... It is akin to nature. Woe to those who think to find in the revolution only the fulfillment of their dreams, no matter how lofty and noble they may be. Revolution, like a thunderstorm, like a snowstorm, always brings something new and unexpected; she cruelly deceives many; she easily maims the worthy in her whirlpool; she often brings the unworthy to land unharmed; but - this is her particular, it does not change either general direction stream, nor that formidable and deafening rumble that the stream emits. This rumble, anyway, always - about the great.
... With all your body, with all your heart, with all your consciousness - listen to the Revolution.
A.A. Bloc "Intelligentsia and Revolution"
Gorky comprehends the revolutionary events in the series of articles "Untimely Thoughts". He states that after February, Russia married freedom, but, according to Gorky, this is external freedom, while internally the people are not free and are bound by a sense of slavery. Gorky saw the overcoming of slavery in the democratization of knowledge, in "cultural and historical development": “Knowledge is a necessary tool of the interclass struggle, which underlies the modern world order and is an inevitable, albeit tragic, moment of a given period of history, an ineradicable force of cultural and political development ... Knowledge must be democratized, it must be made universal, it, and only it, is the source of fruitful work, the basis of culture. And only knowledge will equip us with self-awareness, only it will help us correctly assess our strengths, the tasks of the moment and show us the broad path to further victories. Quiet work is most productive.
Gorky was afraid that in the revolution the destructive element could prevail over the constructive, and the revolution would turn into a merciless rebellion: “You must understand, it’s time to understand that the worst enemy of freedom and law is within us: this is our stupidity, our cruelty and all that chaos of dark, anarchic feelings that was brought up in our souls by the shameless oppression of the monarchy, its cynical cruelty ... a year and a half ago, I published "Two Souls", an article in which I said that the Russian people are organically inclined towards anarchism; that he is passive, but - cruel when power falls into his hands. From these thoughts it follows that Gorky did not accept the actions of the Bolsheviks, fearing that “The working class will suffer, for it is the vanguard of the revolution and he will be the first to be exterminated in the civil war. And if the working class is defeated and destroyed, then the best forces and hopes of the country will be destroyed. So I say, addressing the workers, who are aware of their cultural role in the country: the politically literate proletariat must carefully examine its attitude towards the government of people's commissars, must be very careful about their social creativity.
My own opinion is this: people's commissars are destroying and ruining the working class of Russia, they are terribly and absurdly complicating the working-class movement; directing it beyond the limits of reason, they create irresistibly difficult conditions for all the future work of the proletariat and for the entire progress of the country.
Gorky, comprehending the course of revolutionary events, argues contradictoryly, weighing all the pros and cons, and derives his own definition of socialism, timed to coincide with the current historical moment: « We must remember that socialism is a scientific truth that the whole history of human development leads us to it, that it is a completely natural stage of political and economic evolution human society, we must be confident in its implementation, confidence will reassure us. The worker must not forget the idealistic principle of socialism—he will only then confidently feel himself both an apostle of the new truth and a powerful fighter for its triumph when he remembers that socialism is necessary and salutary not only for the working people, but that it liberates all classes, all mankind from rusty chains of an old, sick, lying, self-denying culture.
To resolve the contradictions, Alexei Maksimovich again turns to historical literature. It is characteristic that he considers the victory of the Revolution through the concept of "time of troubles". To put an end to Gorky's disapproval of the concept of "the end justifies the means", I will quote from his letter to R. Rolland on January 25, 1922 (Gorky is already in exile - a business trip abroad - a forced exile from the People's Commissariat for Education), where Alexei Maksimovich remains on his general humanistic, but obviously erroneous, in my opinion, positions in assessing the revolution: “I have been promoting the need for ethics in struggle since the first days of the revolution in Russia. I was told that it was naive, insignificant, even harmful. Sometimes this was said by people who were organically disgusted with Jesuitism, but they nevertheless consciously accepted it, accepted it, forcing themselves.
These mistakes in Novaya Zhizn were repeatedly criticized by the newspaper Pravda and V.I. Lenin: "Too expensive Gorky social revolution ours, so as not to believe that he will soon become in the ranks of its ideological leaders.
