Real name Peshkov Alexei Maksimovich (1868), prose writer, playwright, publicist.
Born in Nizhny Novgorod in the family of a cabinetmaker, after the death of his father he lived in the family of his grandfather V. Kashirin, the owner of a dyeing establishment.
At the age of eleven, having become an orphan, he began to work, replacing many "owners": a messenger at a shoe store, a cookware on steamboats, a draftsman, etc. Only reading books saved him from the despair of a hopeless life.
In 1884 he came to Kazan to fulfill his dream of studying at the university, but very soon he realized the whole unreality of such a plan. Started to work. Later, Gorky would write: “I did not expect help from outside and did not hope for a lucky break ... I realized very early that a person is created by his resistance environment". At the age of 16, he already knew a lot about life, but the four years spent in Kazan shaped his personality, determined his path. He began to conduct propaganda work among the workers and peasants (with the populist M. Romas in the village of Krasnovidovo). From 1888 Gorky's wanderings around Russia began in order to get to know her better and get to know the life of the people better.
Gorky passed through the Don steppes, through Ukraine, to the Danube, from there through the Crimea and North Caucasus to Tiflis, where he spent a year working as a hammerman, then as a clerk in railway workshops, communicating with revolutionary leaders and participating in illegal circles. At this time, he wrote his first story "Makar Chudra", published in the Tiflis newspaper, and the poem "The Girl and Death" (published in 1917).
Since 1892, returning to Nizhny Novgorod, took up literary work, publishing in the Volga newspapers. Since 1895, Gorky's stories appeared in the capital's magazines, in the "Samarskaya Gazeta" he became known as a feuilletonist, speaking under the pseudonym Yehudiel Khlamida. In 1898, Gorky's Essays and Stories were published, which made him widely known in Russia. Work hard, grow up fast great artist, an innovator who can lead. His romantic stories called to fight, brought up heroic optimism ("Old Woman Izergil", "Song of the Falcon", "Song of the Petrel").
In 1899, the novel Foma Gordeev was published, which put Gorky in the ranks of world-class writers. In the autumn of this year, he arrived in St. Petersburg, where he met Mikhailovsky and Veresaev, with Repin; later in Moscow S.L. Tolstoy, L. Andreev, A. Chekhov, I. Bunin, A. Kuprin and other writers. He agrees with revolutionary circles and was exiled to Arzamas for writing a proclamation calling for the overthrow of the tsarist government in connection with the dispersal of a student demonstration.
In 1901 1902 he wrote his first plays "Petty Bourgeois" and "At the Bottom", staged at the Moscow Art Theater. In 1904, the plays "Summer Residents", "Children of the Sun", "Barbarians".
AT revolutionary events 1905 Gorky took an active part, was imprisoned in Peter and Paul Fortress for anti-tsarist proclamations. The protest of the Russian and world community forced the government to release the writer. For helping with money and weapons during the Moscow December armed uprising, Gorky was threatened with reprisals from the official authorities, so it was decided to send him abroad. At the beginning of 1906 he arrived in America, where he stayed until autumn. Pamphlets "My Interviews" and essays "In America" were written here.
Upon his return to Russia, he created the play "Enemies" and the novel "Mother" (1906). In the same year, Gorky went to Italy, to Capri, where he lived until 1913, devoting all his strength to literary creativity. During these years, the plays "The Last" (1908), "Vassa Zheleznova" (1910), the novels "Summer", "The Town of Okurov" (1909), the novel "The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin" (1910 11) were written.
Using the amnesty, in 1913 the writer returned to St. Petersburg, collaborated in the Bolshevik newspapers Zvezda and Pravda. In 1915 he founded the journal Letopis, directed the literary department of the journal, uniting around him such writers as Shishkov, Prishvin, Trenev, Gladkoe, and others.
After February Revolution Gorky participated in the publication of the newspaper " New life", which was the body of the Social Democrats, where he published articles under common name "Untimely Thoughts". He expressed fears about the unpreparedness of the October Revolution, was afraid that "the dictatorship of the proletariat would lead to the death of politically educated Bolshevik workers ...", reflected on the role of the intelligentsia in saving the nation: "The Russian intelligentsia must again take on the great work of spiritual healing of the people" .
Soon Gorky became actively involved in the construction new culture: helped organize the First Workers 'and Peasants' University, Bolshoi drama theater Petersburg, created a publishing house " world literature". In the years civil war, hunger and devastation, he took care of the Russian intelligentsia, and many scientists, writers and artists were saved by him from starvation.
In 1921, at the insistence of Lenin, Gorky went abroad for treatment (tuberculosis resumed). First he lived in the resorts of Germany and Czechoslovakia, then moved to Italy in Sorrento. He continues to work hard: he completed the trilogy "My Universities" ("Childhood" and "In People" came out in 1913 16), wrote the novel "The Artamonov Case" (1925). He began work on the book "The Life of Klim Samgin", which he continued to write until the end of his life. In 1931 Gorky returned to his homeland. In the 1930s he again turned to dramaturgy: Yegor Bulychev and Others (1932), Dostigaev and Others (1933).
Summing up the acquaintance and communication with the great people of his time. Gorky created literary portraits L. Tolstoy, A. Chekhov, V. Korolenko, essay "V. I. Lenin" ( new edition 1930). In 1934, through the efforts of M. Gorky, the 1st All-Union Congress was prepared and held. Soviet writers. On June 18, 1936, M. Gorky died in Gorki and was buried in Red Square.
Maxim Gorky (real name - Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov). Born March 16 (28), 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod - died June 18, 1936 in Gorki, Moscow Region. Russian writer, prose writer, playwright. One of the most significant and famous Russian writers and thinkers in the world.
Since 1918, he was nominated 5 times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. On the turn of XIX and XX centuries, he became famous as the author of works with a revolutionary tendency, personally close to the Social Democrats and in opposition to the tsarist regime.
