходит на память фрагмент из «Бесов» Достоевского: «…в последнее время он замечен был в самых невозможных странностях. Выбросил, например, из квартиры своей два хозяйские образа и один из них изрубил топором; в своей же комнате разложил на подставках, в виде трех налоев, сочинения Фохта, Молешотта и Бюхнера и пред каждым налоем зажигал восковые церковные свечки».

     За попытку самоубийства Казанская духовная консистория отлучила Пешкова от Церкви на семь лет.

     Летом 1888 года Алексей Пешков начал свое знаменитое четырехлетнее «хождение по Руси», чтобы возвратиться из него уже Максимом Горьким. Поволжье, Дон, Украина, Крым, Кавказ, Харьков, Курск, Задонск (где посетил Задонский монастырь), Воронеж, Полтава, Миргород, Киев, Николаев, Одесса, Бессарабия, Керчь, Тамань, Кубань, Тифлис — вот неполный перечень маршрутов его путешествий.

     За время странничества он работал грузчиком, железнодорожным сторожем, мойщиком посуды, батрачил в деревнях, добывал соль, был избит мужиками и лежал в больнице, служил в ремонтных мастерских, несколько раз подергался аресту — за бродяжничество и за революционную пропаганду. «Поливаю из ведрышка просвещения доброкачественными идейками, и таковые приносят известные результаты», — писал А.Пешков в это время одному из своих адресатов.

     В эти же годы Горький пережил увлечение народничеством, толстовством (в 1889 году заезжал в Ясную Поляну с намерением попросить у Льва Толстого участок земли для «земледельческой колонии», но их встреча не состоялась), переболел учением Ницше о сверхчеловеке, которое навсегда оставило в его воззрениях свои «оспины».

Начало

     Первый рассказ «Макар Чудра», подписанный новым именем — Максим Горький, вышел в 1892 году в тифлисской газете «Кавказ» и ознаменовал своим появлением конец странничества. Горький вернулся в Нижний Новгород. Своим литературным крестным отцом он считал Владимира Короленко. По его протекции с 1893 года начинающий писатель публикует очерки в приволжских газетах, а через несколько лет становится постоянным сотрудником «Самарской газеты». Здесь вышло более двухсот его фельетонов за подписью Иегудиил Хламида, а также рассказы «Песня о Соколе», «На плотах», «Старуха Изергиль» и др. В редакции «Самарской газеты» Горький познакомился с корректором Екатериной Павловной Волжиной. Успешно преодолев сопротивление матери браку дочери-дворянки с «нижегородским цеховым», в 1896 году Алексей Максимович с ней обвенчался.

     В следующем году, несмотря на обострившийся туберкулез и заботы с рождением сына Максима, Горький выпускает новые повести и рассказы, большинство из которых станут хрестоматийными: «Коновалов», «Зазубрина», «Ярмарка в Голтве», «Супруги Орловы», «Мальва», «Бывшие люди» и др. Вышедший в Петербурге первый двухтомник Горького «Очерки и рассказы» (1898) имел небывалый успех и в России, и за рубежом. Спрос на него был столь велик, что тут же потребовалось повторное издание — выпущено в 1899 году в трёх томах. Свою первую книгу Горький послал А.П. Чехову, перед которым благоговел. Тот откликнулся более чем щедрым комплиментом: «Талант несомненный, и притом настоящий, большой талант».

     В этом же году дебютант приехал в Петербург и вызвал столичные овации: восторженная публика в его честь устраивала банкеты, литературные вечера. Его приветствовали люди из самых разных станов: критик-народник Николай Михайловский, декаденты Дмитрий Мережковский и Зинаида Гиппиус, академик Андрей Николаевич Бекетов (дед Александра Блока), Илья Репин, написавший его портрет… «Очерки и рассказы» воспринимались как рубеж общественного самоопределения, и Горький сразу же стал одним из самых влиятельных и популярных русских писателей. Разумеется, интерес к нему подогревался и легендарной биографией Горького-босяка, Горького-самородка, Горького-страдальца (к этому времени он уже несколько раз побывал в тюрьме за революционную деятельность и состоял под надзором полиции)…

«Властитель дум»

     «Очерки и рассказы», а также начавший выходить в издательстве «Знание» четырехтомник писателя «Рассказы», произвели на свет огромную критическую литературу — с 1900 по 1904 год о Горьком вышла 91 книга! Такой славы при жизни не имели ни Тургенев, ни Лев Толстой, ни Достоевский. В чём же причина?

