Start journalistic activity M. Gorky refers to the 1890s, when, working in 1895-1896. in the provincial newspapers of the Volga region and the South of Russia - "Samarskaya Gazeta", "Nizhny Novgorod Leaflet" and "Odessa News" - he invariably defended the interests of the people. At that time, his worldview had not yet fully developed; not accepting the landlord-bourgeois system, Gorky did not see real ways its replacement.
Already in Gorky's early work, extreme anthropocentrism is combined with an active rejection of the spiritual qualities of the majority. modern people. This contradiction determined the desire of the young writer to oppose the imperfect personality of a real modern person with a bright individuality, which brought his humanistic concept closer to the ideas of F. Nietzsche in the 1890s of the 19th century. Under the influence of Nietzscheanism, the ideal image of the Titan-Man is affirmed in Gorky's work, which is endowed with features similar to Nietzsche's superman: prometheism, activism and spiritual strength.
For Gorky, the focus of force is important from the very beginning. goodie, which was already conceived in early works as a savior of people from their own weakness, insignificance and sleepy vegetation. The opposition between the petty-bourgeois and heroic types of individualism, expressed in the programmatic publicist article "Notes on Philistinism" (1905), became an important ideological result, pointing to the movement of Gorky's thought towards the philosophy of collectivism and identifying two main options for subsequent Gorky's work, opposed to each other: individualist - individuality .
The justification of the ideas to which he was close, the writer found in the works of "Nietzschean Marxists" - God-builders - A. A. Bogdanov and A. V. Lunacharsky. Starting from the god-building period, Gorky's anthropocentrism fell into complete and unconditional dependence on the logic of a "creative, that is, socially binding people" idea. In the second half of the 1900s, Gorky called it "the great monistic idea of socialism", and in the 1930s it was Bolshevism, communism.
Under the influence of the “guiding” idea, the Nietzsche features of the Gorky Man are transformed, and from the second half of the 1900s it is no longer a mischievous, not an abstract “Man, with capital letter”, but a proletarian revolutionary, and not even just a revolutionary - but a “revolutionary in spirit”. In 1917 - 1918, the writer gets the image of an "eternal revolutionary" who "would like to revive, spiritualize the whole brain of the world, how much of it is in the skulls of people", and whom Gorky contrasts with a "revolutionary for a while", who pursues in the course of a radical socio-political breaking their selfish class interests. From that moment on, the pure Nietzschean type as a hero who carries a positive beginning actually disappears in Gorky's work. Why? The answer to this question can be found already in Untimely Thoughts, where the writer enters into an argument with the leaders who are conducting a superhuman experiment on Russia, testifies to the real, extremely cruel manifestations of this experiment.
Gorky accuses the Bolshevik leaders of individualism and leaderism: "... they have already been poisoned by the rotten poison of power." “Imagining themselves as Napoleons from socialism, the Leninists tear and rush, completing the destruction of Russia - the Russian people will pay for this with lakes of blood”, they “cold-bloodedly dishonor the revolution, dishonor the working class, forcing it to arrange bloody massacres, urging them to pogroms, to arrests in nothing innocent people..." But ideas, the writer insists, do not win by "methods of physical violence." A truly heroic individuality - "an eternal revolutionary," Gorky constantly reminds in Untimely Thoughts, "is not capable of resorting to certain methods of violence against a person except in cases of inevitable necessity and with a sense of organic disgust for any act of violence."
Having subsequently changed his attitude towards the personality of V. I. Lenin, Gorky did not abandon his fundamentally negative attitude towards the cruelty of the supermen of the revolution. "Leaderism" is a disease; developing from the atrophy of the emotion of collectivism, it is expressed in the hypertrophy of the “individual principle,” writes Gorky. In 1930, leading the work on the publication of the book "History civil war”, Gorky writes in a letter to M. N. Pokrovsky about the need “especially careful study partisanism, over-praised - as you will agree - by fiction writers and poets "According to Gorky, "the glorification of partisan leaders is politically not harmless, and in our circumstances it would not be necessary to emphasize so romantically thickly" the role of the individual "in the partisan movement." What are the circumstances? The overwhelming majority of readers are the peasantry, the glorification of leaders can lead the consciousness of the peasant masses, captured by private-proprietary emotions, from collectivism to individualism strong personality detached from the people or placing itself above the collective.
Gorky is sure that a person embraced by the petty-bourgeois "zoological individualism" of the owner, regardless of who it is: a capitalist small or large predator, a representative of " former people"(emigrants), "mechanical citizens" of the Soviet Union (philistines), "socially unhealthy forces" (peasantry) or "long-winded" intelligentsia - will inevitably move in only one direction: individualism - leaderism - fascism. "The wolf psyche of the big bourgeoisie, the fox mind of the petty one creates liars, hypocrites, traitors, murderers from around the corner." In journalism Soviet years Gorky completes the chain "philistine" - "cynic" - "hooligan", indicated in his work of the 1900s. He writes: “from hooliganism to fascism, the distance is “shorter than a sparrow’s nose.”
Equating leaderism and petty-bourgeois individualism with fascism, Gorky at the same time continues to defend heroic individualism, he is convinced that the individual “I” can and should merge with the collective “we” without any damage to myself: “I wanted - and I want - to see all people as heroes of labor and creativity, builders of new free forms of life. We must live in such a way that each of us, despite the difference in individuality, feels like a person equal to everyone else and everyone else.
Again fires over Moscow,
And dirty ice in the blood.
And these are no longer Tatars,
Worse than Mamaia - their own!
Alexander Galich, "In Memory of Zhivago"
In 1917-18. Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov (aka: Maxim Gorky, Petrel of the Revolution, Great Proletarian Writer and Father of Socialist Realism) wrote a series of articles under the general title "Untimely Thoughts", which anyone can now read. Naturally, being untimely, Burevestnik's thoughts were banned in Soviet times.
« Lenin, Trotsky and those accompanying them have already been poisoned by the rotten poison of power, as evidenced by their shameful attitude towards freedom of speech, the individual and the whole sum of those rights for the triumph of which democracy fought.
Blind fanatics and unscrupulous adventurers are rushing headlong, allegedly along the path to "social revolution" - in fact, this is the path to anarchy, to the death of the proletariat and revolution.
On this path, Lenin and his associates consider it possible to commit all crimes, such as the massacre near St. Petersburg, the defeat of Moscow, the destruction of freedom of speech, senseless arrests - all the abominations that Plehve and Stolypin did.<...>
The working class must know that miracles do not really happen, that famine awaits it, the complete breakdown of industry, the destruction of transport, a prolonged bloody anarchy, and after it - no less bloody and gloomy reaction.
