M bitter real name. Brief biography of Gorky

Abroad

Return to the Soviet Union

Bibliography

Stories, essays

Publicism

Movie incarnations

Also known as Alexei Maksimovich Gorky(at birth Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov; March 16 (28), 1868, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Empire - June 18, 1936, Gorki, Moscow region, USSR) - Russian writer, prose writer, playwright. One of the most popular authors of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, famous for portraying a romanticized declassed character (“tramp”), an author of works with a revolutionary tendency, personally close to the Social Democrats, who was in opposition to the tsarist regime, Gorky quickly gained world fame.

At first, Gorky was skeptical about the Bolshevik revolution. After several years of cultural work in Soviet Russia, the city of Petrograd (Vsemirnaya Literatura publishing house, a petition to the Bolsheviks for those arrested) and life abroad in the 1920s (Marienbad, Sorrento), Gorky returned to the USSR, where he was surrounded for the last years of his life official recognition as a "petrel of the revolution" and "great proletarian writer", the founder of socialist realism.

Member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR (1929).

Biography

Aleksey Maksimovich invented his pseudonym himself. Subsequently, he told me: “I shouldn’t write in literature - Peshkov ...” (A. Kalyuzhny) You can learn more about his biography in his autobiographical stories “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities”.

Childhood

Alexey Peshkov was born in Nizhny Novgorod in the family of a carpenter (according to another version - the manager of the Astrakhan shipping company I. S. Kolchin) - Maxim Savvatevich Peshkov (1839-1871). Mother - Varvara Vasilievna, nee Kashirina (1842-1879). Gorky's grandfather Savvaty Peshkov rose to the rank of officer, but was demoted and exiled to Siberia "for cruel treatment of the lower ranks", after which he signed up as a tradesman. His son Maxim ran away from his father-satrap five times and left home forever at the age of 17. Orphaned at an early age, Gorky spent his childhood in the house of his grandfather Kashirin. From the age of 11 he was forced to go "to the people"; worked as a "boy" at a store, as a buffet utensil on a steamer, as a baker, studied at an icon-painting workshop, etc.

Youth

• In 1884 he tried to enter Kazan University. He got acquainted with Marxist literature and propaganda work.
• In 1888 he was arrested for his connection with the circle of N. E. Fedoseev. He was under constant police surveillance. In October 1888 he entered as a watchman at the Dobrinka station of the Gryase-Tsaritsyno railway. Impressions from staying in Dobrinka will serve as the basis for the autobiographical story "The Watchman" and the story "For the sake of boredom".
• In January 1889, by personal request (a complaint in verse), he was transferred to the Borisoglebsk station, then as a weigher to the Krutaya station.
• In the spring of 1891 he set off to wander around the country and reached the Caucasus.

Literary and social activities

• 1897 - "Former People", "The Orlov Spouses", "Malva", "Konovalov".
• From October 1897 to mid-January 1898, he lived in the village of Kamenka (now the city of Kuvshinovo, Tver Region) in the apartment of his friend Nikolai Zakharovich Vasiliev, who worked at the Kamensk paper factory and led an illegal working Marxist circle. Subsequently, the life impressions of this period served as material for the writer's novel "The Life of Klim Samgin".
• 1898 - The publishing house of Dorovatsky and Charushnikov A.P. published the first volume of Gorky's works. In those years, the circulation of the young author's first book rarely exceeded 1,000 copies. A. I. Bogdanovich advised to publish the first two volumes of “Essays and Stories” by M. Gorky, 1,200 copies each. Publishers "took a chance" and released more. The first volume of the 1st edition of Essays and Stories was published with a circulation of 3,000.
• 1899 - the novel "Foma Gordeev", a poem in prose "The Song of the Falcon".
• 1900-1901 - the novel "Three", a personal acquaintance with Chekhov, Tolstoy.
• 1900-1913 - participates in the work of the publishing house "Knowledge"
• March 1901 - "The Song of the Petrel" was created by M. Gorky in Nizhny Novgorod. Participation in the Marxist workers' circles of Nizhny Novgorod, Sormov, St. Petersburg, wrote a proclamation calling for a fight against the autocracy. Arrested and expelled from Nizhny Novgorod.

According to contemporaries, Nikolai Gumilyov highly appreciated the last stanza of this poem (“Gumilyov without gloss”, St. Petersburg, 2009).