Initially, Gorky was skeptical about the October Revolution. However, after several years of cultural work in Soviet Russia(in Petrograd he headed the World Literature publishing house, interceded with the Bolsheviks for those arrested) and life abroad in the 1920s (Berlin, Marienbad, Sorrento), returned to the USSR, where in last years life received official recognition as the founder of socialist realism.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, he was one of the ideologists of god-building, in 1909 he helped the participants in this trend to maintain a factional school on the island of Capri for workers, which he called "the literary center of god-building."
Alexei Maksimovich 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 (1840-1871), who was the son of a soldier demoted from officers. M. S. Peshkov in the last years of his life worked as a manager of a steamship office, died of cholera. Alyosha Peshkov fell ill with cholera at the age of 4, his father managed to get him out, but at the same time he became infected himself and did not survive; the boy almost did not remember his father, but the stories of his relatives about him left a deep impression - even the pseudonym "Maxim Gorky", according to the old Nizhny Novgorod residents, was taken in memory of Maxim Savvateevich.
Mother - Varvara Vasilievna, nee Kashirina (1842-1879) - from a bourgeois family; widowed early, remarried, died of consumption. Gorky's grandfather Savvaty Peshkov rose to the rank of officer, but was demoted and exiled to Siberia "for cruel treatment with the lower ranks, ”after which he enrolled in the tradesmen. His son Maxim ran away from his father five times and left home forever at the age of 17. Orphaned at an early age, Alexei spent his childhood in the house of his grandfather Kashirin. From the age of 11, he was forced to go “to the people”: he worked as a “boy” at a store, as a buffet utensil on a steamer, as a baker, studied at an icon-painting workshop, etc.
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 went on a wandering and soon reached the Caucasus.
In 1892 he first appeared in print with the story "Makar Chudra". Returning to Nizhny Novgorod, he publishes reviews and feuilletons in the Volzhsky Vestnik, Samarskaya Gazeta, Nizhny Novgorod Leaflet, and others.
1895 - "Chelkash", "Old Woman Izergil".
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 A.P. Charushnikov 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, 1200 copies each. Publishers "took a chance" and released more. The first volume of the 1st edition of Essays and Stories was published in 3,000 copies.
1899 - the novel "Foma Gordeev", a poem in prose "The Song of the Falcon".
1900-1901 - the novel "Three", a personal acquaintance with,.
1900-1913 - participates in the work of the publishing house "Knowledge".
March 1901 - "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.
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.
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 and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. In defense of Gorky famous figures art by Gerhart Hauptmann, Auguste Rodin, Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, Italian writers Grazia Deledda, Mario Rapisardi, Edmondo de Amicis, composer Giacomo Puccini, philosopher Benedetto Croce and other representatives of the creative and scientific world from Germany, France, England. Student demonstrations took place in Rome. On February 14, 1905, under public pressure, he was released on bail. Member of the revolution 1905-1907. In November 1905 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.
1906, February - Gorky and his actual wife, actress Maria Andreeva, set off through Europe to America, where they stayed until autumn. Abroad, the writer creates satirical pamphlets about the "bourgeois" culture of France and the United States ("My Interviews", "In America"). Returning to Russia in autumn, he writes the play "Enemies", creates the novel "Mother". At the end of 1906, due to tuberculosis, he settled in Italy on the island of Capri, where he lived with Andreeva for 7 years (from 1906 to 1913). He settled in the prestigious hotel Quisisana. From March 1909 to February 1911 he lived at the Spinola villa (now Bering), stayed at the villas (they have commemorative plaques about his stay) Blasius (from 1906 to 1909) and Serfina (now Pierina) ). On Capri, Gorky wrote "Confession" (1908), where his philosophical differences with Lenin and rapprochement with the god-builders Lunacharsky and Bogdanov were clearly identified.
1907 - a delegate with an advisory vote 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 - Gorky edits the Bolshevik newspapers Zvezda and Pravda, the art department of the Bolshevik journal Enlightenment, publishes the first collection of proletarian writers. Writes Tales of Italy.
At the end of December 1913, after the announcement of a general amnesty on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanovs, Gorky returned to Russia and settled in St. Petersburg.
1914 - founded the Chronicle magazine and the Parus publishing house.
1912-1916 - M. Gorky creates a series of stories and essays that compiled the collection "Across Russia", autobiographical novels "Childhood", "In People". In 1916, the Parus publishing house published autobiographical story"In people" and a series of essays "Across Russia". The last part of the My Universities trilogy was written in 1923.
1917-1919 - M. Gorky does a lot of public and political work, criticizes the methods of the Bolsheviks, condemns their attitude towards the old intelligentsia, saves a number of its representatives from the repressions of the Bolsheviks and hunger.
1921 - M. Gorky's departure abroad. official reason departure was the resumption of his illness and the need, at the insistence of Lenin, to be treated abroad. According to another version, Gorky was forced to leave due to the aggravation of ideological differences with the established government. In 1921-1923. lived in Helsingfors (Helsinki), Berlin, Prague.
1925 - the novel "The Artamonov Case".
1928 - at the invitation of the Soviet government and personally for the first time comes to the USSR and makes a 5-week trip around the country: Kursk, Kharkov, Crimea, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, during which Gorky is shown the achievements of the USSR, which are reflected in a series of essays "On the Soviet Union". But he does not stay in the USSR, he goes back to Italy.
1929 - the second time he comes to the USSR and on June 20-23 visits the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp, and writes a laudatory review of his regime. October 12, 1929 Gorky leaves for Italy.
1932, March - two central Soviet newspapers Pravda and Izvestia simultaneously published Gorky's pamphlet article under the title, which became catchphrase- "Who are you with, masters of culture?".
October 1932 - Gorky finally returns to the Soviet Union. The government gave him former mansion Ryabushinsky 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 hold among them preparatory work. 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 19th century”, the journal Literary Studies, he writes the plays “Egor Bulychev and Others” (1932), “Dostigaev and Others” (1933).
1934 - Gorky holds the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, speaks at it with the main report.
1934 - co-editor of the book "Stalin's Channel".
In 1925-1936 he wrote the novel "The Life of Klim Samgin", which remained unfinished.
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 death, he was cremated, the ashes were placed in an urn in 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.