Gorky, despite the rejection of the "means" of the revolution, saw in the Bolsheviks an ordering force: “The best of them are excellent people who, in time, will be proud of history. (But in our time, history is turned upside down, all “corrected”, all mangled (N.S.)”
Newspaper " New life” was closed in July 1918. Taking the decision to close the newspaper and realizing the importance of Gorky for the cause of the revolution, Lenin said: “But Gorky is our man… He will certainly come back to us… Such political zigzags happen to him…”.
In the end, Gorky admits his mistakes: “I'm fed up with the impotent, academic position of Novaya Zhizn; “If Novaya Zhizn had been closed six months earlier, it would have been better for me and for the revolution” ...
And after the assassination attempt on Lenin on August 30, 1918, Gorky radically reconsiders his attitude towards October:
“I did not understand October and did not understand until the day of the attempt on the life of Vladimir Ilyich, Gorky recalls. - The general indignation of the workers at this vile act showed me that the idea of Lenin deeply entered the consciousness of the working masses ... Since the day of the heinous attempt on the life of Vladimir Ilyich, I again felt like a "Bolshevik."
To be continued
Introduction……………………………………………………………………..p.3
Chapter 1. History of writing and publication " untimely thoughts»
Gorky………………………………………………………………p. 4-5
Chapter 2. "Untimely thoughts" - pain for Russia and the people.
2.1. Gorky's general impression of the revolution…………………...p. 6-8
2.2. Gorky against the "monster of war" and manifestations
nationalism…………………………………………………………p. 9-11
2.3. Gorky's assessment of some revolutionary events……….p.12-13
2.4. Gorky about the “lead abominations of life”……………………..p. 14-15
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………..p. 16
Introduction
You have to look straight into the eyes of the stern
truth - only knowledge of this truth can
restore our will to live... Ah
every truth must be spoken aloud
for our teaching.
M. Gorky
Gorky's entry into the literary field marked the beginning of a new era in world art. Being a legitimate successor to the great democratic traditions of Russian classical literature, the writer was at the same time a true innovator.
Gorky affirmed faith in a better future, in the victory of human reason and will. Love for people determined the irreconcilable hatred for the war, for everything that stood and stands in the way of people to happiness. And truly significant in this regard is the book of M. Gorky "Untimely Thoughts", which absorbed his "notes on the revolution and culture" of 1917-1918. For all its dramatic inconsistency, "Untimely Thoughts" is an unusually modern book, in many respects visionary. Its importance in restoring the historical truth about the past, which helps to understand the tragedy of the revolution, the civil war, their role in the literary and life fate of Gorky himself cannot be overestimated.
Chapter 1. The history of writing and publishing Gorky's Untimely Thoughts.
A citizen writer, an active participant in the social and literary movements of the era, A. M. Gorky throughout his creative way actively worked in various genres, vividly responding to the fundamental problems of life, topical issues of our time. His legacy in this area is enormous: it has not yet been fully collected to this day.
The journalistic activity of A. M. Gorky during the years of the First World War, during the overthrow of the autocracy, the preparation and conduct of the October Revolution, was distinguished by great intensity. A lot of articles, essays, feuilletons, open letters, speeches of the writer appeared then in various periodicals.
A special place in the work of Gorky as a publicist is occupied by his articles published in the newspaper Novaya Zhizn. The newspaper was published in Petrograd from April 1917 to July 1918 under the editorship of A. M. Gorky. The writer's work in Novaya Zhizn lasted a little more than a year, he published about 80 articles here, 58 of them in the Untimely Thoughts series, emphasizing their acute relevance and polemical orientation by the title itself.