• In 1901, M. Gorky turned to dramaturgy. Creates the plays "Petty Bourgeois" (1901), "At the bottom" (1902). In 1902, he became the godfather and adoptive father of the Jew Zinovy ​​Sverdlov, who took the surname Peshkov and converted to Orthodoxy. This was necessary in order for Zinovy ​​to receive the right to live in Moscow.
• February 21 - the election of M. Gorky to the honorary academicians of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature. "In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. But before Gorky could exercise his new rights, his election was annulled by the government, since the newly elected academician “was under police surveillance.” In connection with this, Chekhov and Korolenko refused membership in the Academy.
• 1904-1905 - writes the plays "Summer Residents", "Children of the Sun", "Barbarians". Meets Lenin. For the revolutionary proclamation and in connection with the execution on January 9, he was arrested, but then released under pressure from the public. Member of the revolution 1905-1907. In the autumn of 1905 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.
• 1906 - M. Gorky travels abroad, creates satirical pamphlets about the "bourgeois" culture of France and the USA ("My Interviews", "In America"). He writes the play "Enemies", creates the novel "Mother". Because of tuberculosis, Gorky settled in Italy on the island of Capri, where he lived for 7 years. Here he writes "Confession" (1908), where his philosophical differences with Lenin and rapprochement with Lunacharsky and Bogdanov were clearly identified.
• 1907 - delegate to the V Congress of the RSDLP.
• 1908 - the play "The Last", the story "The Life of an Unnecessary Man".
• 1909 - the novels "The Town of Okurov", "The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin".
• 1913 - M. Gorky edits the Bolshevik newspapers Zvezda and Pravda, the art department of the Bolshevik magazine Enlightenment, publishes the first collection of proletarian writers. Writes Tales of Italy.

• 1912-1916 - M. Gorky creates a series of stories and essays that compiled the collection "In Rus'", autobiographical novels "Childhood", "In People". The last part of the My Universities trilogy was written in 1923.
• 1917-1919 - M. Gorky conducts a lot of public and political work, criticizes the "methods" of the Bolsheviks, condemns their attitude towards the old intelligentsia, saves many of its representatives from Bolshevik repressions and hunger. In 1917, having disagreed with the Bolsheviks on the issue of the timeliness of the socialist revolution in Russia, he did not pass the re-registration of party members and formally dropped out of it.

Abroad

• 1921 - M. Gorky's departure abroad. A myth developed in Soviet literature that the reason for his departure was the resumption of his illness and the need, at Lenin's insistence, to be treated abroad. In reality, A. M. Gorky was forced to leave because of the aggravation of ideological differences with the established government. In 1921-1923. lived in Helsingfors, Berlin, Prague.
• Since 1924 he lived in Italy, in Sorrento. Published memoirs about Lenin.
• 1925 - the novel "The Artamonov Case".

• 1928 - at the invitation of the Soviet government and Stalin personally, he makes a trip around the country, during which Gorky is shown the achievements of the USSR, which are reflected in the series of essays "On the Soviet Union."
• 1931 - Gorky visits the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp and writes a laudatory review of his regime. A fragment of the work of A. I. Solzhenitsyn "The Gulag Archipelago" is devoted to this fact.

• 1932 - Gorky returns to the Soviet Union. The government provided him with the former Ryabushinsky mansion on Spiridonovka, dachas in Gorki and Teselli (Crimea). Here he receives an order from Stalin - to prepare the ground for the 1st Congress of Soviet Writers, and for this to carry out preparatory work among them. Gorky created many newspapers and magazines: the book series "History of Factories and Plants", "History of the Civil War", "Poet's Library", "History of a Young Man of the 19th Century", the journal "Literary Studies", he writes plays "Egor Bulychev and others" (1932), "Dostigaev and others" (1933).
• 1934 - Gorky "holds" the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, delivers a keynote speech at it.
• 1934 - co-editor of the book "Stalin's Channel"
• In 1925-1936 he wrote the novel "The Life of Klim Samgin", which was never completed.
• On May 11, 1934, Gorky's son, Maxim Peshkov, unexpectedly dies. M. Gorky died on June 18, 1936 in Gorki, having outlived his son by a little more than two years. After his death, he was cremated, the ashes were placed in an urn in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow. Before cremation, the brain of M. Gorky was removed and taken to the Moscow Brain Institute for further study.

Death

The circumstances of the death of Gorky and his son are considered by many to be "suspicious", there were rumors of poisoning, which, however, were not confirmed. At the funeral, among others, the coffin with the body of Gorky was carried by Molotov and Stalin. Interestingly, among other accusations of Genrikh Yagoda at the so-called Third Moscow Trial in 1938, there was an accusation of poisoning Gorky's son. According to Yagoda's interrogations, Maxim Gorky was killed on the orders of Trotsky, and the murder of Gorky's son, Maxim Peshkov, was his personal initiative.

Some publications blame Stalin for Gorky's death. An important precedent for the medical side of the accusations in the "doctors' case" was the Third Moscow Trial (1938), where among the defendants were three doctors (Kazakov, Levin and Pletnev), who were accused of killing Gorky and others.

Family

1. First wife - Ekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova(née Volozhina).
1. Son - Maxim Alekseevich Peshkov (1897-1934) + Vvedenskaya, Nadezhda Alekseevna("Timosha")
1. Peshkova, Marfa Maksimovna + Beria, Sergo Lavrentievich
1. daughters Nina And Hope, son Sergey
2. Peshkova, Daria Maksimovna
2. Second wife - Maria Fedorovna Andreeva(1872-1953; civil marriage)
3. Long-term companion of life - Budberg, Maria Ignatievna

Addresses in St. Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad

• 09.1899 - V. A. Posse's apartment in Trofimov's house - Nadezhdinskaya street, 11;
• 02. - spring 1901 - V. A. Posse's apartment in Trofimov's house - Nadezhdinskaya street, 11;
• 11.1902 - K. P. Pyatnitsky's apartment in an apartment building - Nikolaevskaya street, 4;
• 1903 - autumn 1904 - K. P. Pyatnitsky's apartment in an apartment building - Nikolaevskaya street, 4;
• autumn 1904-1906 - apartment of K. P. Pyatnitsky in an apartment building - Znamenskaya street, 20, apt. 29;
• beginning 03.1914 - autumn 1921 - profitable house of E.K. Barsova - Kronverksky prospect, 23;
• 30.08. - 09/07/1928 - the hotel "European" - Rakov street, 7;
• 18.06. - 07/11/1929 - the hotel "European" - Rakov street, 7;
• end of 09.1931 - hotel "European" - Rakov street, 7.