     В конце XIX — начале XX веков на фоне декадентства (упадничества), как реакция на него, стали укореняться две мощные магнетические идеи: культ сильной личности, внушённый Ницше и социалистическое переустройство мира (Маркс). Это были идеи эпохи. А Горький, исходивший пешком всю Россию, с гениальным чутьем зверя ощущал ритмы своего времени и запахи новых идей, носящихся в воздухе. Художественное слово Горького, выйдя за пределы искусства, «открывало новый диалог с действительностью» (Петр Палиевский). Писатель-новатор ввел в литературу несвойственный русским классикам наступательный стиль, призванный вторгнуться в реальность и радикально изменить жизнь. Он привёл и нового героя – «талантливого выразителя протестующей массы», как писала газета «Искра». Героико- романтические притчи «Старуха Изергиль», «Песня о Соколе», «Песня о Буревестнике» (1901) стали революционными воззваниями в поднимающемся пролетарском движении. Критики предыдущего поколения обвиняли Горького в апологии босячества, в проповеди индивидуализма Ницше. Но они спорили с волей самой истории, а потому проиграли этот спор.

     В 1900 году Горький вступил в издательское товарищество «Знание» и десять лет был его идейным руководителем, объединив вокруг себя писателей, которых считал «передовыми». С его подачи здесь выходили книги Серафимовича, Леонида Андреева, Бунина, Скитальца, Гарина-Михайловского, Вересаева, Мамина-Сибиряка, Куприна и др. Общественная работа ничуть не тормозила творческую: в журнале «Жизнь» публикуются рассказ «Двадцать шесть и одна» (1899), романы «Фома Гордеев» (1899), «Трое» (1900-1901).

     25 февраля 1902 года тридцатичетырехлетнего Горького избирают почетным академиком по разряду изящной словесности, однако выборы были признаны недействительными. Подозревая Академию Наук в сговоре с властями, Короленко и Чехов в знак протеста отказались от звания почетных академиков.

     В 1902 году «Знание» отдельным изданием выпускает первую пьесу Горького «Мещане», премьера которой состоялась в том же году в знаменитом Московском художественном театре (МХТ), через полгода здесь же — триумфальная премьера пьесы «На дне». Пьеса «Дачники» (1904) через несколько месяцев была сыграна в модном петербургском театре Веры Комиссаржевской. Впоследствии на этой же сцене были осуществлены постановки новых пьес Горького: «Дети солнца» (1905) и «Варвары» (1906).

Горький в революции 1905 года

     Напряженная творческая работа не помешала писателю сблизиться перед первой русской революцией с большевиками и «Искрой». Горький устраивал для них сборы денежных средств и сам вносил в партийную кассу щедрые пожертвования. В этой привязанности, видимо, не последнюю роль сыграла одна из самых красивых актрис МХТ Мария Федоровна Андреева, убежденная марксистка, тесно связанная с РСДРП. В 1903 году она стала гражданской женой Горького. Она же привела к большевикам и мецената Савву Морозова, её горячего поклонника и почитателя таланта М. Горького. Богатый московский промышленник, финансировавший МХТ, он стал отпускать значительные суммы и на революционное движение. В 1905 году Савва Морозов на почве психического расстройства застрелился в Ницце. Немирович-Данченко объяснял это так: «Человеческая природа не выносит двух равносильных противоположных страстей. Купец… должен быть верен своей стихии». Образ Саввы Морозова и его странное самоубийство нашли своё отражение на страницах позднего романа М.Горького «Жизнь Клима Самгина».

     Горький принимал активное участие в событиях 8-9 января 1905 года, до сих пор так и не нашедших своей внятной исторической версии. Известно, что в ночь на 9 января писатель вместе с группой интеллигентов посетил председателя кабинета министров С.Ю. Витте, чтобы предотвратить готовящееся кровопролитие. Возникает вопрос: откуда Горький знал, что кровопролитие будет? Шествие рабочих изначально планировалось, как мирная демонстрация. Но в столице было введено военное положение, в то же самое время на квартире Горького укрывался сам Г.А. Гапон…

     Вместе с группой большевиков Максим Горький участвовал в шествии рабочих к Зимнему дворцу и стал свидетелем разгона демонстрации. В этот же день он написал воззвание «Ко всем русским гражданам и общественному мнению европейских государств». Писатель обвинял министров и Николая II «в предумышленном и бессмысленном убийстве множества русских граждан». Что мог противопоставить силе художественного слова Горького несчастный монарх? Оправдываться своим отсутствием в столице? Свалить вину за расстрел на дядю – Петербургского генерал-губернатора? Во многом благодаря Горькому, Николай II получил своё прозвище Кровавый, авторитет монархии в глазах народа был подорван навсегда, а «буревестник революции» обрёл статус правозащитника и борца за народ. Учитывая раннюю осведомлённость Горького о готовящихся событиях, всё это выглядит странно и напоминает тщательно спланированную провокацию…