Most of these "New Life" articles (with minor repetitions) were two complementary books - "Revolution and Culture. Articles for 1917" and "Untimely Thoughts. Notes on Revolution and Culture. The first was published in 1918 in Russian in Berlin, the edition of I. P. Ladyzhnikov. The second was published in the autumn of 1918 in Petrograd. Here it is necessary to note the following important fact: in 1919 - 1920 or 1922 - 1923, A. M. Gorky intended to republish "Untimely Thoughts", for which he supplemented the book with sixteen articles from the collection "Revolution and Culture", designating each article with a serial number. Combining both books and destroying the chronological sequence of Ladyzhnikov's edition, he gave "Untimely Thoughts" - in a new composition and new composition - an even more fundamental, generalizing meaning. The publication was not carried out. A copy prepared by the author is stored in the Archives of A. M. Gorky.
In the USSR, these books were not published. Gorky's articles seemed to be random facts, no one ever tried to consider them in general connection with Gorky's ideological and artistic searches of the previous and subsequent decades.
Chapter 2. "Untimely thoughts" - pain for Russia and the people.
2.1. Gorky's general impression of the revolution.
In Untimely Thoughts, Gorky refuses the usual (for a journalistic collection of articles) chronological arrangement of the material, grouping it for the most part on topics and issues. At the same time, the realities and facts of pre- and post-October reality are combined and interspersed: an article published, for example, May 23, 1918, goes next to an article dated October 31, 1917, or an article dated July 1, 1917 - in a row with an article dated June 2 1918, etc.
Thus, the author's intention becomes obvious: the problems of revolution and culture are given universal, planetary significance. The peculiarity of the historical development of Russia and the Russian revolution with all its contradictions, tragedies and heroism only highlighted these problems more clearly.
On February 27, 1917, the fate of the Romanov dynasty was decided. The autocratic regime in the capital was overthrown. Gorky enthusiastically greeted the victory of the insurgent people, to which he also contributed as a writer and revolutionary. After the February Revolution, Gorky's literary, social and cultural activities gained even wider scope. The main thing for him at this time was the protection of the gains of the revolution, concern for the rise of the country's economy, the struggle for the development of culture, education, and science. For Gorky, these problems are closely interrelated, always modern and future-oriented. Cultural issues come first. It is not for nothing that academician D.S. Likhachev speaks with such anxiety that without culture a society cannot be moral. A nation that loses its spiritual values also loses its historical perspective.
In the very first issue of Novaya Zhizn (April 18, 1917), in the article "Revolution and Culture", Gorky wrote:
“The old power was mediocre, but the instinct of self-preservation correctly told it that its most dangerous enemy is the human brain, and so, by all means available to it, it tried to hinder or distort the growth of the country’s intellectual forces.” The results of this ignorant and prolonged "extinguishing of the spirit," the writer notes, "were revealed with terrifying obviousness of the war": in the face of a strong and well-organized enemy, Russia turned out to be "weak and unarmed." “In a country generously endowed with natural wealth and talents,” he writes, “it was discovered, as a result of its spiritual poverty, total anarchy in all areas of culture. Industry, technology - in its infancy and without a strong connection with science; science is somewhere in the backyard, in the dark and under the hostile supervision of an official; art, limited, distorted by censorship, cut off from the public ... ".
However, one should not think, Gorky warns, that the revolution itself "spiritually healed or enriched Russia." Only now, with the victory of the revolution, is the process of "intellectual enrichment of the country - an extremely slow process" just beginning.
We cannot deny the writer his civic patriotic pathos, fail to see how sharply modern the conclusion of the same article sounds and his call to action, work: “We must unanimously take up the work of the comprehensive development of culture ... The world was created not by word, but by deed”, - this is beautifully said, and this is an undeniable truth.
From the second issue of Novaya Zhizn (April 20), the first of Gorky's articles appeared, published in the newspaper under the general title Untimely Thoughts. Here, although not a direct, but an obvious polemic with the line of the Bolsheviks, who considered the struggle against the Provisional Government to be the most important task, "not a parliamentary republic, but a republic of Soviets" is revealed. Gorky writes: "We live in a storm of political emotions, in the chaos of the struggle for power, this struggle arouses, along with good feelings, very dark instincts." It is important to abandon the political struggle, because politics is precisely the soil on which "thistles of poisonous enmity, evil suspicions, shameless lies, slander, painful ambitions, disrespect for the individual grow rapidly and abundantly." All these feelings are hostile to people, because they sow enmity between them.