This is where its current leader is leading the proletariat, and one must understand that Lenin is not an all-powerful sorcerer, but a cold-blooded conjurer who spares neither the honor nor the life of the proletariat.<...>
The workers must not allow adventurers and madmen to pile shameful, senseless and bloody crimes on the head of the proletariat, for which not Lenin, but the proletariat itself will pay the price.<...>
Imagining themselves as Napoleons from socialism, Leninists tear and rush, completing the destruction of Russia - the Russian people will pay for this with lakes of blood.
Lenin himself, of course, is a man of exceptional strength; for twenty-five years he stood in the front ranks of the fighters for the triumph of socialism, he is one of the largest and brightest figures in international social democracy; a talented person, he has all the qualities of a "leader", as well as the lack of morality necessary for this role and a purely lordly, ruthless attitude towards the life of the masses.<...>
Lenin is a “leader” and a Russian gentleman, not alien to some of the spiritual qualities of this class that has gone into oblivion, and therefore he considers himself entitled to do a cruel experiment with the Russian people, doomed in advance to failure.
The people, exhausted and devastated by the war, have already paid for this experience with thousands of lives and will be forced to pay tens of thousands, which will decapitate them for a long time. This inevitable tragedy does not bother Lenin, the slave of dogma, and his henchmen - his slaves. Life, in all its complexity, is not known to Lenin, he does not know the masses of the people, he did not live with them, but he - from books - learned how to raise this mass on its hind legs, how - the easiest way - to infuriate their instincts. The working class is to the Lenins what ore is to the metal worker. Is it possible - under all the given conditions - to mold a socialist state from this ore? Apparently, it is impossible; however, why not try?<...>
To frighten people with terror and pogroms who do not want to take part in Mr. Trotsky's frenzied dance over the ruins of Russia is shameful and criminal.
All this is unnecessary and will only increase the hatred of the working class. He will have to pay for the mistakes and crimes of his leaders - with thousands of lives, with streams of blood.<...>
The editors of Novaya Zhizn have received the following letter:
« Cannon District of the Putilov Plant.
I decided to reprimand you, writers from Novaya Zhizn, as Stroev was once a writer, as well as Bazarov, Gimer-Sukhanov, Gorky, and all the compilers of Novaya Zhizn, your Organ does not correspond to the real life of our common life, you follow the defencists. But remember, do not touch our working Life of the proletarians, the demonstration that took place on Sunday, the demonstration was not carried out by you, and it is not for you to criticize it. In general, our party, the Majority, and we support our political leaders, the real socialists, the liberators of the people from the oppression of the bourgeoisie and the capitalists, and Henceforth, if such counter-revolutionary articles are written, then we workers swear wat chop on your forehead that we will close your newspaper, and if you wish to ask your Socialist, the so-called neutralist, he was with us at the Putilov factory with his backward speeches, ask him to let him say yes no, but soon they will forbid you and your body will begin to be equal to the Cadet one, and if you are bitter , backward writers will continue their polemics and with the government body Pravda, then you know we will stop trade in our Narva-Peterhof region. address Putilovs plant Pushechn. District write rep. and then there will be reprisals.
Fiercely written!
With such ferocity, the degas argue, having read scary books Gustav Aymar and imagining themselves as terrible Indians.<...>
People's Commissars treat Russia as a material for experience, the Russian people for them is the horse that bacteriologists inoculate with typhoid so that the horse develops anti-typhoid serum in its blood. It is precisely such a cruel and doomed to failure experiment that the commissars are carrying out on the Russian people, not thinking that the exhausted, half-starved horse can die.
The reformers from Smolny do not care about Russia, they cold-bloodedly doom her to their dream of a world or European revolution.
IN modern conditions Russian life has no place for a social revolution, for it is impossible, according to pike command, to make socialists 85% of the peasant population of the country, among which there are several tens of millions of nomadic foreigners.<...>
The life of the world is driven by social idealism—the great dream of the brotherhood of all with all—does the proletariat think that it is realizing this very dream by violating its ideological enemies? The social struggle is not a bloody scuffle, as the Russian worker is taught by his frightened leaders.
The people's commissars are completely unaware of the fact that when they proclaim the slogans of a "social" revolution, the spiritually and physically exhausted people translate these slogans into their own language with several in short words:
— Smash, plunder, destroy...
And destroys the rare nests of agricultural crops in Russia<...>
And when people's commissars shout too eloquently and in panic about the need to fight the "bourgeois", the dark masses understand this as a direct call for murder, which they have proved.
Having destroyed the old courts in the name of the proletariat, Mr. In this way the people's commissars strengthened in the minds of the "street" its right to "lynch justice"—a bestial right. Even earlier, before the revolution, our street loved to beat, indulging in this vile "sport" with pleasure. Nowhere is a person beaten so often, with such zeal and joy, as here in Rus'. “Punch in the face”, “under the soul”, “under the mikitki”, “under the ninth rib”, “lather the neck”, “put the back of the head”, “let the yushka out of the nose” - all these are our cute Russian fun. This is what they brag about. People are too accustomed to the fact that they are "beaten out of the blue" - beaten by parents, masters, beaten by the police.
And now these people, brought up by torture, seem to be given the right to freely torture each other. They use their "right" with obvious voluptuousness, with incredible cruelty. Street "lynchings" have become a daily "everyday occurrence", and we must remember that each of them more and more expands, deepens the stupid, painful cruelty of the crowd.
Worker Kostin tried to protect the beaten - he was also killed.
There is nothing to add to this, but it is all the more incomprehensible why Gorky, having gone into exile in 1921, returns to the country of victorious idiocy in order to become Stalin's pawn. However, Peshkov had to justify his name.
You can read about the further behavior of the Petrel in the Black Book of Communism.
“In 1928, Gorky accepted an offer to make an “excursion” to the Solovetsky Islands, to an experimental concentration camp, which then, in the words of Solzhenitsyn, “gave metastases”, giving rise to the Gulag system. Gorky wrote enthusiastic words about these islands, at the same time praising the Soviet government, which invented this camp. <...>
During the rigged trial of the so-called Industrial Party, the Human Rights League published an angry protest signed by Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann, among others. Gorky answered them open letter: “I consider this execution perfectly legal. It is quite natural when the worker-peasant power crushes its enemies like bedbugs.». <...>
On November 2, 1930, Gorky, who had already joined the “brilliant leader,” wrote to the same Rolland: “In my opinion, you would approach the events in the Union more sensibly and balanced if you agreed with the simplest fact, namely: the Soviet government and the avant-garde workers' parties are in a state of civil war, that is, a class war. The enemies they are fighting and must fight are the intelligentsia, who are trying to restore the power of the bourgeoisie, and the rich peasantry, who, in defending their miserable property, the basis of capitalism, are hindering the cause of collectivization; they resort to terror, the murder of collective farmers, the burning of socialized property, and other methods of guerrilla warfare. And they kill in war». <...>
12 years later, Gorky spoke out much more harshly: “Everything that has outlived its time, measured by history, is taking up arms against us, and this gives us the right to consider ourselves fighters in an ongoing civil war. From this follows the natural conclusion: if the enemy does not surrender, he is destroyed». <...>
In one of the letters of 1932, Gorky, who, by the way, was a personal friend of the chief of the GPU Yagoda and the father of an employee of this organization, wrote: “ Class hatred must be cultivated through the organic rejection of the enemy as a lower being. I am deeply convinced that the enemy is a creature of a lower order, a degenerate both physically and morally». <...>
As they say now, the Father of socialist realism has sunk below the plinth.