     11 января Горький был арестован в Риге, доставлен в Петербург и заключен в отдельную камеру Трубецкого бастиона Петропавловской крепости как государственный преступник. За месяц, проведённый в одиночке, им написана пьеса «Дети солнца», задуман роман «Мать» и пьеса «Враги». В защиту пленённого Горького тут же выступили Герхард Гауптман, Анатоль Франс, Огюст Роден, Томас Гарди и др. Европейский шум вынудил правительство освободить его и прекратить дело «по амнистии».

     Вернувшись в Москву, Горький начал публикацию своих «Заметок о мещанстве» (1905) в большевистской газете «Новая жизнь», в которых осудил «достоевщину» и «толстовство», называя проповедь непротивления злу и нравственного совершенствования мещанской. Во время декабрьского восстания 1905 года московская квартира Горького, охраняемая кавказской дружиной, стала центром, куда свозилось оружие для боевых отрядов и доставлялась вся информация.

Первая эмиграция

     После подавления московского восстания из-за угрозы нового ареста в начале 1906 года Горький и Андреева эмигрировали в Америку, где занялись сбором денег для большевиков. Горький протестовал против предоставления царскому правительству иностранных займов для борьбы с революцией, опубликовав воззвание «Не давайте денег русскому правительству». Соединенные Штаты, не позволяющие себе никакого либерализма, когда дело касается защиты своей государственности, развернули газетную кампанию против Горького как носителя «революционной заразы». Поводом послужил его неофициальный брак с Андреевой. Ни один отель не согласился принять Горького и сопровождающих его людей. Он поселился, благодаря рекомендательному письму Исполнительного комитета РСДРП и личной записке Ленина, у частных лиц.

     Во время своего турне по Америке Горький выступал на митингах, давал интервью, познакомился с Марком Твеном, Гербертом Уэллсом, другими известными деятелями, с помощью которых создавалось общественное мнение о царском правительстве. На революционные нужды удалось собрать всего 10 тысяч долларов, зато более серьезным результатом его поездки стал отказ США предоставить России заём в полмиллиарда долларов. Там же Горьким были написаны публицистические работы «Мои интервью» и «В Америке» (которую он назвал страной «жёлтого дьявола»), а также пьеса «Враги» и роман «Мать» (1906). В последних двух вещах (советская критика их долго называла «художественными уроками первой русской революции») многие русские литераторы увидели «конец Горького».

     «Какая уж это литература! — писала Зинаида Гиппиус. — Даже не революция, а русская социал-демократическая партия сжевала Горького без остатка». Александр Блок справедливо называл «Мать» — художественно слабой, а «Мои интервью» — плоскими и неинтересными.

     Через полгода Максим Горький покинул США и поселился на основе Капри (Италия), где прожил до 1913 года. Итальянский дом Горького стал прибежищем для многих русских политэмигрантов и местом паломничества для его почитателей. В 1909 году на Капри была организована партийная школа для рабочих, присылаемых из России партийными организациями. Горький читал здесь лекции по истории русской литературы. Приезжал в гости к Горькому и Ленин, с которым писатель познакомился на 5-м (Лондонском) съезде РСДРП и с тех пор вел переписку. В то время Горький был ближе к Плеханову и Луначарскому, представлявшими марксизм как новую религию с откровением о «реальном боге» — пролетарском коллективе. В этом они расходились с Лениным, у которого слово «Бог» в любых интерпретациях вызывало ярость.

     На Капри, помимо огромного количества публицистических работ, Горьким были написаны повести «Жизнь ненужного человека», «Исповедь» (1908), «Лето» (1909), «Городок Окуров», «Жизнь Матвея Кожемякина» (1910), пьесы «Последние» (1908), «Встреча» (1910), «Чудаки», «Васса Железнова» (1910), цикл рассказов «Жалобы», автобиографическая повесть «Детство» (1912-1913), а также рассказы, которые позже войдут в цикл «По Руси» (1923). В 1911 году Горький начал работать над сатирой «Русские сказки» (закончил в 1917-м), в которых разоблачал черносотенство, шовинизм, декадентство.