2.2. Gorky against the "monster of war" and manifestations of nationalism.
Gorky resolutely opposed the "world slaughter", "cultural savagery", propaganda of national and racial hatred. He continues his anti-war offensives on the pages of Novaya Zhizn, in Untimely Thoughts: “There is a lot of absurdity, more than grandiose. The robberies began. What will happen? Don't know. But I clearly see that the Cadets and Octobrists are making a military coup out of the revolution. Will they do it? Seems like it's already been done.
We will not turn back, but we will not go far forward ... And, of course, a lot of blood will be shed, an unprecedented amount.”
Novozhiznensky publications are strong and valuable precisely because of their anti-militarist orientation, their revealing anti-war pathos. The writer castigates the “senseless massacre”, “the damned war started by the greed of the commanding classes”, and believes that the war will be ended “by the force of the common sense of the soldiers”: “If it happens, it will be something unprecedented, great, almost miraculous, and it will give a person the right to be proud of himself - his will defeated the most disgusting and bloody monster - the monster of war. He welcomes the fraternization of German soldiers with Russians at the front, is indignant at the generals' calls for a merciless fight against the enemy. “There is no justification for this disgusting self-destruction,” the writer notes on the day of the third anniversary of the start of the war. No matter how much hypocrites lie about the “great” goals of the war, their lies will not hide the terrible and shameful truth: war was born by Barysh, the only god who is believed and prayed to by “real politicians”, murderers who trade the life of the people.”
Gorky notes the tragedy of the senseless extermination of human lives (“How many healthy, perfectly thinking brains are splashed out on the dirty earth”), the material damage that this predatory war causes, devastating nature, destroying the hard work of peoples (“Thousands of villages, dozens of cities are destroyed, centuries-old labor is destroyed many generations"); war - an unforgettable crime against culture - causes enormous moral damage, killing the human in a person. “Tens of thousands of mutilated soldiers,” he writes, “for a long time, until their death, will not forget about their enemies. In stories about the war, they will pass on their hatred to children brought up by the impressions of three years of daily horror. Over the years, a lot has been sown on the land of enmity, this sowing gives lush shoots!
Gorky stigmatizes the government, acting by the methods of autocracy: “The bright wings of our youthful freedom are splashed with innocent blood,” he is indignant at the execution on April 21 of workers who demonstrated against the Provisional Government. Gorky hopes for a peaceful development of the revolution. He writes: “It is criminal and vile to kill each other now, when we all have a wonderful right to honestly argue, honestly disagree with each other. Those who think otherwise are unable to feel and recognize themselves as free people. Murder and violence are arguments of despotism, they are vile arguments - and powerless, because to rape someone else's will, to kill a person does not mean, never means to kill an idea, to prove a wrong thought, an erroneous opinion.
In "Untimely Thoughts", as in dozens of articles written before and after the revolution, Gorky more than once refers to " Jewish question”, exposing the anti-Semitic speculations of the reactionaries. The slanderous fabrications with which the reactionary press is full, on the one hand, intimidate the layman, on the other hand, “heat up the dark instincts of the chauvinists and the Black Hundreds”, who sought to present all the troubles of Russia as the intrigues of foreigners. Behind all this, besides everything, the writer points out, "a nasty malice" towards "workers - people of initiative, in love with work." And instead of appreciating such people, "gentlemen anti-Semites", suffering from an inferiority complex, "wildly yell": "Beat them - because they are better than us." And Gorky more than once angrily recalls how "they" were beaten. He writes about pogroms in Chisinau and Odessa, Samara and Minsk, Kyiv, Bialystok, Yuriev…
Thinking about the relationship of peoples Russian Empire, Gorky painfully notes every manifestation of nationalism, national hatred as a destructive factor in culture, a violation of morality, morality. He writes mournfully and angrily about the bloody Caucasian events, recalls the robberies in Tiflis, the Armenian-Tatar massacre in Baku, organized by the tsarist government in February 1905, the brutal German pogrom in Moscow in May 1915, provoked by the hunters under the influence of the Russian defeat in Galicia and others
Discussing any manifestations of nationalism - chauvinism and anti-Semitism, Gorky, a convinced internationalist, warned that "nowhere is so much tact and moral instinct required as in relation to a Russian to a Jew", to any representative of the numerous peoples of Russia and these peoples "to the phenomena of Russian life" . He warned that "nowhere is required" so much common sense, humanity, tolerance, loyalty. It is not for nothing that Gorky's article and his entire book end with a passionate appeal: "We are the masters of the country, we won her freedom without hiding our faces, and we will not allow some dark people to control our mind, our will."