And I won't die in bed
With a notary and a doctor,
And in some wild crack,
Drowned in thick ivy...
(N. S. Gumilyov)
Gumilyov returned to Petrograd in the spring of 1918. Troubled, fateful time: cultural figures solve the tough Hamlet question: to be or not to be - they are in Russia. And with whom to be?
In the very first days of October, Mayakovsky made his choice without hesitation:
“To accept or not to accept? There was no such question for me. My revolution. Went to Smolny. Have worked. All that was necessary ... " Detachments of "hungry and slaves" famously marched to his ditty:
Eat pineapples, chew grouse.
Your last day is coming, bourgeois ...
On that day, when over the new world
God bowed his face, then
The sun was stopped by a word,
In a word, cities were destroyed.
And the eagle did not flap its wings,
The stars huddled in horror against the moon,
If, like a pink flame,
The word floated above...
... But we forgot that radiant
Only a word amid earthly anxieties,
And in the Gospel of John
The Word is said to be God.
He, the poet, always sought to get rid of "dead words", to master poetic language, capable, like a pink flame, to stop the sun and destroy cities, to rule the world. Rule the world of poetry!
But the number also rules the world, and it has its own purpose, its own destiny ...
The patriarch is gray-haired, under his arm
Conquering both good and evil,
Not daring to turn to the sound,
Drawing a number in the sand with a cane...
We set him a limit
The meager limits of nature.
And, like bees in an empty hive,
Dead words smell bad.
He remained true to his warrior nature. At the front, in the unrelenting literary struggle, in relations with women. Even in street brawls, there were those. He never knows whether he will win, but he cannot rush at the enemy, he cannot retreat.
funny story recalls Korney Chukovsky:
“One day we got in trouble. By the anniversary of the October days, military cadets, our listeners, received a lot of flour from somewhere. They gave each of us, "lecturers", at least half a pood. It was fun for us on this pre-holiday day to carry such an unexpected treasure through the whole city on our light sledges. We walked briskly side by side and soon, somewhere near the Field of Mars, we started talking about the symbolists hated by Gumilyov.
In the heat of the conversation, we never noticed that we were carrying an empty sledge, as some dodger, taking advantage of a sudden blizzard, cut off our bags tightly fastened to the sledge. I was in despair: what would I say at home to a hungry family, doomed to be left without bread for a long time? But Gumilyov, without wasting a second on sighs and complaints, took off from his seat and, with some kind of wild warlike cry, rushed to pursue the thief - very young, energetic, with such reckless swiftness, with such, I would say, fighting rapture, as if only he was waiting for the moment when he would be lucky enough to race across a snowy field in order to take away his property from the enemy. It was dark all around because of the blizzard. Through the dim and shaky murk of this wet snow flurry, people - even those who wandered along the nearest path - seemed to be spots without clear outlines. Gumilyov instantly became the same spot and disappeared. I waited for him in anguish and anxiety.
He returned very slowly and, of course, with nothing, but his eyes shone with triumph. It turns out that in this darkness he ran into some peaceful passer-by who carried his own bag on his back, and, mistaking him for our thief, began to take this bag away from him. The passer-by, for his part, mistook him for a robber: the guard shouted loudly, and they had a scuffle, which, although it ended in the passer-by's victory, gave the poet some kind of boyish - incomprehensible to me - joy. He returned to me in triumph and, taking the empty sleigh by the rope, immediately resumed his indictment against symbolism, against Blok's work, which he always began with the same canonical phrase:
– Of course, Alexander Alexandrovich is a brilliant poet, but the whole system of his Germanic abstractions and symbols...
And more about our catastrophe - not a word. I reminded him that in the "Apollo" of bygone times, he spoke of Blok's poetry enthusiastically, called him "the miracle worker of verse." He replied that he still loved Blok's poetry, but it was the poetry of ghosts, nebulae, sorrows and sobs, etc., etc., etc. Needless to say, I was entirely on Blok's side, when I listened to the endless disputes between Gumilyov and Blok in World Literature.
This whole combat episode that took place on the Field of Mars - this bold pursuit of an imaginary robber and a desperate battle with him (although he turned out to be much stronger), all this revealed to me the very essence of Gumilyov. He was a warrior by nature, a man of unusual activity ... and almost insane fearlessness ... "
Countless myths are associated with the last three years of the poet's life, which are presented as truth even today. For example, about his hatred of the Bolsheviks from the first day of his return to his homeland. For him, who considered the poet a special, higher being, interest in politics was excluded. It was below his dignity. Nikolai Stepanovich himself refuted this fiction:
You know that I'm not red
But not white - I'm a poet!
Even the ardent enemies of the Bolsheviks who emigrated abroad confirmed this.
S. Pozner: “He was never a Bolshevik; denied communism and grieved about the fate of the motherland, which fell into the monkey paws of the Kremlin rulers. But nowhere and never publicly opposed them. Not because he was afraid to risk himself - it went beyond the circle of his interests. It would be politics, but politics and he, the poet Gumilyov, are two polarities... He lived by literature, poetry. He lived himself and tried to attach others to them.
For the sake of such initiation, Gumilyov collaborated with all Bolshevik educational organizations, led poetry circles in Proletkult, with revolutionary sailors of the Baltic Fleet, and even in the educational commune of policemen. He treated all the educational programs of the Soviet government with great sympathy. He respected People's Commissar A. V. Lunacharsky, was friends with some of the Bolshevik bosses. Even with the manager of the Petrograd Soviet B. Kaplun (by the way, the nephew of the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka M. S. Uritsky. - Auth.). They talked about literature, drank, sometimes sniffed the ether. Kaplun patronized Bohemia, helped in any way he could and had a special box at the Mariinsky Theater in gratitude for not allowing the theater to be closed after the revolution. Gumilyov willingly accepted from him wine "requisitioned from the bourgeoisie" - a luxury in those years. Together with K. Chukovsky, he "punched" for writers through the same Kaplun priceless firewood in freezing Petrograd. And when publications appeared in emigration with attacks on
"Sovdepovskaya" World Literature "", on behalf of Gorky, answered the "slanderers of Russia" with a letter for the foreign press.