The circumstances of the death of Maxim Gorky and his son are considered by many to be "suspicious", there were rumors of poisoning, which, however, were not confirmed.
On May 27, 1936, after visiting his son's grave, Gorky caught a cold in the cold windy weather and fell ill. He was ill for three weeks, and on June 18 he died. At the funeral, among others, Stalin also carried the coffin with Gorky's body. Interestingly, among other accusations of Genrikh Yagoda at the Third Moscow Trial in 1938, there was an accusation of poisoning Gorky's son. According to Yagoda's interrogations, Maxim Gorky was killed by order, 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.
Personal life of Maxim Gorky:
Wife in 1896-1903 - Ekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova (nee Volzhina) (1876-1965). The divorce was not formalized.
Son - Maxim Alekseevich Peshkov (1897-1934), his wife Vvedenskaya, Nadezhda Alekseevna ("Timosha").
Granddaughter - Peshkova, Marfa Maksimovna, her husband Beria, Sergo Lavrentievich.
Great-granddaughters - Nina and Nadezhda.
Great-grandson - Sergei (they bore the surname "Peshkov" because of the fate of Beria).
Granddaughter - Peshkova, Daria Maksimovna, her husband Grave, Alexander Konstantinovich.
Great-grandson - Maxim.
Great-granddaughter - Ekaterina (they bear the surname Peshkovs).
Great-great-grandson - Alexei Peshkov, son of Catherine.
Daughter - Ekaterina Alekseevna Peshkova (1898-1903).
Adopted and godson - Peshkov, Zinovy Alekseevich, brother of Yakov Sverdlov, Gorky's godson, who took his last name, and de facto adopted son, his wife Lydia Burago.
Actual wife in 1903-1919 - Maria Fedorovna Andreeva (1868-1953) - actress, revolutionary, Soviet statesman and party leader.
Adopted daughter - Ekaterina Andreevna Zhelyabuzhskaya (father - real state councilor Zhelyabuzhsky, Andrei Alekseevich).
Adopted son - Zhelyabuzhsky, Yuri Andreevich (father - real state councilor Zhelyabuzhsky, Andrei Alekseevich).
Cohabitant in 1920-1933 - Budberg, Maria Ignatievna (1892-1974) - baroness, adventurer.
Novels of Maxim Gorky:
1899 - "Foma Gordeev"
1900-1901 - "Three"
1906 - "Mother" (second edition - 1907)
1925 - "The Artamonov Case"
1925-1936 - "The Life of Klim Samgin".
The stories of Maxim Gorky:
1894 - "Wretched Pavel"
1900 - “Man. Essays" (remained unfinished, the third chapter was not published during the life of the author)
1908 - "The life of an unnecessary person."
1908 - "Confession"
1909 - "Summer"
1909 - "The Town of Okurov", "The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin".
1913-1914 - "Childhood"
1915-1916 - "In people"
1923 - "My Universities"
1929 - "At the End of the Earth".
Stories and essays by Maxim Gorky:
1892 - "The Girl and Death" (a fairy tale poem, published in July 1917 in the New Life newspaper)
1892 - "Makar Chudra"
1892 - "Emelyan Pilyai"
1892 - "Grandfather Arkhip and Lyonka"
1895 - "Chelkash", "Old Woman Izergil", "Song of the Falcon" (poem in prose)
1897 - " former people"," Orlov's Spouses "," Malva "," Konovalov ".
1898 - "Essays and Stories" (collection)
1899 - "Twenty-six and one"
1901 - "Song of the Petrel" (poem in prose)
1903 - "Man" (poem in prose)
1906 - "Comrade!", "Sage"
1908 - "Soldiers"
1911 - "Tales of Italy"
1912-1917 - "In Russia" (a cycle of stories)
1924 - "Stories 1922-1924"
1924 - "Notes from a diary" (a cycle of stories)
1929 - "Solovki" (essay).
Plays by Maxim Gorky:
1901 - "Philistines"
1902 - "At the bottom"
1904 - Summer Residents
1905 - "Children of the Sun"
1905 - "Barbarians"
1906 - "Enemies"
1908 - "The Last"
1910 - "Eccentrics"
1910 - "Children" ("Meeting")
1910 - "Vassa Zheleznova" (2nd edition - 1933; 3rd edition - 1935)
1913 - "Zykovs"
1913 - "Fake Coin"
1915 - "The Old Man" (staged on January 1, 1919 on the stage of the State Academic Maly Theater; published 1921 in Berlin).
1930-1931 - "Somov and others"
1931 - "Egor Bulychov and others"
1932 - "Dostigaev and others".
Journalism of Maxim Gorky:
1906 - "My Interviews", "In America" (pamphlets)
1917-1918 - a series of articles "Untimely Thoughts" in the newspaper "New Life" (in 1918 it was published as a separate publication).
1922 - "On the Russian peasantry."
Real name and surname - Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov.
Russian writer, publicist, public figure. Maxim Gorky was born March 16 (28), 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod in a petty-bourgeois family. He lost his parents early, was brought up in the family of his grandfather. He graduated from two classes of a suburban elementary school in Kunavin (now Kanavino), a suburb of Nizhny Novgorod, but could not continue his education due to poverty (his grandfather's dyeing establishment went bankrupt). M. Gorky was forced to work from the age of ten. Possessing a unique memory, Gorky was intensely engaged in self-education all his life. In 1884 went to Kazan, where he participated in the work of underground populist circles; connection with the revolutionary movement largely determined his life and creative aspirations. In 1888-1889 and 1891-1892. wandered around the south of Russia; impressions from these "walks in Russia" subsequently became the most important source of plots and images for his work (primarily early).
The first publication is the story "Makar Chudra", published in the Tiflis newspaper "Kavkaz" September 12, 1892. In 1893-1896. Gorky actively collaborated with the Volga newspapers, where he published many feuilletons and stories. The name of Gorky received all-Russian and all-European fame shortly after the release of his first collection, Essays and Stories (vols. 1-2, 1898 ), in which the sharpness and brightness in the transfer of life's realities were combined with neo-romantic pathos, with a passionate call for the transformation of man and the world ("Old Woman Izergil", "Konovalov", "Chelkash", "Malva", "On Rafts", "Song of Sokole, etc.). The symbol of the growing revolutionary movement in Russia was the "Song of the Petrel" ( 1901 ).