Gorky believes in the mind of the Russian people, in their conscience, in the sincerity of their striving for freedom. And, referring to the press, which makes such poor use of the “free word”, the writer recalls: “But right now, in these tragically confused days, it should remember how poorly developed the sense of personal responsibility is in the Russian people and how accustomed we are to punish for their sins of our neighbors... We use the "free word" only in a furious argument about who is to blame for the devastation of Russia. And here there is no dispute, because everyone is to blame ... and no one does anything to oppose the storm of emotions with the power of reason, the power of good will.
2.3. Gorky's assessment of some revolutionary events.
Characteristic is the assessment given to the bitter events of the July days of 1917 in Petrograd, when on July 4 counter-revolutionary troops shot down a peaceful demonstration of soldiers, workers and Baltic sailors, their arrest and disarmament. In relation to the mass protests in July, the differences between the writer and the Bolsheviks in assessing the driving forces of the revolution and the prospects for its further development were clearly revealed.
At the end of his article in Untimely Thoughts (July 14), Gorky emphasizes: “However, I consider the main instigator of the drama not “Leninists”, not Germans, not provocateurs and obscure counter-revolutionaries, but - a more evil, more powerful enemy - a serious Russian stupidity ".
With a nightmare vision, the writer imagines how “an unorganized crowd crawls out into the street, poorly understanding what it wants, and, hiding behind it, adventurers, thieves, professional killers will begin to“ create the history of the Russian revolution. Fearing a repetition of the "disgusting scenes of July 3-5", the "bloody, senseless slaughter" of those days, "which we have already seen and which undermined the moral significance of the revolution throughout the country, shook its cultural meaning", he considers it very likely "that this events will take on an even more bloody and pogrom character. “Who needs all this and why?” Gorky asks in despair.
As for the October Revolution, "Untimely Thoughts" and similar - under other names - Gorky's articles in Novaya Zhizn indicate that his attitude towards it was not politically consistent and unambiguous. An emotional-sensual attitude to reality prevailed over his social-analytical one. As a writer, he approached October primarily from a moral standpoint, fearing the dark elements, the "zoological instincts" of the people, unjustified bloodshed, rampant anarchy, violence, the cruelty of terror, and the death of culture. A few days after the October Revolution, Gorky published an article accusing the Bolsheviks of "dogmatism", "nechaevism", justifying the "despotism of power", of "the destruction of Russia" - "the Russian people will pay for this with lakes of blood." And again and again he speaks of a "cruel experiment" on the Russian people, "doomed in advance to failure", of "a ruthless experiment that will destroy the best forces of the workers and stop the normal development of the Russian revolution for a long time." “Lakes of blood” are seen by Gorky as the result of violence against the historical development of Russia, as a result of the “immoral”, “ruthless attitude towards the life of the masses”.
2.4. Gorky about the "lead abominations of life".
So, "blood" and "morality", violence and morality, "goal" and "means" - these are the fundamental questions of life and revolution, which occupied the great minds of all times, painfully solved by the classics of world and Russian literature and especially painfully by Gorky's closest predecessors - F M. Dostoevsky and L. N. Tolstoy, who became even more aggravated in connection with the revolutionary events, as we see, do not get by with the author of Untimely Thoughts. They define the central issues of the writer's Novaya Zhiznensky articles, and run like a red thread through Untimely Thoughts. Refracted through a prism real events, life situations and conflicts, they recreate a characteristic, deeply dramatic, complex and unusually contradictory picture of the first stage in the development of our revolution. "Untimely Thoughts" captured precisely the pictures of the revolutionary time - its atmosphere, and not the "chronicle" - even if it was "peculiar", as they tried to present it. For all its journalistic open polemical nature, this is a book of reflections, a lyric-political essay with painful and dramatic social and philosophical quests, which are based on the problems of revolution and culture.