Bibliography

Novels

• 1899 - "Foma Gordeev"
• 1900-1901 - "Three"
• 1906 - "Mother" (second edition - 1907)
• 1925 - "The Artamonov Case"
• 1925-1936 - "The Life of Klim Samgin"

Tale

• 1908 - "The life of an unnecessary person."
• 1908 - "Confession"
• 1909 - "The Town of Okurov", "The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin".
• 1913-1914 - "Childhood"
• 1915-1916 - "In people"
• 1923 - "My Universities"

Stories, essays

• 1892 - "The Girl and Death" (a fairy tale poem, published in July 1917 in the New Life newspaper)
• 1892 - "Makar Chudra"
• 1895 - "Chelkash", "Old Woman Izergil".
• 1897 - "Former people", "Spouses Orlovs", "Malva", "Konovalov".
• 1898 - "Essays and Stories" (collection)
• 1899 - "Song of the Falcon" (poem in prose), "Twenty-six and one"
• 1901 - "The Song of the Petrel" (poem in prose)
• 1903 - "Man" (poem in prose)
• 1911 - "Tales of Italy"
• 1912-1917 - "In Rus'" (a cycle of stories)
• 1924 - "Stories 1922-1924"
• 1924 - "Notes from a diary" (a cycle of stories)

Plays

Publicism

• 1906 - "My Interviews", "In America" ​​(pamphlets)
• 1917-1918 - a series of articles "Untimely Thoughts" in the newspaper "New Life" (in 1918 came out as a separate edition)
• 1922 - "On the Russian peasantry"

Initiated the creation of a series of books "The History of Factories and Plants" (IFZ), took the initiative to revive the pre-revolutionary series "Life of Remarkable People"

Movie incarnations

• Alexei Lyarsky ("Gorky's Childhood", 1938)
• Alexey Lyarsky ("In People", 1938)
• Nikolai Walbert (My Universities, 1939)
• Pavel Kadochnikov ("Yakov Sverdlov", 1940, "Pedagogical Poem", 1955, "Prologue", 1956)
• Nikolai Cherkasov (Lenin in 1918, 1939, Academician Ivan Pavlov, 1949)
• Vladimir Emelyanov (Appasionata, 1963)
• Afanasy Kochetkov (This is how a song is born, 1957, Mayakovsky began like this ..., 1958, Through the icy mist, 1965, Incredible Yehudiel Khlamida, 1969, The Kotsiubinsky family, 1970, "Red diplomat", 1971, Trust, 1975, "I am an actress", 1980)
• Valery Poroshin ("The Enemy of the People - Bukharin", 1990, "Under the Sign of Scorpio", 1995)
• Alexey Fedkin ("Empire Under Attack", 2000)
• Alexey Osipov ("Two Loves", 2004)
• Nikolai Kachura (Yesenin, 2005)
• Georgy Taratorkin ("Captivity of Passion", 2010)
• Nikolay Svanidze 1907. Maksim Gorky. "Historical chronicles with Nikolai Svanidze

Memory

• In 1932, Nizhny Novgorod was renamed the city of Gorky. The historical name was returned to the city in 1990.
• In Nizhny Novgorod, the central district children's library, the drama theater, the street, and the square in the center of which there is a monument to the writer by sculptor V.I. Mukhina bear the name of Gorky. But the most remarkable is the museum-apartment of M. Gorky.
• In 1934, in Voronezh, a Soviet propaganda passenger multi-seat 8-engine aircraft was built at an aviation plant, the largest aircraft of its time with a land chassis - ANT-20 "Maxim Gorky".

• In Moscow, there was Maxim Gorky lane (now Khitrovsky), Maxim Gorky embankment (now Kosmodamianskaya), Maxim Gorky square (formerly Khitrovskaya), Gorkovskaya metro station (now Tverskaya) of the Gorkovsko-Zamoskvoretskaya (now Zamoskvoretskaya) line, Gorky street ( now divided into Tverskaya and 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya streets).

Also, the name of M. Gorky bears a number of streets in other settlements of the states of the former USSR.

The real name of Maxim Gorky is Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov. The future writer was born and spent his childhood in Nizhny Novgorod. His father was a cabinetmaker, his mother was a bourgeois. After the death of Gorky's father, his mother returned to her parents' house.