With the beginning of Gorky's work in 1900 in the publishing house "Knowledge" began his many years of literary and organizational activities. He expanded the publishing program, organized from 1904 release famous collections"Knowledge", rallied around the publishing house the largest writers close to the realistic direction (I. Bunin, L. Andreev, A. Kuprin, etc.), and actually led this direction in its opposition to modernism.
At the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. the first novels of M. Gorky "Foma Gordeev" were published (1899) and "Three" ( 1900) . In 1902 in the Moscow Art Theater, his first plays were staged - "Petty Bourgeois" and "At the Bottom". Together with the plays "Summer Residents" ( 1904 ), "Children of the Sun" ( 1905 ), "Barbarians" ( 1906 ) they identified a kind of Gorky type of Russian realistic theater of the early 20th century, based on acute social conflict and clearly expressed ideological characters. The play "At the Bottom" is still preserved in the repertoire of many theaters around the world.
Involved in active political activity at the beginning of the first Russian revolution, Gorky was forced in January 1906 emigrate (returned at the end of 1913). The peak of the writer's conscious political engagement (social-democratic coloring) fell on 1906-1907 years, when the plays "Enemies" were published ( 1906 ), the novel "Mother" ( 1906-1907 ), publicistic collections "My Interviews" and "In America" (both 1906 ).
New turn in Gorky's worldview and stylistic manner was found in the stories "The Town of Okurov" ( 1909-1910 ) and "The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin" ( 1910-1911 ), as well as in autobiographical prose 1910s.: stories "The Master" ( 1913 ), "Childhood" ( 1913-1914 ), "In people" ( 1916 ), a collection of short stories "In Russia" ( 1912-1917 ) and others: Gorky turned to the problem of Russian national character. The same trends were reflected in the so-called. second dramatic cycle: plays "Eccentrics" ( 1910 ), "Vassa Zheleznova" (1st edition - 1910 ), "Old Man" (created in 1915, published in 1918 ) and etc.
During the revolutions 1917 Gorky sought to fight the anti-humanistic and anti-cultural arbitrariness, which the Bolsheviks staked on (a series of articles "Untimely Thoughts" in the newspaper "New Life"). After October 1917 he, on the one hand, joined the cultural and community service new institutions, and on the other hand, he criticized the Bolshevik terror, tried to save from arrests and executions (in some cases successfully) representatives creative intelligentsia. The intensified disagreements with the policies of V. Lenin led Gorky to October 1921 to emigration (formally it was presented as going abroad for treatment), which actually (with interruptions) continued before 1933.
First half of the 1920s marked by Gorky's search for new principles of artistic worldview. The book Notes from a Diary. Memories" ( 1924 ), in the center of which is the theme of the Russian national character and its contradictory complexity. Collection "Stories 1922-1924" ( 1925 ) marked by an interest in mysteries human soul, a psychologically complicated type of hero, gravitating towards conventionally fantastic perspectives of vision unusual for the former Gorky. In the 1920s Gorky began work on wide-ranging artistic canvases highlighting Russia's recent past: "My Universities" ( 1923 ), the novel "The Artamonov Case" ( 1925 ), epic novel "The Life of Klim Samgin" (parts 1-3, 1927-1931 ; unfinished 4 hours, 1937 ). Later, this panorama was supplemented by a cycle of plays: "Egor Bulychov and Others" ( 1932 ), "Dostigaev and others" ( 1933 ), "Vassa Zheleznova" (2nd edition, 1936 ).
Finally returning to the USSR in May 1933, Gorky took an active part in cultural construction, led the preparation of the 1st All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, participated in the creation of a number of institutes, publishing houses and magazines. His speeches and organizational efforts played a significant role in establishing the aesthetics of socialist realism. The journalism of these years characterizes Gorky as one of the ideologists of the Soviet system, indirectly and directly speaking with an apology for the Stalinist regime. At the same time, he repeatedly appealed to Stalin with petitions for the repressed figures of science, literature and art.
The peaks of M. Gorky's work include a cycle of memoir portraits of his contemporaries (L.N. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhov, L.N. Andreev, etc.), created by him at different times.
June 18, 1936 Maxim Gorky died in Moscow, was buried in Red Square (the urn with the ashes was buried in the Kremlin wall).
Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov (better known as pseudonym Maxim Gorky, March 16 (28), 1868 - June 18, 1936) - Russian and Soviet writer, public figure, founder of the style of socialist realism.
Childhood and youth of Maxim Gorky
Gorky was born in Nizhny Novgorod. His father, Maxim Peshkov, who died in 1871, in the last years of his life worked as the manager of the Astrakhan shipping office of Kolchin. When Alexei was 11 years old, his mother also died. The boy was brought up after that in the house of his maternal grandfather, Kashirin, the ruined owner of a dyeing workshop. The stingy grandfather early forced the young Alyosha to "go to the people", that is, to earn money on his own. He had to work as a delivery boy at a store, a baker, and wash dishes in a canteen. These early years Gorky later described his life in Childhood, the first part of his autobiographical trilogy. In 1884, Alexei unsuccessfully tried to enter Kazan University.
Gorky's grandmother, unlike her grandfather, was a kind and religious woman, an excellent storyteller. Alexei Maksimovich himself associated his suicide attempt in December 1887 with heavy feelings about his grandmother's death. Gorky shot himself, but survived: the bullet missed the heart. She, however, seriously damaged the lung, and the writer suffered all his life afterwards from respiratory weakness.
In 1888 Gorky was on a short time arrested for connection with the Marxist circle of N. Fedoseev. In the spring of 1891 he set off to wander around Russia and reached the Caucasus. Expanding his knowledge by self-education, getting a temporary job either as a loader or a night watchman, Gorky accumulated impressions that he later used to write his first stories. He called this life period "My Universities".