Throughout his social and literary activity, Gorky invariably spoke out against the slavish obedience he hated, non-resistance that humiliates a person, for an active attitude to life and its "lead abominations." “Man is created by his resistance to the environment,” the writer is convinced. And Gorky perfectly understood that in the struggle for a radical social reorganization of life, violence cannot be avoided. He never considered, in Blok's words, "the revolution an idyll", he never erred on this score. He understood, but it was very difficult for him to accept. It is impossible for a true humanist, such as Gorky is without a doubt, to come to terms with this inevitability.
The contradictions of the rapidly developing revolutionary reality determined the nature of the contradictions in Gorky's journalism of that time, which were reflected primarily in Untimely Thoughts. The critical intensity of his journalism does not weaken. As before, he is convinced of the untimeliness of the socialist revolution. However, this thought is, as it were, relegated to the background, exists as a conclusion from his observations and critical speeches. The primary task is to protect and affirm the universal ideals on which it is based and which nourish it. Now all his thoughts are directed towards realizing as fully as possible the humanistic potential of the revolution, the freedoms and rights won by the people.
This is not why Gorky writes so much about the rampant anarchy, the cruelty of the Bolsheviks, the inability of the authorities to understand that its slogans “spiritually and physically tormented people” are translated into their own language: “smash, rob, destroy”, not because he pays so much attention to senseless pogroms and extrajudicial reprisals that does not see, does not notice positive phenomena and achievements. Simply: “Dirt and rubbish is always more noticeable on a sunny day ... the more feasible our aspirations for the triumph of freedom, justice, beauty seem to us, the more disgusting is before us all that bestial meanness that stands in the way of the victory of human beauty.”
Heir to the traditions of great literature, Gorky declares in Untimely Thoughts: “Whoever holds the power, I still have my human right to be critical of it.” Coming from the lower classes of the people, flesh of his flesh, a patriot and citizen, filled with sincere filial love for the motherland, he asserts his “right to speak the offensive and bitter truth about the people.
Conclusion
Each article by Gorky in Novaya Zhizn is topical, written on a specific occasion, in connection with one or another real fact, life event or social phenomenon, a newspaper publication or a letter just received, etc. And at the same time, these are not fleeting notes , reports and sketches - they are deeply "personal", they capture the most dear, close or bitter and hated facts and phenomena, feelings and experiences to the author. Responding to the topic of the day, the writer, behind each specific fact, seeks to see and reveal the characteristic phenomenon of time, to put the real fact in context in the context of rapidly developing reality, to extract from it common sense as he understands it.
And if we try to briefly formulate the essence, direction and general pathos of Untimely Thoughts, then this is: upholding, protecting the indissoluble unity of politics and morality. And this is the great merit of the writer before his contemporaries and an invaluable lesson to his descendants, the future generation.
Gorky's appeal from "Untimely Thoughts" is addressed to us, the current generations:
“We have to work, respected citizens, we have to work - only in this is our salvation and in nothing else ...
Indeed, it is not worthwhile especially to indulge in the cause of mutual torture and extermination - we must remember that there are enough people who are willing and, perhaps, can exterminate us. Let us work, for our salvation…”
Bibliographic list.
Social and cultural activities (2)
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This time. Russia survived behind XX century two ... wise leader, "father peoples". The persecution of political opponents, ... in the partisan detachments there were more 150 cameramen. For...became widely known" untimely thoughts" M. Gorky, "cursed days"I. Bunin ...
M. Montaigne Experiences
Abstract >> Pedagogylanguage. The army sent to Russia Sultan Bayazet)
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the people for the good Russia. Many... fertile ground. List of References 1. Bitter M. " untimely thoughts" and talk about the revolution and...