Возвращение в Россию

     В 1913 году, в связи с 300-летием Дома Романовых, была объявлена политическая амнистия. Горький вернулся в Россию. Поселившись в Петербурге, он начинает большую издательскую деятельность, что отодвинуло художественное творчество на второй план. Издает «Сборник пролетарских писателей» (1914), организует издательство «Парус», выпускает журнал «Летопись», который с самого начала Первой мировой войны занял антимилитаристскую позицию и выступал против «мировой бойни» — здесь Горький сходился с большевиками. В списке сотрудников журнала числились писатели самых разных направлений: Бунин, Тренев, Пришвин, Луначарский, Эйхенбаум, Маяковский, Есенин, Бабель и др. В это же время написана вторая часть его автобиографической прозы «В людях» (1916).

1917 год и вторая эмиграция

     В 1917 году взгляды Горького резко разошлись с большевистскими. Октябрьский переворот он считал политической авантюрой и опубликовал в газете «Новая жизнь» цикл очерков о событиях 1917-1918 годов, где нарисовал страшные картины одичания нравов в охваченном красным террором Петрограде. В 1918 году очерки вышли отдельным изданием «Несвоевременные мысли. Заметки о революции и культуре». Газета «Новая жизнь» тут же была закрыта властями как контрреволюционная. Самого Горького не тронули: слава «буревестника революции» и личное знакомство с Лениным позволяло ему, что называется, открывать дверь ногой в кабинеты всех высокопоставленных товарищей. В августе 1918 года Горький организует издательство «Всемирная литература», которое в самые голодные годы кормило многих русских писателей переводами и редакторской работой. По инициативе Горького была создана и Комиссия по улучшению быта ученых.

     Как свидетельствует Владислав Ходасевич, в эти трудные времена в квартире Горького с утра до ночи шла толчея:

     «У него просили заступничества за арестованных, через него добывали пайки, квартиры, одежду, лекарства, жиры, железнодорожные билеты, командировки, табак, писчую бумагу, чернила, вставные зубы для стариков и молоко для новорожденных…»

     Только однажды мемуарист видел, как Горький отказал в просьбе клоуну Дельвари, который просил писателя стать крёстным отцом его ребёнка. Это противоречило старательно созданному имиджу «буревестника революции», и портить себе биографию Горький не собирался.

     На фоне растущего красного террора все более углублялось скептическое отношение писателя к возможности «строительства социализма и коммунизма» в России. Его авторитет среди политбоссов начал падать, особенно после ссоры с всесильным комиссаром Северной столицы Г.Е. Зиновьевым. Против него была направлена драматическая сатира Горького «Работяга Словотёков», поставленная в петроградском Театре народной комедии в 1920 году и сразу же запрещенная прототипом главного героя.

     16 октября 1921 года Максим Горький покинул Россию. Сначала жил в Германии и Чехословакии, а в 1924 году поселился на вилле в Сорренто (Италия). Положение у него было двойственное: с одной стороны, он довольно резко критиковал советскую власть за нарушение свободы слова и запреты на инакомыслие, а с другой — противостоял абсолютному большинству русской политической эмиграции своей приверженностью к идее социализма.

     В это время полновластной хозяйкой горьковского дома стала «русская Мата-Хари» — Мария Игнатьевна Бенкендорф (впоследствии баронесса Будберг). К примирению с Советской Россией, по утверждению Ходасевича, Горького склоняла именно Мария Игнатьевна. Не удивительно: она, как выяснилось, была агентом ИНО ОГПУ.

     При Горьком жил со своей семьей его сын Максим, непременно кто-то гостил — русские эмигранты и советские вожди, именитые иностранцы и почитатели таланта, просители и начинающие литераторы, беглецы из советской России и просто странники. Судя по многим воспоминаниям, в денежной помощи Горький никогда никому не отказывал. Достаточные средства для содержания дома и семьи Горькому могли дать только большие тиражи российских изданий. В эмиграции же на большие тиражи не могли рассчитывать даже такие фигуры, как Деникин и Врангель. Ссориться с Советами «пролетарскому» писателю было не с руки.

     В период своей второй эмиграции ведущим жанром Горького стала художественная мемуаристика. Он дописал третью часть своей автобиографии «Мои университеты», воспоминания о В.Г. Короленко, Л.Н. Толстом, Л.Н. Андрееве, А.П. Чехове, Н.Г Гарине-Михайловском и др. В 1925 году Горький закончил роман «Дело Артамоновых» и начал работу над грандиозной эпопеей «Жизнь Клима Самгина» — о русской интеллигенции в переломный период русской истории. Несмотря на то, что это произведение осталось незавершенным, многие критики считают его центральным в творчестве писателя.