Alyosha was orphaned early - at the age of 10 he lost his mother. Her relatives were engaged in upbringing: grandmother Akulina Ivanovna and grandfather Vasily Vasilyevich Kashirin. My grandfather ran a dye shop. But soon he went bankrupt, and Alyosha had to go to the people.

From an early age, he faced the difficulties of life, which could destroy everything human in the boy. While serving in the people, he was often beaten for his addiction to reading. After working in various non-honorary positions, in 1884 he went to Kazan, where he wanted to enter the university. But there were no funds for studies, so here I had to try different professions.

He walked all over Russia. Later, his wanderings would provide rich material for a cycle of tramp stories. While still in Kazan, Aleksey met revolutionary-minded students and began to take part in the work of a Marxist circle. Soon he became unreliable in the eyes of the authorities.

Early work

Gorky began his journey in literature with the story Makar Chudra, published on September 12, 1892. In the next three years, the stories "Chelkash", "Old Woman Izergil", "Song of the Falcon" were written. After 6 years, a book of essays and stories was published, which brought national fame to the author. At the beginning of the 20th century, Alexei Maksimovich turned to dramaturgy. Within 5 years, his plays “Petty Bourgeois”, “Summer Residents”, “At the Bottom” and others appeared.

The writer was engaged in active social activities, contributed to the revolutionary movement gaining momentum. For this, he was repeatedly harassed by the police and arrested. But this did not prevent him in 1902 from becoming an honorary academician of belles-lettres. However, by order of Nicholas II, this election was annulled. In protest, Korolenko and Chekhov also relinquished their titles.

First migration

After the events of 1905 and a harsh response from the authorities, Gorky migrated. He traveled to America and France, lived in Italy until 1913. But he did not stop writing in his wanderings. Gorky continued to support the Bolshevik Party. Aleksey Maksimovich was able to return to his homeland only after the announcement of an amnesty timed to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty.

After the October Revolution of 1917, Gorky tried to develop the self-consciousness of the new Russia. But soon the writer came to understand that the revolution could not spiritually enrich or at least heal the country. Gorky condemned all terror and the looting of cultural property. It is about this that a collection of his articles entitled "Untimely Thoughts" was written.

Alexei Maksimovich, taking advantage of his acquaintance with Lenin, tried in every possible way to help cultural and scientific figures, to support them financially. But not always and not everyone was able to protect. Alexander Blok died, Gumilyov was shot.

Second migration

Outraged by the lawlessness taking place in his native land, on October 16, 1921, Gorky left the country to treat his lungs. In fact, it was again emigration. He was in Germany, Czechoslovakia, Italy. But Gorky did not cease to be keenly interested in the events taking place in Russia, he spoke in the press condemning the "Red Terror".

At the same time, the writer did a lot of literary work. He finished the trilogy "My Universities", wrote the novel "The Artamonov Case", began working on the book "The Life of Klim Samgin", which continued until his death.

After some time, Alexey Maksimovich nevertheless decides to accept the invitation to return to his homeland. His return was supposed to serve the cause of strengthening the international prestige of the Soviet Union. In the year of his 60th birthday, Gorky makes a test trip. All along the way, the world-famous writer is given solemn receptions, he is met by crowds of people with flowers.

Gorky was shown the most attractive part of Soviet reality. Being an emotional person, he was delighted with both the warm welcome and the achievements that the country had achieved during his absence. The desire to return grew stronger in him. In 1933, Gorky finally returned to the country, taking the place of the head of all Soviet literature. He was able to organize and hold the first congress of Soviet writers, to formulate the main principles of the new creative method of socialist realism.

The activities and position of Gorky in the last period of his life are somewhat contradictory. The writer cared about the development of culture, but for some reason did not notice the ongoing repression. In 1936, Alexei Maksimovich died. He died of a lung disease, which he could not cure.

• "Childhood", a summary of the chapters of Maxim Gorky's story

Photo

Biography

The famous Russian writer Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov is known to everyone under his literary pseudonym "Maxim Gorky". He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 5 times.

Gorky's life story originates from Nizhny Novgorod from his grandfather Kashirin, who was a very cruel officer, for which he was demoted. Exiled into exile, and then acquired his own dyeing workshop. Little Alyosha was born in Nizhny Novgorod, where Kashirin's daughter had gone. The boy somewhere caught cholera at the age of 4, his father, caring for him, became infected and died, and little Alyosha managed to recover.

The mother gave birth to a second child, decided to return to her parents' house. On the way, the baby died. Returning to their hometown, the significantly thinned Peshkov family began to live in Kashirin's house. The boy was taught at home: mother - reading, and grandfather - literacy. Old Kashirin often went to church, forced his grandson to pray, which later aroused in him an extremely negative attitude towards religion.

Maxim began his studies at a parish school, but illness prevented him from receiving an elementary education. Later, the young man studied for two years at the settlement school. The future writer lacked education, and there were errors in his manuscripts. The mother remarried and went with her son to her husband. Relations did not work out, the new husband often beat his wife, and Alyosha saw this. Having beaten his stepfather hard, he ran to his grandfather. The teenager had a difficult life, he often stole firewood and food, collected thrown clothes, he always smelled bad. The school had to be abandoned, which ended the education of the writer.