In the spring of 1921, Mandelstam introduced Gumilyov to V. A. Pavlov, the flag secretary of Rear Admiral A. V. Nemitz, commander of the Black Sea Fleet. Thanks to this, the poet traveled to the Crimea on a special train of the “Red Admiral”. V. A. Pavlov and naval commander S. A. Kolbasyev, admirers of the work of Nikolai Stepanovich, through a military publishing house, published the last lifetime collection "Tent" in Sevastopol. Great luck - in those years it was unthinkable to find paper for publishing poetry. By the way, S. A. Kolbasyev is another character in the poem “My Readers”: “a lieutenant who led gunboats under fire from enemy batteries.”
Gumilyov did not go to the commissars, like the husbands and lovers of his ex-wife - N. Punin, V. Shileiko, A. Lurie. He treated the Bolsheviks with a strange mixture of contempt and respect, but did not oppose their power. As if he didn’t notice it, as if he “didn’t notice” the revolution.
Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika severely harmed him. The euphoria and myth-making of those years distorted the true image, gave rise in our minds to a false, tendentious portrait of the poet. The execution of Gumilyov on this wave looked unambiguous, creating for him the halo of a martyr who laid down his life for the freedom of his homeland. It turned out no longer Gumilyov, but at least Boris Savinkov. Yes, he was not any "fighter against the red infection"! His symbolic participation in the conspiracy is the boyishness of a man who was read out at the age of 30 by Mine Reed, who played hide and seek with his students after classes. His “counter-revolutionary activity” is a game that allowed young fans to mysteriously hint at a terrible secret. Odoevtsev, for example, he asked to be escorted to a secret room, where he was supposed to receive a revolver. Right on Ilf and Petrov: "I'll give you parabellum"!
Let us recall the words of Khodasevich: "He was surprisingly young in soul, and perhaps in mind."
Khodasevich was echoed by A. Ya. Levinson: “This professor of poetry had the soul of a boy running to the Mexican pampas after reading Gustav Emar.”
About the myths about his behavior before the execution is not worth talking about. Knowing Gumilyov, there is no doubt that he behaved courageously and with dignity. But why breed beautiful fairy tales, referring to unknown gardeners, housekeepers of Chekist bosses and almost to the stories of “one woman in a tram”?! Why invent theatrical details of the “last cigarette”, “last look at the firing squad”, fictitious dialogues of the Red Army soldiers who admired the courage of the poet and his appeals to other condemned to maintain dignity in the last minute of life? What is this - "a deceit that elevates us"? Rather degrading. Insulting the memory of the poet. Note: not only the place, but also the date of execution is not exactly known.
The writer A.V. Dolivo-Dobrovolsky fantasized to the point that Alexander Blok wrote an article against acmeism “Without a deity, without inspiration” on the instructions of the Cheka - this, they say, was the ideological preparation for the upcoming political process. Reader, do you hear the stormy applause of the patients of Ward No. 6?!
And the horrors about "brutal torture in the dungeons"?! Especially against the background of his note from the cell to his wife: “I feel good, I write poetry and play chess” and discussions with the investigator about poetry. The year was 1921, the terrible 30s were still far away. And if Gumilyov was a REAL conspirator, a lawbreaker, why General Prosecutor's Office RF rehabilitated him? However, we remember that political rehabilitation in 1992 were the same production line as the accusations of "enemies of the people" in 1937.
And the myth that there was no conspiracy at all looks completely ridiculous - "the case was falsified by the Cheka." This fiction was officially approved by the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, as if there were no numerous testimonies of conspirators who escaped in exile, who spoke in detail about their and Gumilev's participation in the "Petrograd Combat Organization".
And the memories of I. Odoevtseva, G. Ivanov?! And the statements that Odoevtseva’s story about accidentally seen wads of money in the drawer of Gumilyov’s desk look strange are an invention or a memory error. In his testimony, Gumilyov himself confirms that he received 200,000 Soviet rubles from the conspirators.
Of course, there was a conspiracy by Tagantsev. But what? Dmitry Bykov defined it this way: “... in the strict sense of the word, it was not a conspiracy, but a beautiful-hearted dream, now we will get together, now we will mobilize, now we will decide what to do next.<…>They did not go beyond preparatory conversations that at some point, on a signal, it would be necessary to begin to act.
Such a “beautiful dream” was very suitable for the romantic Gumilyov, who, for lack of Africa, was looking for adventure in Russia. In Red Petrograd, he defiantly baptized himself at every church, openly declared himself a monarchist.
“This is madness, senseless and dangerous bravado,” friends warned.
“They won’t dare touch me, I’m too famous,” he objected lightly.
Dare...
But before that, how many times he shocked the authorities in his boyish game! At the evening at the sailors of the Baltic Fleet, reading African poems, he singled out with a special intonation:
I gave him a Belgian gun
And a portrait of my sovereign.
The hall buzzed: “What kind of sovereign? King, or what?!” Gumilyov paused, looked around the audience with a piercing gaze, and when the sailors calmed down, he continued to read as if nothing had happened.
Another time, in the same revolutionary audience, to the question: “Well, citizen lecturer, does it help to write good poetry?” calmly replied:
“Wine and women, I think.”
The revolutionary audience was dumbfounded.
He was happy as a child when he learned the story written by K. Chukovsky in his diary: “During the break, the proletcult poet Arsky calls me up and says, surrounded by other proletkultists:
- You noticed?
- What?
Well... don't pretend. Do you understand why Gumilyov is so applauded?
Because the lyrics are very good. Write you such verses, and you will be applauded.
- Do not pretend, Korney Ivanovich, they applaud, because it talks about a bird.
- What bird?
- About the white ... Here! White bird. Everyone is happy ... here is a hint of Denikin.
In another situation, this could be the reason for the arrest.
Without a demonstrative disregard for danger, without playing hide and seek with death, he could not live.
“Death was always close to him, I think that this closeness excited him,” recalled Alexei Tolstoy. And he's right. The poet was bewitchingly imagining a bullet, which is already being poured for him by a red-hot forge an old man- worker…
... All his comrades fell asleep,
Only he does not sleep alone yet:
He's all busy casting a bullet,
What will separate me from the earth ...
... The bullet cast by him will find
My chest, she came for me.
And it will come - in three years!
Dmitry Bykov said that Gumilyov "on purpose tortured himself all his life, built a biography, and as a result, he was completed to the Tagantsevsky fence." We would say - finished the game. The proximity of death not only aroused, it inevitably attracted him. To her was special treatment: this is not the end of life, but the line beyond which there is another world. How many times did he talk about the "old woman with a scythe" in verse! And came to unexpected conclusions:
true death,
And life mutters lies.
The Gumilyov case has long been declassified and published. Its plot is simple. Lieutenant Colonel turned to Nikolai Stepanovich tsarist army V. G. Shvedov. Together with another former officer, Yu. P. German, he led the anti-Bolshevik conspiracy. Gumilyov promised him in the event of an armed uprising to lead a group of intellectuals and former officers. Agreed to help draft political proclamations and received money "for technical needs." But it did not come to a performance in Petrograd. The Kronstadt uprising was suppressed, German was shot dead by border guards when crossing the Finnish border (leaflets, proclamations and letters turned out to be with him), Shvedov was shot in a shootout during his arrest.