In 1892, 24-year-old Gorky returned to his native place and began to collaborate as a journalist in several provincial publications. Aleksey Maksimovich first wrote under the pseudonym Yehudiel Khlamida (which in Hebrew and Greek gives some associations with “cloak and dagger”), but soon came up with another one for himself - Maxim Gorky, hinting at both the “bitter” Russian life and the desire to write only the "bitter truth". For the first time, the name "Gorky" was used by him in correspondence for the Tiflis newspaper "Kavkaz".
Maksim Gorky. video film
Gorky's literary debut and his first steps in politics
In 1892, Maxim Gorky's first short story "Makar Chudra" appeared. He was followed by "Chelkash", "Old Woman Izergil" (see summary and full text), "Song of the Falcon" (1895), "Former people" (1897), etc. All of them did not differ not so much in great artistic merits, how much exaggerated pompous pathos, but successfully coincided with the new Russian political trends. Until the mid-1890s, the left-wing Russian intelligentsia worshiped the Narodniks, who idealized the peasantry. But from the second half of this decade, Marxism began to gain increasing popularity in radical circles. Marxists proclaimed that the dawn of a bright future would be kindled by the proletariat and the poor. Tramps-lumpen were the main characters of the stories of Maxim Gorky. Society began to applaud them vigorously as a new fiction fashion.
In 1898, Gorky's first collection, Essays and Stories, was published. He had a noisy (albeit completely inexplicable for reasons literary talent) success. Gorky's public and creative career took off sharply. He portrayed the life of beggars from the very bottom of society (“tramps”), depicting their difficulties and humiliations with strong exaggerations, strenuously introducing the feigned pathos of “humanity” into his stories. Maxim Gorky earned a reputation as the only literary spokesman for the interests of the working class, defender of the idea of radical social, political and cultural transformation of Russia. His work was praised by intellectuals and "conscious" workers. Gorky struck up a close acquaintance with Chekhov and Tolstoy, although their attitude towards him was not always unambiguous.
Gorky acted as a staunch supporter of the Marxist social democracy, openly hostile to "tsarism." In 1901, he wrote the "Song of the Petrel" openly calling for revolution. For compiling a proclamation calling for a "fight against the autocracy", he was arrested in the same year and expelled from Nizhny Novgorod. Maxim Gorky became close friends with many revolutionaries, including Lenin, whom he first met in 1902. He became even more famous when he exposed as the author of the "Protocols Elders of Zion» secret police officer Matvey Golovinsky. Golovinsky then had to leave Russia. When the election of Gorky (1902) as a member of the Imperial Academy in the category of fine literature was annulled by the government, academicians A.P. Chekhov and V.G. Korolenko also resigned in solidarity.
Maksim Gorky
In 1900-1905. Gorky's work became more and more optimistic. Of his works of this period of life, several plays stand out, closely connected with public affairs. The most famous of them is "At the Bottom" (see its full text and summary). Staged not without censorship difficulties in Moscow (1902), she had big success and then given throughout Europe and the United States. Maxim Gorky became closer and closer to the political opposition. During the revolution of 1905, he was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg for the play "Children of the Sun", which was formally dedicated to the cholera epidemic of 1862, but clearly alluded to current events. The "official" companion of Gorky in 1904-1921 was former actress Maria Andreeva - old Bolshevik, who became the director of theaters after the October Revolution.
Having grown rich through his writing, Maxim Gorky provided financial support to the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party ( RSDLP) while supporting liberal calls for civic and social reform. The death of many people during the manifestation on January 9, 1905 ("Bloody Sunday"), apparently, gave impetus to Gorky's even greater radicalization. Without openly joining the Bolsheviks and Lenin, he agreed with them on most issues. During the December armed rebellion in Moscow in 1905, the headquarters of the rebels was located in the apartment of Maxim Gorky, not far from Moscow University. At the end of the uprising, the writer left for St. Petersburg. At his apartment in this city, a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP was held under the chairmanship of Lenin, which decided to stop the armed struggle for the time being. A.I. Solzhenitsyn writes (“March 17th”, ch. 171) that Gorky “in Nine Hundred and Fifth, in his Moscow apartment during the days of the uprising, kept thirteen Georgian combatants, and bombs were made from him.”
Fearing arrest, Alexei Maksimovich fled to Finland, from where he left for Western Europe. From Europe, he traveled to the United States to raise funds for the Bolshevik Party. It was during this trip that Gorky began to write his famous novel"Mother", which was first published in English in London, and then in Russian (1907). The theme of this very tendentious work is the joining of a simple working woman to the revolution after the arrest of her son. In America, Gorky was initially welcomed with open arms. He got acquainted with Theodore Roosevelt and Mark Twain. However, then the American press began to resent the high-profile political actions of Maxim Gorky: he sent a telegram of support to trade union leaders Haywood and Moyer, who was accused of murdering the governor of Idaho. The newspapers did not like the fact that the writer was not accompanied on the trip by his wife, Ekaterina Peshkova, but by his mistress, Maria Andreeva. Strongly wounded by all this, Gorky began to condemn the “bourgeois spirit” in his work even more fiercely.
Gorky on Capri
Returning from America, Maxim Gorky decided not to return to Russia for the time being, because he could be arrested there for his connection with the Moscow uprising. From 1906 to 1913 he lived on the Italian island of Capri. From there Alexei Maksimovich continued to support the Russian left, especially the Bolsheviks; he wrote novels and essays. Together with Bolshevik emigrants Alexander Bogdanov and A. V. Lunacharsky Gorky created an intricate philosophical system entitled " god-building". It claimed to work out from the revolutionary myths "socialist spirituality", with the help of which the enriched strong passions and with new moral values humanity will be able to get rid of evil, suffering and even death. Although these philosophical quests were rejected by Lenin, Maxim Gorky continued to believe that "culture", that is, moral and spiritual values, was more important for the success of the revolution than political and economic events. This theme underlies his novel The Confession (1908).