Gorky's biography is full of sad moments. Alyosha was soon left without his mother, who died of consumption, his grandfather went bankrupt, the orphan had to go to work for people. From the age of 11, Alyosha has been working in a shop as an auxiliary worker, washes dishes on a steamer, and works as an apprentice in an icon painting workshop. At the age of 16, the young man could not enter the University of Kazan due to the lack of a certificate and money.

Alexei works at the pier, makes acquaintance with young revolutionary-minded people. Grandmother and grandfather died, the young man, in a fit of depression, tried to kill himself with a gun. Help arrived quickly in the face of the watchman, they performed an operation in the hospital, but the lungs were still affected.

Writer, books

Alexei is being monitored for his connection with the revolutionaries, he is subjected to a short-term arrest. He works as a laborer, guards at the station and works as a fisherman. At one of the stations he fell in love, but he was refused, then he undertakes a trip to Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich in Yasnaya Polyana. But the meeting did not take place. Maxim decides to show one of his manuscripts to Korolenko, who severely criticized the work of the novice writer.

The writer's life story often refers to prison dungeons, where he again and again ends up behind bars for his views, and after leaving prison, he undertakes a journey through Russia on passing carts, on freight trains. During these trips, the idea of ​​"Makar Chudra" was born, which is published under the name of Maxim Gorky. (Maxim - like a father, Gorky because of a complex biography).

But the writer felt real fame after the story "Chelkash". Not everyone accepted the work of the new talent, and the authorities even placed him in one of the castles of Georgia. Alexei Maksimovich moved to St. Petersburg after he was released, and in the northern capital he writes the famous plays “At the Bottom” and “Petty Bourgeois”.

The courage and directness of Gorky's statements were recognized even by the emperor. He did not even notice the writer's negative attitude towards the autocratic system of Russia. Aleksey Maksimovich does not pay attention to the prohibitions of the police and continues to distribute revolutionary literature. Leo Tolstoy and Gorky became great friends. In an apartment in the center of Nizhny Novgorod, many famous people, contemporaries of the owner of the house, always gathered. Writers, directors, artists and musicians talked about their works.

Gorky joined the Bolshevik Party in 1904 and met the leader of the proletariat, Lenin. This acquaintance was the reason for another arrest and a cell in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The public demanded the release of the writer, after which he left the country for America. He was tormented by tuberculosis for a long time, and he undertakes to move to Italy.

Because of his revolutionary activities, he was objectionable to the authorities. Gorky settled for seven years on the island of Capri. In 1913, Alexei Maksimovich returned to his homeland, lived in the northern capital for 5 years, then went abroad again, and only in 1933 did he finally move to Russia. When he visited his sick grandchildren who lived in Moscow, he caught a cold and was no longer able to recover, he fell ill and died.

Personal life

Gorky's chronic illness did not prevent him from being full of strength and energy. The writer's first marriage was an informal relationship with Olga Kamenskaya, an ordinary midwife. Their union did not last long. The second time the writer decided to marry his second chosen one.

Born in Nizhny Novgorod. The son of the manager of the shipping company Maxim Savvatievich Peshkov and Varvara Vasilievna, nee Kashirina. At the age of seven, he was left an orphan and lived with his grandfather, once a rich dyer, who had gone bankrupt by that time.

Alexei Peshkov had to earn his living from childhood, which prompted the writer to take on the pseudonym Gorky in the future. In early childhood he served as an errand boy in a shoe store, then as an apprentice draftsman. Unable to bear the humiliation, he ran away from home. He worked as a cook on the Volga steamer. At the age of 15, he came to Kazan with the intention of getting an education, but, having no material support, he could not fulfill his intention.

In Kazan, I learned about life in slums and rooming houses. Driven to despair, he made an unsuccessful suicide attempt. From Kazan he moved to Tsaritsyn, worked as a watchman on the railway. Then he returned to Nizhny Novgorod, where he became a scribe at the barrister M.A. Lapin, who did a lot for the young Peshkov.

Unable to stay in one place, he went on foot to the south of Russia, where he tried himself in the Caspian fisheries, and in the construction of a pier, and other works.

In 1892, Gorky's story "Makar Chudra" was first published. The following year, he returned to Nizhny Novgorod, where he met with the writer V.G. Korolenko, who took a great part in the fate of the beginning writer.

In 1898 A.M. Gorky was already a famous writer. His books sold in thousands of copies, and fame spread beyond the borders of Russia. Gorky is the author of numerous stories, the novels "Foma Gordeev", "Mother", "The Artamonov Case", etc., the plays "Enemies", "Petty Bourgeois", "At the Bottom", "Summer Residents", "Vassa Zheleznova", the epic novel " Life of Klim Samgin.

Since 1901, the writer began to openly express sympathy for the revolutionary movement, which caused a negative reaction from the government. Since that time, Gorky has been repeatedly arrested and persecuted. In 1906 he went abroad to Europe and America.

After the completion of the October Revolution of 1917, Gorky became the initiator of the creation and the first chairman of the Writers' Union of the USSR. He organizes the publishing house "World Literature", where many writers of that time got the opportunity to work, thereby escaping from hunger. He also has the merit of saving from arrest, the death of representatives of the intelligentsia. Often during these years, Gorky was the last hope of those persecuted by the new government.