The "Petrograd Combat Organization" (PBO) was headed by V. N. Tagantsev, the son of an academician, a scientist. That's really who was a beautiful-hearted dreamer. After his arrest, he did not testify for a long time. Then from Moscow they sent the best “specialist in the intelligentsia” to the Cheka, Ya. S. Agranov (by the way, a friend of Osip and Lily Brik). The "specialist in the intelligentsia" convinced Tagantsev to confess in exchange for a promise of an open trial and saving the lives of the conspirators. Tagantsev bought into it, betrayed everyone. Promises, of course, were not kept.
Based on his testimony, they built an accusation against Gumilyov. But! Tagantsev betrayed the poet on August 6, and they took Gumilyov on the night of the 3rd to the 4th. So someone denounced him before! Friends suspected V. A. Pavlov and especially S. A. Kolbasiev. But in the 80s, when the first biographer of Gumilyov, P.N. Luknitsky, who sought the rehabilitation of the poet, asked the Deputy Prosecutor General of the USSR about this, he heard in response: “There were statements, but the names are different.”
On the same day as Gumilyov, N. Punin was arrested. In prison, they accidentally collided, and Punin handed Vera Ahrens a note: "Meeting here with Nikolai Stepanovich, we stood in front of each other like crazy, in his hands was the Iliad, which was immediately taken away from the poor fellow."
Gumilyov was interrogated by investigator Yakobson. Nobody knew this man, even the name is unknown. Hence the version that in fact he was Yakov Agranov. According to rumors, the investigator charmed Gumilyov with his knowledge of his poems, literary erudition, and flattery. Called for candor. Gumilyov confessed, but did not betray anyone. He named only the already killed Herman, Shvedov and B. N. Bashkirov-Verin, who managed to emigrate.
On August 24, 1921, a resolution of the Presidium of the Petrograd GubChK was issued: “Gumilyov Nikolay Stepanovich, 35 years old, b. nobleman, philologist, member of the collegium of the publishing house " world literature", married, non-partisan, former officer, member of the Petrograd combat counter-revolutionary organization, actively contributed to the drafting of proclamations of counter-revolutionary content, promised to connect with the organization at the time of the uprising a group of intellectuals, career officers who would actively take part in the uprising, received money from the organization for technical needs .<…>Sentence to the highest measure of punishment - execution.
On September 1, the decision was published with the message that the sentence had already been carried out.
After Gumilyov's arrest, they fussed over him. The Cheka wrote a guarantee signed by Maxim Gorky, A. Volynsky, M. Lozinsky, B. Khariton, A Mashirov. Tried to rescue the poet S. Otsup, N. Volkovysk, S. Oldenburg.
Unsuccessfully…
When Gorky found out about the verdict, he asked his ex-wife M. Andreeva to contact Lenin in Moscow through A. Lunacharsky. Maria Fedorovna woke the people's commissar out of bed at four o'clock in the morning, persuaded him to call Lenin. According to A. Kolbanovsky, Lunacharsky's secretary, he replied: "We cannot kiss the hand raised against us" and hung up.
Reading the materials of the case, it is difficult to understand why Gumilyov was shot. There are many versions, including absolutely fantastic ones. The most plausible seems to be the explanation of Professor A.P. Sudoplatov, who, thanks to his father, had access to the most classified information: the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet was behind the verdict on Gumilyov
G. Zinoviev.
Another thing is also surprising: during the investigation, Gumilyov did not fight for himself, did not try to alleviate his fate. Continued "playing cache-cache with a gloomy death." And if you remember his constant repetitions: “Nothing glorifies a poet like a beautiful death”, you involuntarily begin to think: Nikolai Stepanovich became a hostage of his own myth, his life philosophy, playing "superman". Friends did not doubt it.
Osip Mandelstam: - It was impossible to think of a better death for Gumilyov. He wanted to be a hero and he became one. He wanted fame and, of course, he will receive it.
Georgy Ivanov: - In fact, for the biography of Gumilyov, such a biography as he wanted for himself, it is difficult to imagine a more brilliant end.
Of course, one can agree to some extent with Mandelstam, and with Georgy Ivanov, and with many others who quoted Gumilyov's statements on the topic - "I call death ...". Himself, they say, called. I wanted to. And even provoked. I've made my own judgment!
But, knowing Gumilyov, it is difficult to vouch for the truth of all these “wanted”, “called”, “provoked”, “himself” ...
The soul is full of contradictions, and a completely different truth is hidden in its very depths, unknown to anyone. The truth, which you do not want or cannot admit even to yourself. She amuses your vanity, exalts in her own eyes as a hero. And it happens that you utter your lofty credo publicly, proudly and not without posing, declare it, forgetting these wise words - “a thought uttered is a lie” ...
What could Gumilyov think about after hearing the verdict? How did the heart, full of poetic ideas, seething with inspiration, burning with a thirst for life, respond, no matter how bravura he played with her. And ... glimmering with hope, expectation of a miracle - fate too mercilessly struck him, which he challenged so many times, fearing nothing, regretting nothing, repenting of nothing ...
That's fate and pinned him to the wall - took revenge.
It seems to us that Gumilev's game with death was the same bravado all his life as the reckless desire to show off under bullets or theatrical antics on the theme "We sing a song to the madness of the brave."
And even figurative poetic figures of a romantic poet.
It can, of course, be assumed that the meeting with death was seen by him as a deliverance from all sorts of life's troubles and breakdowns. Fatal love stories for him. Crash after crash! African epics, except for the Museum of Ethnography, almost no one appreciated. The ostentatious courage at the front often served as a pretext for ridicule behind the back. The great poet of Russia was never recognized. Arrest on takeoff. The tragic death was last chance win the semi-childish game of "superman".
But something else outweighed. Always and constantly. Incredible vitality, vigorous activity, especially in the days before the arrest, an unprecedented rise in strength, a thirst for creativity, a feeling of one's own "Boldino autumn"! Such an update, such an unprecedented, revolutionary rise and ... a cell in a prison on Shpalernaya!
That is why no psychologist can "calculate" what was on Gumilyov's soul before being shot. And did he yearn for such a tragic end to his life.
Vladislav Khodasevich was one of the last to visit Gumilyov at his apartment in the "House of Arts". It was the evening of August 3rd. Gumilyov returned after a lecture he had just given - he was received enthusiastically. He was lively, cheerful, very pleased. As always, he made plans.
“He showed some kind of special even warmth, which seemed to be unusual for him in general,” Khodasevich recalled. - And every time I got up to leave, Gumilyov began to beg: "Sit still."
They stayed up until two in the morning.