Возвращение в Страну Советов

     В 1928 году Максим Горький вернулся на Родину. Встретили его с большим почётом. На государственном уровне было организовано его турне по советской стране: Юг России, Украина, Кавказ, Поволжье, новые стройки, Соловецкие лагеря…Все это произвело на Горького грандиозное впечатление, что отразилось в его книге «По Союзу Советов» (1929) В Москве писателю выделили для жилья знаменитый особняк Рябушинского, для отдыха — дачи в Крыму и под Москвой (Горки), для поездок в Италию и Крым — специальный вагон. Начались многочисленные переименования улиц и городов (Нижний Новгород был назван Горьким), 1 декабря 1933 года в ознаменование 40-летия литературной деятельности Максима Горького был открыт первый в России Литературный институт, названный его именем. По инициативе писателя организуются журналы «Наши достижения», «Литературная учёба», создается знаменитая серия «Библиотека поэта», образован Союз писателей и т.д.

     Последние годы жизни Максима Горького, а также гибель его сына и смерть самого писателя, овеяны всевозможными слухами, догадками и легендами. Сегодня, когда открыты многие документы, стало известно, что после возвращения на Родину Горький находился под жесткой опекой ГПУ, возглавляемого Г.Г. Ягодой. Секретарь Горького П.П. Крючков, связанный с органами, вёл все его издательские и денежные дела, стараясь изолировать писателя от советской и мировой общественности, поскольку Горькому далеко не все нравилось в «новой жизни». В мае 1934 года при загадочных обстоятельствах погиб его любимый сын Максим.

     В своих мемуарах Ходасевич вспоминает, что еще в 1924 году через Екатерину Павловну Пешкову Максима приглашал вернуться в Россию Феликс Дзержинский, предлагая работу в своем ведомстве Горький этого не допустил, произнеся фразу, похожую на пророческую: «Когда у них там начнется склока, его прикончат вместе с другими, — а мне этого дурака жалко».

     Тот же В. Ходасевич высказал и свою версию убийства Максима: причиной этого он считал влюбленность Ягоды в красавицу-жену Максима (слухи о их связи уже после смерти Максима ходили среди русской эмиграции). Сына Горького, любившего выпить, словно намеренно оставили пьяным в лесу его собутыльники — сотрудники ГПУ. Ночь была холодной, и Максим умер от сильнейшей простуды. Эта смерть окончательно подточила силы его больного отца.

     Алексей Максимович Горький скончался 18 июля 1936 года, в возрасте 68 лет, от давней болезни легких, но вскоре был объявлен жертвой «троцкистско-бухаринского заговора». Против врачей, лечивших писателя, был открыт громкий судебный процесс… Много позже в отравлении престарелого Горького обвиняли его последнюю «любовь» — агента ГПУ-НКВД Марию Игнатьевну Будберг. Для чего НКВД могло понадобиться травить и так полуживого писателя? На этот вопрос внятно так никто и не ответил.

     В заключение хочется добавить, что некоторые исследователи творчества Горького считают, что «отрицательный» Лука из пьесы «На дне» — «старец лукавый» с его утешительной ложью — это и есть подсознательное «я» самого Горького. Любил Алексей Максимович, как и большинство писателей той сложной эпохи, и в жизни предаваться возвышающим обманам. Не случайно Луку так истово защищает «положительный» босяк Сатин: «Я понимаю старика… да! Он врал… но — это из жалости к вам, черт вас возьми!»

     Да, «самый реалистичный писатель» и «буревестник революции» солгал не один раз, переписывая и переиначивая в политических целях факты своей собственной биографии. Ещё больше лгал писатель и публицист Горький, переоценивая и «передёргивая» на новый лад неоспоримые факты из истории великой страны. Была ли это ложь, продиктованная жалостью к человечеству? Скорее, тот самый возвышающий самообман, позволяющий художнику из обычной грязи создавать великие шедевры…

Елена Широкова

Использован материал сайта «Энциклопедия великих людей и идей»Советский Драматург Литератор Писатель 