In 1921, the writer's tuberculosis worsened, and he left for treatment in Germany and the Czech Republic. From 1924 he lived in Italy. In 1928, 1931, Gorky traveled around Russia, including visiting the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp. In 1932, Gorky was practically forced to return to Russia.

The last years of the life of a seriously ill writer were, on the one hand, full of boundless praise - even during the life of Gorky, his native city of Nizhny Novgorod was named after him - on the other, the writer lived in practical isolation under constant control.

Alexei Maksimovich was married many times. First time on Ekaterina Pavlovna Volzhina. From this marriage he had a daughter, Catherine, who died in infancy, and a son, Maxim Alekseevich Peshkov, an amateur artist. Gorky's son died unexpectedly in 1934, which gave rise to speculation about his violent death. The death of Gorky himself two years later also aroused similar suspicions.

The second time he was married in a civil marriage to the actress, revolutionary Maria Fedorovna Andreeva. In fact, the third wife in the last years of the writer's life was a woman with a stormy biography, Maria Ignatievna Budberg.

He died not far from Moscow in Gorki, in the same house where V.I. Lenin. The ashes are in the Kremlin wall on Red Square. The writer's brain was sent to the Moscow Brain Institute for study.

The name of Maxim Gorky is known, perhaps, to everyone. Several generations have studied and are studying his work since childhood. There are certain stereotypes about Gorky. He is perceived as the founder of the literature of socialist realism, the "petrel of the revolution", a literary critic and publicist, the initiator of the creation and the first chairman of the Writers' Union of the USSR. We know about his childhood and youth from the autobiographical stories "Childhood", "In People", "My Universities". However, in recent years there have been many publications that show a slightly different Gorky.

Student's report on Gorky's biography

Childhood

The future writer was born in Nizhny Novgorod. At the age of three, he lost his father, and at ten, his mother. He spent his childhood in his grandfather's house, in a philistine environment with rude and cruel morals. The street on Sundays often resounded with the joyful cries of the boys: “At the Kashirins they are fighting again!”. The boy's life was brightened up by his grandmother, a beautiful portrait of which Gorky left in the autobiographical story "Childhood" (1914). He studied for only two years. Having received a commendable diploma, he was forced by poverty (his grandfather had gone bankrupt by that time) to leave his studies and go “to the people” to earn money as a student, apprentice, servant.

"In people"

As a teenager, the future writer fell in love with books and used every free minute to read avidly everything that came to hand. This chaotic reading, with an extraordinary natural memory, determined much in his view of man and society.

In Kazan, where he went in the summer of 1884, hoping to enter the university, he also had to work odd jobs, and self-education continued in populist and Marxist circles. “Physically, I was born in Nizhny Novgorod. But spiritually - in Kazan. Kazan is my favorite "university", the writer later said.

"My Universities"

The beginning of literary activity

In the late 80s - early 90s, Alyosha Peshkov wandered across the expanses of Russia: the Mozdok steppe, the Volga region, the Don steppes, Ukraine, the Crimea, the Caucasus. He himself is already engaged in agitation among the workers, falls under the covert surveillance of the police, becomes "unreliable." In the same years, he began to publish under the pseudonym Maxim Gorky. In 1892, the story “Makar Chudra” appeared in the Tiflis newspaper “Kavkaz”, and in 1895 the story “Old Woman Izergil” was published by Gorky, immediately noticed, enthusiastic responses appeared in the press.

In 1900, Gorky met Leo Tolstoy, who wrote in his diary "…I liked him. A real man of the people". Both writers and readers were impressed by the fact that a new person entered literature - not from the "upper", educated, layers, but "from below", from the people. The attention of Russian society has long been drawn to the people - primarily the peasantry. And then the people, as if by themselves, in the person of Gorky, entered the living rooms of rich houses, and even holding their own unusual compositions in their hands. Of course, he was greeted with enthusiastic interest.

The origins of Gorky's prose

Chekhov's works were the immediate predecessor of Gorky's prose. But if Chekhov's heroes complain that they have "overstrained themselves", then Gorky's figures of the "bottom" of society are content with what they have. They have a kind of "tramp" philosophy with a touch of then-fashionable Nietzscheanism.

Tramp - a person without a fixed place of residence, not bound by constant work, family, not owning any property and therefore not interested in maintaining peace and tranquility in society.

It was difficult to pass by Nietzsche's influence in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And Gorky already in the 90s noted new motives for Russian literature: greed for life, thirst and the cult of strength, a passionate desire to go beyond the usual, “petty-bourgeois” framework of existence. Therefore, the writer abandons the usual prose genres and writes fairy tales (“Old Woman Izergil”, 1895), songs (“Song of the Falcon”, 1895), poems in prose (“Man, 1904).

Beginning in 1889, Gorky was arrested several times for his revolutionary activities among the workers. The more famous he becomes, the more resentment each of his detentions causes. The most famous people of Russia, among them Leo Tolstoy, are busying themselves for the writer. During one of the arrests (1901), Gorky in the Nizhny Novgorod prison wrote "The Song of the Petrel", the text of which quickly spread throughout the country. Cry "Let the storm come on!" left no options in choosing the path of Russia's development, especially for young people.