“He was extremely cheerful. He spoke a lot, different topics. For some reason, I only remember his story about his stay in the Tsarskoye Selo infirmary, about Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and the Grand Duchesses. Then Gumilyov began to assure me that he was destined to live a very long time - "at least until ninety years old." He kept repeating: "Certainly up to ninety years, certainly not less." Until then, I was going to write a pile of books. He reproached me: “Here we are of the same age as you, but look: I’m really ten years younger. It's all because I love young people. I play hide-and-seek with my students - and played today. And therefore I will certainly live to be ninety years old, and you will turn sour in five years.
And he, laughing, showed how in five years I would be hunched over, dragging my feet and how he would perform well.
Saying goodbye, I asked permission to bring him some things for safekeeping the next day. When the next morning, at the appointed hour, I approached the doors of Gumilyov with my things, no one answered my knock. In the dining room, the attendant Yefim told me that Gumilyov had been arrested and taken away at night.
So, did Nikolai Stepanovich really look like a person who was fed up with life?! Rather, on the contrary, he seemed to say goodbye forever, with his romanticization of death, ceased to be a "violinist", called to die heroically.
Not a death sentence, but freedom, his soul longed for. And it seems to us that in his tragic end, languishing on Shpalernaya, he did not believe. Didn't want to believe. Could not! Hope did not leave him, until the moment when the verdict was read.
Yes, I predicted
You will not be saved from the bloody share,
What the firmament intended for the earthly.
But be silent: incomparable right -
Choose your own death.
Alas, he no longer had such a right. He threw the last challenge to fate, and fate outplayed him.
Always aspired to be a winner, but turned out to be defeated?
What did you want - to live or consciously die as a hero?
An obvious contradiction hidden in the character and soul of this strange person. Today - undoubted optimism, cheerfulness, cheerfulness at a meeting with Khodasevich, and tomorrow, in prison - not the slightest attempt to alleviate one's lot during the investigation, to defend oneself from accusations
(there was such a possibility!), even some kind of bravura playing along with the investigator. Step by step towards the fatal verdict.
WHY?!
We don't know the answer.
Perhaps the readers themselves will find it ...
This page has been proofread
Vladimir Lenin introduces a socialist system in Russia according to the Nechaev method - "at full speed through the swamp."
And Lenin, and Trotsky, and all, who accompanies them to death in a jam, are obviously killed by the Nechayev, which is “the right to uncleaning everything is easier for a Russian man can be carried away”, and now they are obscenely uncleaned. , forcing him to organize bloody massacres, urging him to pogroms, to arrest innocent people, like A. V. Kartashov, M. V. Bernatsky, A. I. Konovalov and others.
By forcing the proletariat to agree to the destruction of the freedom of the press, Lenin and his henchmen thus legitimized for the enemies of democracy the right to silence it; threatening famine and pogroms to all who do not agree with the despotism of Lenin-Trotsky, these "leaders" justify the despotism of power, against which all the best forces of the country fought for so painfully long.
“The obedience of schoolchildren and fools,” who follow Lenin and Trotsky together, “has reached the highest point,” scolding their leaders in private, now leaving them, now joining them again, schoolchildren and fools, in the end, dutifully serve the will of the dogmatists and more and more arouse in the darkest mass of soldiers and workers unrealizable hopes for a carefree life.
Imagining themselves as Napoleons from socialism, the Leninists tear and rush, completing the destruction of Russia - the Russian people will pay for this with lakes of blood.
Lenin himself, of course, is a man of exceptional strength; for twenty-five years he stood in the forefront of the fighters for the triumph of socialism, he is one of the most prominent and bright figures of international social democracy; a talented person, he has all the properties of a "leader", as well as the necessary for
The same text in modern orthography
Vladimir Lenin introduces a socialist system in Russia according to the Nechaev method - "at full speed through the swamp."
Both Lenin and Trotsky, and all the others who accompany them to perdition in the quagmire of reality, are obviously convinced, together with Nechaev, that “the right to dishonor is the easiest way to drag a Russian person along,” and so they cold-bloodedly dishonor the revolution, dishonor the working class , forcing him to arrange bloody massacres, goading to pogroms, to the arrests of innocent people, like A.V. Kartashov, M.V. Bernatsky, A.I. Konovalov and others.
By forcing the proletariat to agree to the destruction of the freedom of the press, Lenin and his henchmen thus legitimized for the enemies of democracy the right to suppress its mouth; threatening famine and pogroms to all who do not agree with the despotism of Lenin-Trotsky, these "leaders" justify the despotism of power, against which all the best forces of the country fought for so painfully long.
“The obedience of schoolchildren and fools,” who follow Lenin and Trotsky together, “has reached the highest point,” scolding their leaders in private, now leaving them, now joining them again, schoolchildren and fools, in the end, dutifully serve the will of the dogmatists and more and more arouse in the most obscure mass of soldiers and workers unrealizable hopes for a carefree life.
Imagining themselves Napoleons from socialism, the Leninists tear and rush, completing the destruction of Russia - the Russian people will pay for this with lakes of blood.
Lenin himself, of course, is a man of exceptional strength; for twenty-five years he stood in the front ranks of the fighters for the triumph of socialism, he is one of the largest and brightest figures in international social democracy; a talented person, he has all the properties of a "leader", as well as the necessary for
Gorky Maxim (real name and surname Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov) (March 16, 1868, Nizhny Novgorod , - June 18, 1936, Gorki, near Moscow). Father - cabinetmaker: mother from the middle class. Studied for 2 years. From 1878 his life "in people" began. Lived in the slums, among the tramps; wandering, he lived by day labor. He visited the Volga region, the Don, Ukraine, South Bessarabia, the Crimea, the Caucasus. He was arrested more than once for social and political activities. Member of the Revolution of 1905-1907. In the autumn of 1905 he joined the RSDLP (in 1917, having parted ways with the Bolsheviks on the issue of timeliness socialist revolution in Russia, did not pass the re-registration of party members and formally left it). From 1906 he lived abroad. In the spring of 1907 cases. 5th (London) Congress of the RSDLP (with an advisory vote). In 1907-1909 experienced a great influence A.A. Bogdanova , V.A. Bazarov, A.V. Lunacharsky (revision of the philosophical foundations of Marxism, propaganda of god-building), which he supported in philosophical disputes with V.I. Lenin . Together with Bogdanov and his supporters, he took an active part in organizing a party school for Russian workers in Capri (Italy).
By the 1910s Gorky's name became one of the most popular in Russia, and then in Europe (his first story was published in 1892), his work caused a huge critical literature (91 books about Gorky were published in 1900-1904; from 1896 to 1904 critical literature about him amounted to over 1860 titles). Performances of his plays on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater were an exceptional success and were accompanied by anti-government speeches of the public.