Return of Gorky to Russia (1913-1921)
Taking advantage of the amnesty given for the 300th anniversary Romanov dynasty, Gorky returned to Russia in 1913 and continued his active public and literary activity. During this period of his life, he guided young writers from the people and wrote the first two parts of his autobiographical trilogy - "Childhood" (1914) and "In People" (1915-1916).
In 1915 Gorky, along with a number of other prominent Russian writers participated in the publication of the journalistic collection "Shield", the purpose of which was to protect the allegedly oppressed Jews in Russia. Speaking in the Progressive Circle at the end of 1916, Gorky “dedicated his two-hour speech to all sorts of spitting on the entire Russian people and exorbitant praise of Jewry,” says Mansyrev, a progressive Duma member, one of the founders of the Circle. (See A. Solzhenitsyn. Two hundred years together. Chapter 11.)
During First World War his St. Petersburg apartment again served as a meeting place for the Bolsheviks, but in revolutionary 1917 his relations with them deteriorated. Two weeks after the October Revolution of 1917, Maxim Gorky wrote:
However, as the Bolshevik regime strengthened, Maxim Gorky became more and more despondent and increasingly refrained from criticism. On August 31, 1918, having learned about the assassination attempt on Lenin, Gorky and Maria Andreeva sent a general telegram to him: “We are terribly upset, we are worried. We sincerely wish you a speedy recovery, be of good spirits.” Alexey Maksimovich achieved a personal meeting with Lenin, about which he spoke as follows: “I realized that I was mistaken, went to Ilyich and frankly confessed my mistake.” Together with a number of other writers who joined the Bolsheviks, Gorky created the World Literature publishing house under the People's Commissariat for Education. It planned to publish the best classical works, however, in an atmosphere of terrible devastation, they could not do almost anything. Gorky, however, started love affair with one of the employees of the new publishing house - Maria Benkendorf. It went on for many years.
Gorky's second stay in Italy (1921-1932)
In August 1921, Gorky, despite a personal appeal to Lenin, could not save his friend, the poet Nikolai Gumilyov, from being shot by the Chekists. In October of the same year, the writer left Bolshevik Russia and lived in German resorts, where he completed the third part of his autobiography, My Universities (1923). He then returned to Italy "for the treatment of tuberculosis". Living in Sorrento (1924), Gorky maintained contacts with his homeland. After 1928, Alexei Maksimovich visited the Soviet Union several times until he accepted Stalin's proposal for a final return to his homeland (October 1932). According to some literary critics, the reason for the return was the writer's political convictions, his long-standing sympathies for the Bolsheviks, but there is also a more reasonable opinion that leading role Gorky's desire to get rid of the debts made during his life abroad played here.
The last years of Gorky's life (1932-1936)
Even while visiting the USSR in 1929, Maxim Gorky made a trip to the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp and wrote a laudatory article about Soviet punitive system, although he received detailed information from the campers on Solovki about the terrible atrocities that are happening there. This case is in The Gulag Archipelago by A. I. Solzhenitsyn. In the West, Gorky's article about the Solovetsky camp provoked stormy criticism, and he began to bashfully explain that he was under pressure from Soviet censors. The writer's departure from fascist Italy and return to the USSR were widely used by communist propaganda. Shortly before his arrival in Moscow, Gorky published (March 1932) in the Soviet newspapers the article "Who are you with, masters of culture?". Designed in the style of Leninist-Stalinist propaganda, it called on writers, artists and artists to put their creativity at the service of the communist movement.
Upon his return to the USSR, Alexei Maksimovich received the Order of Lenin (1933) and was elected head of the Union of Soviet Writers (1934). The government provided him with a luxurious mansion in Moscow, which belonged to the millionaire Nikolai Ryabushinsky before the revolution (now the Gorky Museum), as well as a fashionable dacha in the Moscow region. During the demonstrations, Gorky went up to the podium of the mausoleum together with Stalin. One of the main Moscow streets, Tverskaya, was renamed in honor of the writer, just like his hometown, Nizhny Novgorod (which regained its historical name only in 1991, with the collapse Soviet Union). The largest aircraft in the world, the ANT-20, which was built in the mid-1930s by the Tupolev bureau, was named "Maxim Gorky". There are numerous photos of the writer with members of the Soviet government. All these honors had to be paid for. Gorky put his work at the service of Stalinist propaganda. In 1934 he co-edited a book that glorified the slave-built White Sea-Baltic Canal and convinced that in the Soviet "correctional" camps a successful "reforging" of the former "enemies of the proletariat" was being carried out.
Maxim Gorky on the podium of the mausoleum. Nearby - Kaganovich, Voroshilov and Stalin
There is, however, evidence that all this lies cost Gorky considerable mental anguish. The writer's hesitation was known at the top. After the murder Kirov in December 1934 and the gradual deployment by Stalin " Great Terror» Gorky actually ended up under house arrest in his luxurious mansion. In May 1934, his 36-year-old son Maxim Peshkov unexpectedly died, and on June 18, 1936, Gorky himself died of pneumonia. Stalin, who carried the writer's coffin with Molotov during his funeral, said that Gorky had been poisoned by "enemies of the people." Prominent participants in the Moscow trials of 1936-1938 were charged with poisoning. and are found to be proven. former head OGPU and NKVD, Heinrich Yagoda, confessed that he organized the assassination of Maxim Gorky on the orders of Trotsky.
Joseph Stalin and Writers. Maksim Gorky
The cremated ashes of Gorky were buried at the Kremlin wall. Before that, the writer's brain was removed from his body and sent "for study" to the Moscow Research Institute.
Assessment of Gorky's work
AT Soviet times, before and after the death of Maxim Gorky, government propaganda diligently obscured his ideological and creative throwing, ambiguous relations with the leaders of Bolshevism in different periods life. The Kremlin presented him as the largest Russian writer of his time, a native of the people, true friend Communist Party and the father of "socialist realism". Statues and portraits of Gorky were distributed throughout the country. Russian dissidents saw in Gorky's work the embodiment of a slippery compromising compromise. In the West, they emphasized the constant fluctuations of his views on the Soviet system, recalling Gorky's repeated criticism of the Bolshevik regime.