In the same year he was sent to Arzamas, but, given his poor health, he was allowed to live in the Crimea for six months. There Gorky often meets Chekhov and Tolstoy. The popularity of the writer in all sectors of society in those years is enormous. In February 1903, he was elected an honorary academician in the category of fine literature. Nicholas II, learning about this, wrote to the Minister of Education: “... such a person, in the present troubled times, the Academy of Sciences allows itself to be elected into its midst. I am deeply indignant…”.

After this letter, the Imperial Academy of Sciences declared the elections invalid. In protest, Korolenko and Chekhov refused the title of honorary academicians.

In the 1900s, Gorky, thanks to his enormous literary success, is already a wealthy man and can help the revolutionary movement financially. And he hires capital lawyers for the arrested Sormovo and Nizhny Novgorod participants in workers' demonstrations, gives large sums for the publication of the Leninist newspaper Vperyod, which was published in Geneva.

In a group of Bolsheviks, Gorky takes part in the procession of workers on January 9, 1905. After the execution of the demonstration by the authorities, he writes an appeal in which he calls "all citizens of Russia to an immediate, stubborn and friendly struggle against the autocracy". Shortly thereafter, the writer was once again arrested, charged with a state crime and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Gorky was indignant at the fact that he had been in the fortress for nine days “did not give any news about the situation of M.F.”(Maria Fedorovna Andreeva, his close friend, was then in the hospital), which was somewhat like torture ...

A month later, he was released on bail, and the conditions of detention in the fortress made it possible to write the play “Children of the Sun” there. In this play, the author complains about the inertia of the intelligentsia.

Like most people living in Russia at the beginning of the century, Gorky simply could not imagine that as a result of the revolution led by the Bolsheviks, many writers, philosophers, scientists would end up in prisons, but only there they would no longer be allowed to write, they would not have news for years about the fate of their young children, they, innocent, will be tortured and killed ...

The writer actively participates in the revolution of 1905, joins the Social Democratic Party, during street fighting in Moscow he supplies workers' squads with weapons. At the author's reading of "Children of the Sun", a certain amount of money is taken from each person present - for weapons for the rebels.

The temperament of a fighter, a fighter, a herald takes Gorky further and further away from the actual artistic tasks.

Trip to America and Europe

In January 1906, the Bolshevik Party sent Gorky to America to raise money for underground work. This collection did not succeed on the planned scale; but in America, the novel "Mother" was written - about the awakening of "class consciousness" in the proletarian environment.

Criticism notes that Gorky could not stand the "major tone" with which he entered literature. Gorky's talent did not increase. Instead of a romantic tramp, he has grown a clearly invented, gray figure of a “conscious worker”.

After leaving America, Gorky remained abroad: he was awaiting arrest in his homeland. In the autumn of 1906 he settled in Italy, on the island of Capri. The writer was able to return to Russia only in 1913, when an amnesty for political emigrants was announced in connection with the tercentenary of the Romanov dynasty.

Gorky's talent, contrary to the verdicts of criticism, is still far from having exhausted its potential. The writer endlessly studies and describes the Russian national character. Now he is interested not so much in "tramps" as in eccentrics, losers.

“... Rus' is replete with failed people ... they always, with the mysterious power of a magnet. Attracted my attention. They seemed more interesting, better than the dense mass of ordinary county people who live for work and for food…”.

In the cycle of stories "Complaints" (1912), Gorky draws "the hopeless, stupid melancholy of Russian life." The book "Across Rus'" includes essays seen in past wanderings around the boundless country. Gorky seemed to set out to create a register of Russian characters - infinitely diverse, but somewhat similar to each other.

"Childhood"

In 1913, the first chapters from the story "Childhood" appeared in print. It is based on documentary material.

“Although Childhood depicts so much murder and abomination, it is, in essence, a fun book,- wrote Korney Chukovsky. - Least of all, Gorky whimpers and complains ... And “Childhood” is written cheerfully, with cheerful colors..

Under Soviet rule, when it will be impossible to write lovingly about a “good” pre-revolutionary childhood, Gorky’s book will become a role model, a clear illustration of how one must be able to see in the past pre-revolutionary time mainly “lead abominations”.

Best stories 1922–1926 (“The Hermit”, “The Tale of Unrequited Love”, “The Tale of a Hero”, “The Tale of the Unusual”, “The Killers”), dedicated to his unchanging theme - Russian characters, are also largely documentary. And above all, the most qualified critics of the mid-20s will appreciate the short “Notes from a Diary. Memoirs” (1923–1924): in them, Gorky writes mainly about real people under their real names (for example, the essay “A.A. Blok”).

"Untimely Thoughts"

The October and post-October events of 1917, Gorky, who for many years considered himself a socialist, took it tragically. In this regard, he did not undergo re-registration in the RSDLP and formally remained outside the party. The “petrel of the revolution” understands that it turns out to be disastrous for those “conscious workers” on whom he pinned his hopes.