In con. 1913 returned to Russia. From the first days first world war adopted an anti-militarist, internationalist position. February Revolution 1917 Gorky met enthusiastically, seeing in it the victory of the democratic forces of the country, the insurgent people. His apartment in Petrograd in February-March "resembled a headquarters" where political and public figures, workers, writers, artists, actors. Gorky became the initiator of a number of social and cultural undertakings, paid great attention to the protection of cultural monuments, became a member of the "Special Conference on Claims", was chairman. Commission on issues of lawsuits under the executive committee of Petrograd. RSD Council. On March 12, in a speech at a rally in the Mikhailovsky T-re, he announced the measures taken to protect the monuments of the claim. He wrote a number of articles, indignant at the mass export of art from Russia. of valuables worth "Amer. millions", protested against the robbery of the country, participated in the establishment of the "Society of Memory of the Decembrists", "Society of the House-Museum of the Memory of Freedom Fighters" (May). With the active participation of Gorky, the "League of Social Education" was created (June 4), and the House of Scientists was organized. He is a member of the commission on the hands of Nar. house in Petrograd, was later elected before. org. to-ta "Educational Society in memory of February 27, 1917 "Culture and Freedom"" (March 1918); it also included V.N. Figner , G.A. Lopatin , IN AND. Zasulich , G.V. Plekhanov , V.A. Bazarov etc. Main. the goal of the society was to coordinate all the cult-prosvet, about-in, clubs, circles. In order for the society to be able to fulfill the task of spiritual revival and moral purification of the country, Gorky believed, it was necessary first of all to unite "the intellectual forces of the old, experienced intelligentsia with the forces of the young worker-cross intelligentsia." And for this it is necessary to "rise above politics" and direct all efforts to "immediate intensive cultural work", involving in it the workers and the cross, the masses ("New Life", 1917, June 30). Culture, he believed, must be instilled in the people, brought up in slavery for centuries, given to the proletariat, the broad masses of the systematic. knowledge, a clear understanding of their world-ist. mission, their rights and duties, to teach democracy.
One of the most important scientific and educational undertakings of Gorky these days (March) was the creation of the "Free Association for the Development and Dissemination of Positive Sciences", which included prominent scientists and public figures (I.P. Pavlov, VA Steklov, LA Chugaev, A. E. Fersman, A. A. Markov, S. P. Kostychev, D. K. Zabolotny, V. G. Korolenko, L.B. Krasin , ON THE. Morozov, V.I. Palladium, etc.). Gorky three times (April - May) spoke in Petrograd and Moscow at public meetings of the association with speeches, asserted the importance of science for the free development of man.
According to Gorky, “there is no future without democracy”, “a strong person is a reasonable person”, and therefore it is necessary to “arm yourself with accurate knowledge”, “instill respect for reason, develop love for it, feel its universal power” (“Chronicle ", 1917, N 5-6, pp. 223-28). Gorky called for everything Russian. “to support the Free Association of Scientists morally and financially”: “The source of our misfortunes is our illiteracy. To live well, one must work well, to stand firmly on one’s feet, one must work hard, learn to love work” (ibid.).
The greatest activity lit. and societies, the work of Gorky received in the gas he founded. Novaya Zhizn [came out in Petrograd from 18 Apr. ed. Gorky, with the close participation (essentially - co-editors) V.A. Bazarova, V.A. Desnitsky, N.N. Sukhanov
, A.N. Tikhonov and was the organ of a group of Social Democrats "internationalists", which united part of the Mensheviks - supporters Yu.O. Martova
and dep. semi-Bolshevik intellectuals. orientation]. The newspaper from the first issue announced the struggle against the imperialists as its program. war, the unification of all roar. and democrat. forces to keep social and watered. conquest Feb. revolution, the development of culture, education, science on the way to the further implementation of social. transformations in the country, led by the Councils of the RSD under the hands of. s.-d. parties. In addition to the new cycle of "Russian Tales", stories, essays, Gorky published St. 80 articles, 58 of them in the series " Untimely Thoughts", emphasizing their acute relevance and polemical orientation by the very name. "Novozhiznenskaya" journalism compiled two complementary books of the writer - "Revolution and Culture. Articles for 1917" (P. 1918) and "Untimely Thoughts. Notes on revolution and culture" (P., 1918; reprinted. M., 1990)
Gorky condemned the "senseless massacre, exposed the desire of the Provisional Government to bring the war to a victorious end. The internationalist position of the newspaper caused a sharp rejection of the bourgeois press: in V. L. Burtsev's article "Either we, or the Germans and those who are with them" Gorky was accused of espionage, treason (see: "Rus. Volya", July 7, 9, 20; "Living Word", July 9; Gorky's answer, see: "New Life", July 9, 12). Gorky also wrote in anger about "the disgusting pictures of madness that engulfed Petrograd on the afternoon of July 4," when, under the influence of Bolshevik propaganda, the indignation of the armed workers and soldiers became a rehearsal for the "social revolution," "However, the main activator of the drama," he wrote - I do not consider "Leninists", not Germans, not provocateurs and secret counter-revolutionaries, but a more evil, more powerful enemy - a heavy growth. stupidity" (ibid., July 14). Gorky believed that "the most terrible enemy of freedom and law is within us", "our cruelty and all that chaos of dark, anarchic feelings, which was brought up in our souls by the shameless oppression of the monarchy, its cynical cruelty" (ibid., April 23). With the victory of the revolution, only the "process of intellectual enrichment of the country" begins (ibid., April 18). Culture, science, and art are, according to Gorky, just that force (and the intelligentsia - the bearer of this force), which "will allow us to overcome the abominations of life and tirelessly, stubbornly strive for justice, the beauty of life, for freedom" (ibid., April 20).
Defending the social gains of the revolution, opposing reaction, conservative forces, bourgeois. parties, Time. pr-va, gas. Novaya Zhizn very soon entered into polemics with the Bolsheviks, who put the issue of armament on the agenda. uprising and carrying out social. roar-tion. Gorky is convinced that Russia is not ready for social. transformations, that the uprising will be drowned in a sea of blood, and the cause of the revolution will be thrown back decades. He believed that before implementing the social. rev-tion. the people must "work hard in order to acquire the consciousness of their personality, their human dignity", that first they "must be incinerated and cleansed from the slavery nurtured in them by the slow fire of culture" (ibid., July 14). For Gorky as an artist, ist. Russia's development was revealed in Ch. arr. through life. Russian psychology. people and above all the cross-va: so, in his book. "On the Russian Cross-ve" (Berlin, 1922), the tragedy of the rev-tion was depicted in the atmosphere of the wild cruelty of both belligerents in Grazhd. war. Developing the ideas expressed as early as 1915 in Art. "Two Souls", Gorky wrote with anxiety about the passivity, slavish obedience to the circumstances of the Russian. man, while admiring his ability at a decisive moment to be heroic. affairs. Gorky tried to stir up a roar. the energy of the people, the activity of man as opposed to dreamy fatalism and philistine philistinism, as well as the anarchism of the countryside.