Gorky saw in literature not so much a way of artistic and aesthetic self-expression as moral and political activity with the aim of changing the world. As the author of novels, short stories, autobiographical essays and plays, Aleksey Maksimovich also wrote many treatises and reflections: articles, essays, memoirs about politicians (for example, about Lenin), about people of art (Tolstoy, Chekhov, etc.).
Gorky himself argued that the center of his work is a deep belief in the value human personality, glorification human dignity and resilience in the midst of life's hardships. The writer saw in himself a "restless soul", which seeks to find a way out of the contradictions of hope and skepticism, love of life and disgust at the petty vulgarity of others. However, both the style of Maxim Gorky's books and the details of his public biography are convincing: these claims were mostly feigned.
The tragedy and confusion of his extremely ambiguous time were reflected in Gorky's life and work, when the promises of a complete revolutionary transformation of the world only masked the selfish thirst for power and bestial cruelty. It has long been recognized that, from a purely literary point of view, most of Gorky's works are rather weak. best quality his autobiographical stories are distinguished, where a realistic and picturesque picture Russian life late XIX century.
The biography of Maxim Gorky is set out in his works: "Childhood", "In People", "My Universities", or rather, the beginning of his life. Maxim Gorky is the pseudonym of the outstanding Russian writer, playwright Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov. In his creative biography there was another pseudonym: Yehudiel Khlamida.
Talent-nugget has been awarded five times Nobel Prize on literature. Usually he is called a proletarian, revolutionary writer for his struggle against the autocracy. The biography of Maxim Gorky was not easy. This will be discussed in this article.
Maxim Gorky was born in 1868. His biography began in Nizhny Novgorod. His maternal grandfather, Kashirin, was a demoted officer due to his harsh treatment of his subordinates. After returning from exile, he became a tradesman, kept a dye workshop. His daughter married a carpenter and left with her husband for Astrakhan. There they had two children.
The eldest of them, Alyosha, fell ill with cholera at the age of four. Because the mother was pregnant with her second child, the father took care of the sick child and contracted the disease from him. Soon he died, and the boy went on the mend. From experiences mother has given birth before term. She decided to return with the children to parental home. On the way, her youngest child died.
They settled in her father's house in Nizhny Novgorod. Now there is a museum - Kashirin's house. The furnishings and furniture of those years have been preserved, even the rods with which grandfather flogged Alyosha. He was a tough, quick-tempered character and could whip anyone in anger, even a small grandson.
Maxim Gorky was educated at home. His mother taught him to read, and his grandfather taught him church reading and writing. Despite his temper, grandfather was a very pious man. He often attended church and took his grandson there, usually against his will, by force. So in little Alyosha was born negative attitude to religion, as well as the spirit of opposition, which then develops into a revolutionary direction in his works.
One day, the boy took revenge on his grandfather by cutting his favorite “Lives of the Saints” with scissors. For which, of course, he received, as it should.
For a short time, Maxim attended the parish school. But due to illness, he was forced to stop studying there. Maxim Gorky also studied at the Sloboda school for two years. Here, perhaps, and all his education. All his life he wrote with errors, which were later corrected by his wife, a proofreader by profession.
Alyosha's mother got married a second time and moved in with her husband, taking her son with her. But his relationship with his stepfather did not work out. One day Alyosha saw him beating his mother. The boy attacked his stepfather and beat him. After that, I had to run away to my grandfather, which, of course, was not the best option.
For a long time, the school of life for Alyosha was the street where he got the nickname "Bashlyk". For some time he stole firewood to heat the house, food, and looked for rags in the landfill. After his classmates complained to the teacher that it was impossible to sit next to him because of the bad smell emanating from him, Maxim Gorky was offended and did not come to the school anymore. He never received his secondary education.
Youth years
Soon, Alexei's mother fell ill with scabies and died. Left an orphan, Alyosha was forced to earn his living. Grandfather by that time was completely ruined. Gorky himself writes well about this time: “... my grandfather told me:
- Well, Lexey, you are not a medal, on my neck there is no place for you, but go to the people ...
And I went to the people. Thus ends the story "Childhood". The adult, independent period of the biography of Maxim Gorky begins. And he was then only eleven years old!
Alexey worked in different places: in a shop as an assistant, as a cook, on a steamer as a crockery, in an icon-painting workshop as an apprentice.
When he was sixteen years old, he decided to try to enter Kazan University. But, to his great regret, he was refused. Firstly, the poor were not accepted there, and secondly, he did not even have a certificate.
Then Alexei went to work at the pier. There he met revolutionary-minded youth, began to visit their circles, and read Marxist literature.
When the young man worked in a bakery, he met the populist Derenkov. He sent income from the sale of products to support the popular movement.
In 1987 Alexei's grandmother and grandfather died. He was very fond of his grandmother, who often protected him from his grandfather's outbursts of anger, told him fairy tales. On her grave in Nizhny Novgorod there is a monument depicting her telling a fairy tale to her beloved grandson Alyosha.
The young man was very worried about her death. He developed depression, in a fit of which he attempted suicide. Alexei shot himself in the chest with a gun. But the watchman managed to call medical care. The unfortunate man was taken to the hospital, where he was urgently operated on. He survived, but the consequences of this injury will cause him a lifelong lung disease.
Later, in the hospital, Alexei made another suicide attempt. He drank poison from a medical vessel. They managed to pump it out again by washing the stomach. Here the psychiatrists had to examine the young man. Many were found mental disorders which were later rejected. For suicide attempts, Alexei was excommunicated from church fellowship for four years.
In the 88th year, Alexei, along with other revolutionaries, leaves for Krasnovidovo to conduct revolutionary propaganda. He joins Fedoseev's circle, for which he is arrested. From that moment on, the police began to follow him. At that time he was a laborer, worked as a watchman at the station, then moved to the Caspian Sea, where he began to work among other fishermen.
In the 89th year, he wrote a petition in verse with the aim of transferring him to Borisoglebsk. Then he worked at the Krutaya station. Here Alexei fell in love for the first time with the daughter of the head of the station. His feeling was so strong that he decided on a marriage proposal. He, of course, was denied. But he remembered the girl all his life.