“... The proletariat has not won, an internecine slaughter is going on all over the country, hundreds and thousands of people are killing each other. ... But most of all, I am both amazed and frightened by the fact that the revolution does not bear signs of the spiritual rebirth of man, does not make people more honest, straightforward, does not increase their self-esteem and the moral assessment of their work.

This is how Gorky wrote shortly after the revolution in the newspaper Novaya Zhizn, where his sharp journalistic articles were published under the general title Untimely Thoughts. For a certain period they divorced the writer from the Bolsheviks.

Six months later, it seems to him, he finds a way out: the proletariat needs to unite "with the fresh forces of the worker-peasant intelligentsia."

“Having covered the whole country with a network of cultural and educational societies, having gathered in them all the spiritual forces of the country, we will light bonfires of fire everywhere, which will give the country both light and warmth, help it heal and stand on its feet cheerful, strong and capable of construction and creativity ... Only in this way, and only in this way, will we reach true culture and freedom.”.

A new utopia is being born - universal literacy as a path to freedom. From now on and until the end of his life, she will direct the actions of the writer. He believes in uniting the forces of the intelligentsia and intelligent workers. The peasantry, however, considers it a dark, "anti-revolutionary" element. He never saw the tragedy of the Russian peasantry at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s.

Gorky's activities in the first post-revolutionary years

In the first post-revolutionary years, Gorky constantly bothers for the unfortunate, who are threatened with execution, very similar to lynching.

"Vladimir Ilyich! he writes to Lenin in the autumn of 1919. - ... Several dozens of the most prominent Russian scientists have been arrested ... Obviously, we have no hope of winning and no courage to die with honor if we resort to such a barbaric and shameful method, which I consider the destruction of the scientific forces of the country ... I know that you will say the usual words: “ political struggle”, “whoever is not with us is against us”, “neutral people are dangerous” and so on… It became clear to me that the “reds” are the same enemies of the people as the “whites”. Personally, of course, I prefer to be destroyed by the “whites”, but the “reds” are also not my comrades.”

Trying to save the remnants of the intelligentsia from starvation, Gorky organized private publishing houses, a commission to improve the life of scientists, everywhere meeting the fierce resistance of Soviet officials. In September 1920, the writer was forced to leave all the institutions he had created, about which he announced to Lenin: “Otherwise, I can’t do it. I'm tired of the stupidity".

In 1921, Gorky tried to send the dying Blok abroad for treatment, but the Soviet government refused to do so. It is not possible to save from execution those arrested in the so-called Tagantsev case, including Nikolai Gumilyov. Created on the initiative of Gorky, the Committee for Assistance to the Starving was dispersed a few weeks later.

Treatment abroad

In 1921 the writer left Russia. He was treated in Germany and Czechoslovakia, and since 1924 he settled again in Italy, in Sorrento. But this time not as an immigrant. Years passed, and gradually Gorky's attitude towards the Soviet power changed: it began to seem to him the people's, workers' power. In the USSR in those years, based on Lenin's assessment, "Mother" was made a school textbook, convincing everyone that this is exemplary literature. Streets, theaters, an airplane are named after Gorky. The authorities are doing everything to win the writer over to their side. She needs him like a screen.

Return to Moscow, last years of life

In 1928 Gorky returned to Moscow. It is greeted by crowds of new readers. The writer immerses himself in literary and social work: founds and heads new magazines and book series, takes part in writers' lives, helps someone overcome censorship bans (for example, Mikhail Bulgakov), someone goes abroad (Evgeny Zamyatin), and someone something, on the contrary, hinders publication (for example, Andrei Platonov).

Gorky himself continues the multi-volume work The Life of Klim Samgin, begun back in Italy, a chronicle of Russian life in the pre-revolutionary decades. A huge number of characters, a considerable number of true details of the era, and behind all this one task - to show the double, cowardly, treacherous face of the former Russian intelligentsia.

He becomes close to Stalin and the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yagoda, and this increasingly obscures from him the bloody meaning of what is happening in the country. Like many cultural figures, Gorky does not see that the political regime established in the USSR for its own purposes (like Hitler's in Germany) manipulates culture, distorts the very meaning of education, subordinating it to inhuman goals. In his articles, Gorky stigmatizes the victims of the trials of the 1928–30s. With all his knowledge of life, he does not want to understand that the testimony given by "enemies of the people" can only be obtained under torture.

Since 1933, Gorky has been deprived of the opportunity to travel abroad for the winter, to meet with those whom he would like to see. Stalin can no longer allow even episodic participation of the writer in any literary and social affairs, which he himself did not foresee. Gorky actually finds himself under house arrest, and in this position, under unclear circumstances, he dies on the eve of a new wave of mass repressions.

Literature

D.N. Murin, E.D. Kononova, E.V. Minenko. Russian literature of the twentieth century. Grade 11 program. Thematic lesson planning. St. Petersburg: SMIO Press, 2001

E.S. Rogover. Russian literature of the XX century / St. Petersburg: Paritet, 2002

N.V. Egorova. Lesson developments in Russian literature of the twentieth century. Grade 11. I semester. M.: VAKO, 2005