Back in the July days, Gorky saw a frightening "departure of the social roar." A week before October in st. "You can't be silent!" urges the Bolsheviks to abandon the "performance", fearing that "this time the events will take on an even more bloody and pogrom character, inflict an even more severe blow to the roar" ("New Life", 1917, 18 Oct.). After Oct. coup, the opposition Novaya Zhizn, led by Gorky, became an opponent of the new government, criticizing the "costs" of the revolution, its "shadow sides", the forms and methods of implementing social transformations in the country - the cultivation of the class. hatred, terror of violence, "zoological anarchism" of the dark masses: at the same time, Gorky defends the roar forgotten in the whirlwind. buden humanistic. ideals of socialism, ideas of democracy, universal values, rights and freedom of the individual. He accuses the leaders of the Bolsheviks, Lenin and "his henchmen" of "destroying the freedom of the press", "adventurism", "dogmatism" and "nechaevism", justifying the "despotism of power". Imagining themselves "Napoleons from socialism", the Bolshevik-Leninists "complete the destruction of Russia - the Russian people will pay for this with lakes of blood" (ibid., November 10). From article to article, he writes about the October Revolution as an "adventure", which will only lead to "anarchy, the death of the proletariat and revolution" (ibid., November 7). Gorky speaks of the "cruel experience" of the Bolshevik fanatics and utopians over the Rus. by a people "doomed in advance to failure" (ibid., December 10), "a ruthless experiment that will destroy the best forces of the workers and stop the normal development of Russian revolution for a long time" (ibid., November 10). He notes that the working class "will have to pay for the mistakes and crimes of its leaders - with thousands of lives, with streams of blood" (ibid., November 12). In his opinion, Lenin and Trotsky are Bolsheviks. nar. the commissars - the "leaders" of the backward working masses, the "rebellious philistines" - "put into practice the beggarly ideas of Proudhon, but not Marx, develop Pugachevism, and not socialism, and in every possible way propagate universal alignment with moral and material poverty" (ibid., 6 December). “Theft is developing,” writes Gorky, “robbery is growing, shameless people are practicing bribery just as cleverly as the officials of the tsarist government did it”; the rudeness of the representatives of the "pr-va people's commissars" causes general indignation. And all this is being done in the name of the "proletariat" and in the name of "social revolution", and all this is "the triumph of animal life. The development of that Asiaticism, which is festering us." “No,” the writer states, “in this explosion, the zoological instincts, I do not see pronounced elements of social rev-tion. This is Russian. revolt without socialists in spirit, without the participation of the social. psychology" (ibid., December 7). Gorky agrees with the "enemies" that "Bolshevism is a nat. misfortune, for it threatens to destroy the weak germs of Rus. culture in the chaos of the gross instincts excited by him" (ibid., 1918, March 22).
The essence, direction, general pathos of Gorky's Novozhiznenskaya journalism, like the entire social-lit. his activities in 1917-18 are permeated with the idea of upholding and protecting the indissoluble unity of politics and morality. As a writer, Gorky is primarily concerned with the moral side of the roar. events, he measures everything with an ordinary person, a single person. The separation of politics and morality, according to the writer, will have the most detrimental effect on the life of the people and the country in the present and threatens with grave and bloody consequences in the future. It contributes to the introduction of anti-democracy. methods in politics, leads to the justification of violence, cruelty and terror, the violation of social justice.
Gorky's activities in those years provoked sharp criticism from the authorities. Arguing with him, a Bolshevik. the party and official press wrote that the writer turned from a "petrel" into a "loon", "whose "happiness of battle" is inaccessible" ("Pravda", 1917. November 22), acts as a "sniffing layman" (ibid., 9 Dec.), “because of the trees he doesn’t see the forest” rm, November 25), that his conscience was gone” (“Petrogr. masses", "spitting on this people" ("Pravda", 1918, March 17), in a word - "changed the roars" and "solidizes with the reactionaries" (ibid., 1918, January 7).
Gorky sharply, painfully perceived this criticism, comparing him with "enemies of the working class" and accusations of "treason to the cause of the proletariat." He asserted and defended his “right to speak the offensive and bitter truth about the people”, about their passivity, slavish obedience, “gravitation towards equality in insignificance”, “about the costs” of the rev-tion: “Whoever has the power, I my human right remains to be critical of it" Novaya Zhizn, 1917, Nov. 19). At the same time, for Gorky, socialism is not a utopia: he continued to believe in his ideas, he wrote about "heavy labor pains" new world, "new Russia", noting that, despite all the mistakes, crimes, "the roar-tion, nevertheless, has grown to its victory" (ibid., 1918, June 11), and expressed confidence that the roaring whirlwind, which shook "to the very depths of Russia", "heal us, heal us", revive "to construction and creativity" (ibid., 1918, June 30). Stating that he is by no means going to defend the Bolsheviks, Gorky also pays tribute to them: "The best of of them - excellent people, to-rymi will eventually be proud of Rus. history ... "; "... and something good can be said about the Bolsheviks - I will say that, not knowing what results will lead us, in the end, watered, their activities, psychologically - the Bolsheviks have already rendered Russian. service to the people, moving their entire mass off the dead center and arousing in the entire mass an active attitude towards reality, an attitude without which our country would perish "(ibid., 1918, May 26). Nevertheless, attacks on Novaya Zhizn" did not stop, and in the second half of June 1918 criticism of Gorky and the positions of his newspaper by the Bolshevik press took on a particularly sharp character, going as far as direct accusations of the writer of collusion with the bourgeoisie. On July 16, 1918, with the consent of Lenin, the newspaper was finally closed (before that, the publication had been several once temporarily stopped). forces of the proletariat in the revolution.
During this period (and in subsequent years of the Civil War) Gorky was one of the organizers of the lit.-societies. and publisher. undertakings (publishing house "World Literature", "House of Writers", "House of Arts", etc.). He called for the unity of the old and new intelligentsia, spoke in their defense against unreasonable persecution by the Soviets. authorities. Dec. 1918 elected to Petrograd. Council (re-elected in June 1920). The writer worked in Petrograd, founded on his initiative. Commission for the Improvement of the Life of Scientists (PetroKUBU), since Jan. 1920 her prev. He opposed the military. intervention, called on the advanced forces of the world to protect the revolution, to help the starving. In 1918, his books In People, Russian Tales, Yeralash and Other Stories, Articles 1905-1916 were published, and a number of new works were also written.
Oct. 1921 due to deteriorating health and at the insistence of Lenin, Gorky went abroad for treatment; in 1928 he visited his homeland for the first time and since then he has been coming to Sov. Union (except 1931), until finally settled in the USSR in 1933
The materials of the article by I.I. Weinberg in book: Political figures Russia 1917. biographical dictionary. Moscow, 1993.