ГО́РЬКИЙ Мак­сим (наст. имя и фам. Алек­сей Мак­си­мо­вич Пеш­ков) [16(28).3.1868, Ниж­ний Нов­го­род – 18.6.1936, Гор­ки, под Мо­ск­вой; ур­на с пра­хом за­хо­ро­не­на в Крем­лёв­ской сте­не], рус. пи­са­тель, пуб­ли­цист, об­ще­ст­вен­ный дея­тель. Из ме­щан. Ра­но по­те­ряв ро­ди­те­лей, вос­пи­ты­вал­ся в се­мье де­да. Окон­чил два клас­са сло­бод­ско­го на­чаль­но­го уч-ща [в Ку­на­ви­не (ны­не Ка­на­ви­но), при­го­ро­де Ниж­не­го Нов­го­ро­да], об­ра­зо­ва­ние не смог про­дол­жать из-за бед­но­сти (ра­зо­ри­лось кра­силь­ное за­ве­де­ние де­да), с де­ся­ти лет был вы­ну­ж­ден ра­бо­тать. Об­ла­дав­ший уни­каль­ной па­мя­тью, Г. всю жизнь на­пря­жён­но за­ни­мал­ся са­мо­об­ра­зо­ва­ни­ем. В 1884 от­пра­вил­ся в Ка­зань, где уча­ст­во­вал в ра­бо­те под­поль­ных на­род­ни­че­ских круж­ков; связь с ре­во­люц. дви­же­ни­ем во мно­гом оп­ре­де­ли­ла его жиз­нен­ные и твор­че­ские уст­рем­ле­ния. В 1888–89 и 1891–92 ски­тал­ся по югу Рос­сии; впе­чат­ле­ния от этих «хо­ж­де­ний по Ру­си» в по­сле­дую­щем ста­ли важ­ней­шим ис­точ­ни­ком сю­же­тов и об­ра­зов для его твор­че­ст­ва (пре­ж­де все­го ран­не­го).

Пер­вая пуб­ли­ка­ция – рас­сказ «Ма­кар Чуд­ра», на­пе­ча­тан­ный в тиф­лис­ской газ. «Кав­каз» 12.9.1892. В 1893–96 Г. ак­тив­но со­труд­ни­чал с при­волж­ски­ми га­зе­та­ми, где опуб­ли­ко­вал мно­же­ст­во фель­е­то­нов и рас­ска­зов. Все­рос. и об­ще­ев­ро­пей­скую из­вест­ность имя Г. по­лу­чи­ло вско­ре по­сле вы­хо­да его пер­во­го сб. «Очер­ки и рас­ска­зы» (т. 1–2, 1898), в ко­то­ром ост­ро­та и яр­кость в пе­ре­да­че жиз­нен­ных реа­лий со­че­та­лись с нео­ро­ман­ти­че­ским па­фо­сом, со стра­ст­ным при­зы­вом к пре­об­ра­зо­ва­нию че­ло­ве­ка и ми­ра («Ста­ру­ха Изер­гиль», «Ко­но­ва­лов», «Чел­каш», «Маль­ва», «На пло­тах», «Пес­ня о Со­ко­ле» и др.). Осо­бен­ный ин­те­рес вы­звал об­раз бо­ся­ка, гла­ша­тая сво­бо­до­лю­би­вой фи­ло­со­фии, ко­то­рая в оп­ре­де­лён­ной сте­пе­ни пе­ре­кли­ка­лась с уче­ни­ем Ф. Ниц­ше. Сим­во­лом рас­ту­ще­го ре­во­люц. дви­же­ния в Рос­сии ста­ла «Пес­ня о Бу­ре­ве­ст­ни­ке» (1901).

С на­ча­лом ра­бо­ты Г. в 1900 в изд-ве «Зна­ние» на­ча­лась его мно­го­лет­няя ли­те­ра­тур­но-ор­га­ни­за­тор­ская дея­тель­ность. Он рас­ши­рил про­грам­му изд-ва, ор­га­ни­зо­вал (с 1904) вы­пуск зна­ме­ни­тых сб-ков «Зна­ния», спло­тил во­круг изд-ва круп­ней­ших пи­са­те­лей, близ­ких к реа­ли­стич. на­прав­ле­нию (И. А. Бу­нин, Л. Н. Ан­д­ре­ев, А. И. Ку­прин и др.), и фак­ти­че­ски воз­гла­вил это на­прав­ле­ние в его про­ти­во­стоя­нии мо­дер­низ­му.