Alexei was fascinated by the ideas of Leo Tolstoy. He even went to see him in Yasnaya Polyana. But the writer's wife ordered the walker to be driven away.
The beginning of a creative career
In 1989, Maxim Gorky met the writer Korolenko and ventured to show him his work. The beginning of the creative biography was very unsuccessful. The writer criticized his Song of the Old Oak. But the young man did not despair and continued to write.
This year, Peshkov goes to prison for participating in revolutionary movement youth. Coming out of prison, he decides to go on a trip to Mother Russia. He visited the Volga region, Crimea, the Caucasus, Ukraine (where he ended up in the hospital). I traveled, what is now called "hitchhiking" - on passing carts, walked a lot on foot, climbed into empty freight cars. To a young romantic liked this free life. The opportunity to see the world and feel the happiness of liberty - all this is easily the basis of the works of a novice writer.
Then the manuscript "Makara Chudra" was born. In Georgia, Peshkov met the revolutionary Kalyuzhny. He published this work in the newspaper. Then a pseudonym was born - Maxim Gorky. Maxim - in honor of his father, and Gorky - because bitterness was constantly present in his biography.
His works began to be published willingly in newspapers and magazines. Soon everyone was talking about a new talent. By that time, he had already settled down and got married.
Resurgence in fame
In 1998, two volumes of the writer's works were published. They brought him not only great fame, but also trouble. Gorky was arrested for his revolutionary views and imprisoned in a castle in the capital of Georgia.
After his release, the writer settled in St. Petersburg. There they were created the best works: "Song of the petrel", "At the bottom", "Petty bourgeois", "Three" and others. In 1902 he was elected an honorary academician Imperial Academy Sciences. The emperor himself highly appreciated the writer's work, despite his struggle with the autocracy. His sharp, direct language, courage, liberty, genius of thought, present in his works, could not leave anyone indifferent. The talent was clear.
During that period, Gorky continued to take part in the revolutionary movement, attending circles, and distributing Marxist literature. It was as if the lessons of past arrests hadn't had any effect on him. Such courage simply pissed off the police.
Now famous writer already freely communicated with the idol of youth Leo Tolstoy. They talked for a long time Yasnaya Polyana. He also met other writers: Kuprin, Bunin and others.
In 1902, Gorky, together with his family, which already had two children, moved to Nizhny Novgorod. He rents a spacious house in the city center. Now there is a museum there. This apartment was a haven for creative people of that time. It gathered and talked for a long time, exchanging new works, such famous people as: Chekhov, Tolstoy, Stanislavsky, Andreev, Bunin, Repin and, of course, his friend Fedor Chaliapin. He played the piano and sang musical pieces.
Here he finished "At the Bottom", wrote "Mother", "Man", "Summer Residents". He did well not only in prose, but also in poetry. But some of them, for example, "The Song of the Petrel", are written, as you know, in blank verse. A revolutionary, proud spirit, a call to struggle are present in almost all of his works.
Last years
In 1904, Gorky joined the RSDLP, and the following year he met Lenin. The writer is again arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. But soon, under pressure from the public, he was released. In 1906, Gorky was forced to leave the country and became a political emigrant.
He lived first in the USA. Then, due to a serious illness that tormented him for a long time (tuberculosis), he settled in Italy. Everywhere he conducted revolutionary propaganda. Concerned authorities recommended that he settle on the island of Capri, where he lived for about seven years.
On the roof of the building of the editorial office of the newspaper "Izvestia"
Here he was visited by many Russian writers and revolutionaries. Once a week, a seminar for novice writers was even held in his villa.
Here Gorky wrote his Tales of Italy. In the 12th year, he traveled to Paris, where he spoke with Lenin.
In 1913, Gorky returned to Russia. He settled in St. Petersburg for five years. Relatives and acquaintances found refuge in his spacious house. Once a woman named Maria Budberg brought him papers to sign and fainted from hunger. Gorky fed her and left her in his house. She would later become his mistress.
With writer Romain Rolland
Gorky, who led an active revolutionary activity, oddly enough, reacted negatively to the October coup in the country. He was struck by the cruelty of the revolution, interceded for the arrested whites. After the assassination attempt on Lenin, Gorky sent him a sympathetic telegram.
In the 21st year, Gorky again leaves his homeland. According to one version, the reason for this was the deterioration of health, according to another, disagreement with the policy in the country.
In 1928, the writer was invited to the USSR. For five weeks he traveled around the country, then returned back to Italy. And in the 33rd year he came to his homeland, where he lived until his death.
In the last years of his life, he created the book "The Life of Klim Samgin", striking in its philosophy of life.
In 1934, Gorky held the First Congress of the Writers' Union of the USSR.
The last years he lived in the Crimea. In 1936, Gorky visited his sick grandchildren in Moscow. Apparently, he got infected from them or caught a cold along the way. But his health deteriorated sharply. The writer fell ill, it was clear that he would not recover.
The dying Gorky was visited by Stalin. The writer died on June 18. At autopsy, it turned out that his lungs were in a terrible state.
The coffin of the writer was carried by Molotov and Stalin. Both Gorky's wives followed the coffin. The city of Nizhny Novgorod, where the writer was born, bore his name from 1932 until 1990.
Personal life
Gorky always possessed an enviable masculine strength, according to surviving information, despite his chronic illness.
The first unofficial marriage of the writer was with the midwife Olga Kamenskaya. Her mother, also a midwife, delivered Peshkov's mother. It seemed interesting to him that his mother-in-law helped him to be born. But with Olga they did not live long. Gorky left her after she fell asleep while the author was reading The Old Woman Izergil.
In 1996, Alexey got married to Ekaterina Volzhina. She was the only official wife of the writer. They had two children: Ekaterina and Maxim. Katya soon died. The son died two years before Gorky.
In 1903, he became friends with the actress Maria Andreeva, who left her husband and two children for him. He lived with her until her death. Moreover, there was no divorce from Gorky's first wife.