На ру­бе­же 19–20 вв. вы­шли пер­вые ро­ма­ны Г. «Фо­ма Гор­де­ев» (1899) и «Трое» (1900). В 1902 в МХТ бы­ли по­став­ле­ны его пер­вые пье­сы – «Ме­ща­не» и «На дне». Вме­сте с пье­са­ми «Дач­ни­ки» (1904), «Де­ти Солн­ца» (1905), «Вар­ва­ры» (1906) они оп­ре­де­ли­ли свое­об­раз­ный горь­ков­ский тип рус. реа­ли­стич. те­ат­ра нач. 20 в., ос­но­ван­ный на ост­рой со­ци­аль­ной кон­фликт­но­сти и яс­но вы­ра­жен­ной идео­ло­гич­но­сти ха­рак­те­ров. Пье­са «На дне», где жиз­нен­ная кон­кре­ти­ка со­пря­га­ет­ся с фи­лос. обоб­ще­ния­ми, по­ны­не со­хра­ня­ет­ся в ре­пер­туа­ре мн. те­ат­ров ми­ра.

Во­вле­чён­ный в ак­тив­ную по­ли­тич. дея­тель­ность в на­ча­ле пер­вой рус. ре­во­лю­ции, Г. был вы­ну­ж­ден в янв. 1906 эмиг­ри­ро­вать (вер­нул­ся в кон. 1913). Пик соз­на­тель­ной по­ли­тич. ан­га­жи­ро­ван­но­сти (со­ци­аль­но-де­мо­кра­тич. ок­ра­ски) пи­са­те­ля при­шёл­ся на 1906–07, ко­гда бы­ли опуб­ли­ко­ва­ны пье­са «Вра­ги» (1906), роман «Мать» (1906–07), пуб­ли­ци­стич. сб-ки «Мои ин­тер­вью» и «В Аме­ри­ке» (оба 1906). Вме­сте с тем уже в на­пи­сан­ной го­дом поз­же по­вес­ти «Ис­по­ведь» (1908) от­ра­зи­лись бо­лее ши­ро­кое ми­ро­ви­де­ние и ком­плекс фи­лос. идей, свя­зан­ных с бо­го­строи­тель­ст­вом (ска­за­лась бли­зость Г. к кру­гу А. А. Бо­гда­но­ва и А. В. Лу­на­чар­ско­го, вы­звав­шая не­до­воль­ст­во и кри­ти­ку В. И. Ле­ни­на).

Но­вый по­во­рот в ми­ро­со­зер­ца­нии и сти­ле­вой ма­не­ре Г. об­на­ру­жил­ся в по­вес­тях «Го­ро­док Оку­ров» (1909–10) и «Жизнь Мат­вея Ко­же­мя­ки­на» (1910–1911), а так­же в ав­то­био­гра­фич. про­зе 1910-х гг.: по­вес­тях «Хо­зя­ин» (1913), «Дет­ст­во» (1913–14), «В лю­дях» (1916), сб. рас­ска­зов «По Ру­си» (1912–17) и др.: Г. об­ра­тил­ся к про­бле­ме рус. нац. ха­рак­те­ра, нео­ро­ман­ти­че­скую экс­прес­сию ран­них про­из­ве­де­ний сме­ни­ли внеш­не не­бро­ские, но пластически дос­то­вер­ные об­ра­зы. По­весть «Дет­ст­во» за­ста­ви­ла да­же не­га­тив­но на­стро­ен­ную к Г. сим­во­ли­ст­скую кри­ти­ку (Д. С. Ме­реж­ков­ский, З. Н. Гип­пи­ус и др.) го­во­рить о вы­со­чай­шем мас­тер­ст­ве пи­са­те­ля. Те же тен­ден­ции от­ра­зи­лись и в т. н. вто­ром дра­ма­тур­гич. цик­ле: пье­сы «Чу­да­ки» (1910), «Вас­са Же­лез­но­ва» (1-я ред. – 1910), «Ста­рик» (созд. в 1915, опубл. в 1918) и др.

В пе­ри­од Февр. и Окт. ре­во­лю­ций 1917 Г. стре­мил­ся бо­роть­ся с ан­ти­гу­ма­ни­стич. и ан­ти­куль­тур­ным про­из­во­лом, став­ку на ко­то­рый де­ла­ли боль­ше­ви­ки (цикл ста­тей «Не­свое­вре­мен­ные мыс­ли» в газ. «Но­вая жизнь»). По­сле окт. 1917 он, с од­ной сто­ро­ны, вклю­чил­ся в куль­тур­ную и об­ществ. ра­бо­ту но­вых ин­сти­ту­тов, а с дру­гой – кри­тико­вал боль­ше­ви­ст­ский тер­рор, пы­тал­ся спа­сти от аре­стов и каз­ней (в ря­де слу­ча­ев – удач­но) пред­ста­ви­те­лей твор­че­ской ин­тел­ли­ген­ции. Уси­ли­вав­шие­ся раз­но­гла­сия с по­ли­ти­кой В. И. Ле­ни­на при­ве­ли Г. в окт. 1921 к эмиг­ра­ции (фор­маль­но она бы­ла пред­став­ле­на как вы­езд за гра­ни­цу для ле­че­ния), ко­то­рая фак­ти­че­ски (с пе­ре­ры­ва­ми) про­дол­жа­лась до 1933.

1-я пол. 1920-х гг. от­ме­че­на по­ис­ка­ми Г. но­вых прин­ци­пов ху­дож. ми­ро­вос­прия­тия. В экс­пе­рим. фраг­мен­тар­но-ме­му­ар­ной фор­ме на­пи­са­на кн. «За­мет­ки из днев­ни­ка. Вос­по­ми­на­ния» (1924), в цен­тре ко­то­рой – те­ма рус. нац. ха­рак­те­ра в его про­ти­во­ре­чи­вой слож­но­сти. Сб. «Рас­ска­зы 1922–1924 го­дов» (1925), в ко­то­рый во­шли «От­шель­ник», «Ка­ра­мо­ра», «Рас­сказ о без­от­вет­ной люб­ви», «Рас­сказ о ге­рое», «Го­лу­бая жизнь» и др., от­ме­чен ин­те­ре­сом к тай­нам че­ло­ве­че­ской ду­ши, пси­хо­ло­ги­че­ски ус­лож­нён­но­му ти­пу ге­роя, тя­го­те­ни­ем к не­обыч­ным для преж­не­го Г. ус­лов­но-фан­та­сти­че­ским ра­кур­сам ви­де­ния. В 1920-е гг. на­ча­лась ра­бо­та Г. над ши­ро­ки­ми ху­дож. по­лот­на­ми, ос­ве­щаю­щи­ми не­дав­нее про­шлое Рос­сии: «Мои уни­вер­си­те­ты» (1923) – по­весть, за­вер­шаю­щая ав­то­био­гра­фич. три­ло­гию (вклю­ча­ет так­же по­ве­сти «Дет­ст­во» и «В лю­дях»), ро­ман «Де­ло Ар­та­мо­но­вых» (1925), ро­ман- эпо­пея «Жизнь Кли­ма Сам­ги­на» (ч. 1–3, 1927–31; не­за­вер­шён­ная ч. 4, 1937). Позд­нее эта па­но­ра­ма бы­ла до­пол­не­на цик­лом пьес: «Егор Бу­лы­чов и дру­гие» (1932), «Дос­ти­га­ев и дру­гие» (1933), «Вас­са Же­лезно­ва» (2-я ред. – 1936).

Окон­ча­тель­но вер­нув­шись в СССР в мае 1933, Г. при­нял ак­тив­ное уча­стие в куль­тур­ном строи­тель­ст­ве, ру­ко­во­дил под­го­тов­кой 1-го Все­со­юз­но­го съез­да сов. пи­са­те­лей, уча­ст­во­вал в соз­да­нии ря­да ин­сти­ту­тов, из­да­тельств и жур­на­лов. Его вы­сту­п­ле­ния и ор­га­ни­за­ци­он­ные уси­лия сыг­ра­ли су­ще­ст­вен­ную роль в ут­вер­жде­нии эс­те­ти­ки со­циа­ли­сти­че­ско­го реа­лиз­ма. Пуб­ли­ци­сти­ка этих лет ха­рак­те­ри­зу­ет Г. как од­но­го из идео­логов сов. строя, кос­вен­но и пря­мо вы­сту­паю­ще­го с апо­ло­ге­ти­кой ста­лин­ско­го ре­жи­ма. Од­но­вре­мен­но он не­од­но­крат­но об­ра­щал­ся к И. В. Ста­ли­ну с хо­да­тай­ст­ва­ми за ре­прес­си­ро­ван­ных дея­те­лей нау­ки, ли­те­ра­ту­ры и ис­кус­ст­ва.

К вер­ши­нам твор­че­ст­ва Г. от­но­сит­ся цикл ме­му­ар­ных порт­ре­тов со­вре­мен­ни­ков (Л. Н. Тол­сто­го, А. П. Че­хо­ва, Л. Н. Ан­д­рее­ва, В. И. Ле­ни­на и др.), соз­дан­ных им в раз­ное вре­мя.