What century did Gorky live in? The last years of the writer's life

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(March 16 (28), 1868, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Empire - June 18, 1936, Gorki, Moscow region, USSR)

en.wikipedia.org

At first, Gorky was skeptical about the Bolshevik revolution. After several years of cultural work in Soviet Russia, Petrograd (publishing house "World Literature", a petition to the Bolsheviks for those arrested) and life abroad in the 1920s (Marienbad, Sorrento) Gorky returned to the USSR, where the last years of his life were surrounded by official recognition as a "petrel of the revolution" and "great proletarian writer", founder socialist realism.
Member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR (1929).

Biography

Surprising as it may seem, until now no one has an exact idea about many things in Gorky's life. Who knows his biography reliably?
Memories. Bunin I. A.

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

Childhood

Alexey Peshkov was born in Nizhny Novgorod in the family of a carpenter (according to another version - the manager of the Astrakhan shipping company I. S. Kolchin) - Maxim Savvatevich Peshkov (1839-1871). Mother - Varvara Vasilievna, nee Kashirina (1842-1879). Orphaned at an early age, he spent his childhood in the house of his grandfather Kashirin (see Kashirin's house). From the age of 11 he was forced to go "to the people"; he worked as a “boy” at a shop, as a buffet utensil on a steamer, as an apprentice in an icon-painting workshop, as a baker, etc.

Youth

* In 1884 he tried to enter Kazan University. He got acquainted with Marxist literature and propaganda work.
* In 1888 - arrested for 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 to wander around the country and reached the Caucasus.

Literary and social activities

* 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".
* 1896 - Gorky writes a response to the first cinematic session in Nizhny Novgorod:
And suddenly something clicks, everything disappears, and a train of the railway appears on the screen. He rushes with an arrow straight at you - beware! It seems that he is about to rush into the darkness in which you sit, and turn you into a torn bag of skin, full of crumpled meat and crushed bones, and destroy, turn into rubble and dust this hall and this building, where there is so much wine. , women, music and vice.
(Maxim Gorky - 1896)

* 1897 - " former people"," Orlov's Spouses "," Malva "," Konovalov ".
* From October 1897 until mid-January 1898, he lived in the village of Kamenka (now the city of Kuvshinovo, Tver Region) in the apartment of his friend Nikolai Zakharovich Vasiliev, who worked at the Kamensk paper factory and led an illegal working Marxist circle. Subsequently, the life impressions of this period served as material for the writer's novel "The Life of Klim Samgin".
* 1898 - The publishing house of Dorovatsky and Charushnikov A.P. published the first volume of Gorky's works. In those years, the circulation of the young author's first book rarely exceeded 1,000 copies. A. I. Bogdanovich advised to publish the first two volumes of “Essays and Stories” by M. Gorky, 1,200 copies each. Publishers "took a chance" and released more. The first volume of the 1st edition of Essays and Stories was published with a circulation of 3,000 .m/text 0520.shtml
* 1899 - the novel "Foma Gordeev", a poem in prose "The Song of the Falcon".
* 1900-1901 - the novel "Three", a personal acquaintance with Chekhov, Tolstoy.
* 1900-1913 - participates in the work of the publishing house "Knowledge"
* March 1901 - "The Song of the Petrel" was created by M. Gorky in Nizhny Novgorod. Participation in Marxist workers' circles Nizhny Novgorod, Sormov, Petersburg, wrote a proclamation calling for a fight against the autocracy. Arrested and expelled from Nizhny Novgorod.
“Many do not consider Gorky a poet, and in vain. For example, "The Wallachian Legend" (aka "The Legend of Marko"). I happened to hear modern song written to this poem. I immediately wondered if there would be a last stanza or not. As I expected, it was not. The line “At least a song remains from Marco” was followed by a vocalization (obviously, the mentioned song was meant). But for the sake of this last, Nietzsche stanza, Gorky wrote his ballad based on a rather typical folklore plot.
- Vadim Nikolaev, "Notes on Russian Poetry"

According to contemporaries, Nikolai Gumilyov highly appreciated the last stanza of this poem (“Gumilyov without gloss”, St. Petersburg, 2009).
* In 1901, M. Gorky turned to dramaturgy. Creates the plays "Petty Bourgeois" (1901), "At the bottom" (1902). In 1902, he became the godfather and adoptive father of the Jew Zinovy ​​Sverdlov, who took the surname Peshkov and converted to Orthodoxy. This was necessary in order for Zinovy ​​to receive the right to live in Moscow.
* February 21 - the election of M. Gorky to the honorary academicians of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature. "In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. But before Gorky could exercise his new rights, his election was annulled by the government, so as a newly elected academician "was under the supervision of the police." In this regard, Chekhov and Korolenko refused membership in the Academy "(Mirsky D.S. Maxim Gorky).
* 1904-1905 - writes the plays "Summer Residents", "Children of the Sun", "Barbarians". Meets Lenin. For the revolutionary proclamation and in connection with the execution on January 9, he was arrested, but then released under pressure from the public. Member of the revolution 1905-1907. In the autumn of 1905 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.
* 1906 - M. Gorky travels abroad, creates satirical pamphlets about the "bourgeois" culture of France and the USA ("My Interviews", "In America"). He writes the play "Enemies", creates the novel "Mother". Because of tuberculosis, Gorky settled in Italy on the island of Capri, where he lived for 7 years. Here he writes "Confession" (1908), where his philosophical differences with Lenin and rapprochement with Lunacharsky and Bogdanov were clearly identified (see "The Capri School").
* 1907 - delegate of the V Congress of the RSDLP.
* 1908 - the play "The Last", the story "The Life of an Unnecessary Man".
* 1909 - the story "The Town of Okurov", "The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin".
* 1913 - M. Gorky edits the Bolshevik newspapers Zvezda and Pravda, the art department of the Bolshevik magazine Enlightenment, publishes the first collection of proletarian writers. Writes Tales of Italy.
* 1912-1916 - M. Gorky creates a series of stories and essays that compiled the collection "In Rus'", autobiographical stories "Childhood", "In People". The last part of the My Universities trilogy was written in 1923.
* 1917-1919 - M. Gorky does a lot of social and political work, criticizes the "methods" of the Bolsheviks, condemns their attitude towards the old intelligentsia, saves many of its representatives from Bolshevik repression and hunger. In 1917, having disagreed with the Bolsheviks on the issue of the timeliness of the socialist revolution in Russia, he did not pass the re-registration of party members and formally left it. [Source not specified 666 days]

Abroad

* 1921 - M. Gorky's departure abroad. A myth developed in Soviet literature that the reason for his departure was the resumption of his illness and the need, at Lenin's insistence, to be treated abroad. In reality, A. M. Gorky was forced to leave because of the aggravation of ideological differences with the established government. In 1921-1923. lived in Helsingfors, Berlin, Prague.
* Since 1924 he lived in Italy, in Sorrento. Published memoirs about Lenin.
* 1925 - the novel "The Artamonov Case".
* 1928 - at the invitation of the Soviet government and Stalin personally, he makes a trip around the country, during which Gorky is shown the achievements of the USSR, which are reflected in the series of essays "On the Soviet Union."
* 1931 - Gorky visits the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp and writes a laudatory review of his regime. A fragment of the work of A. I. Solzhenitsyn "The Gulag Archipelago" is devoted to this fact.

Return to the Soviet Union

* 1932 - Gorky returns to the Soviet Union. The government provided him with the former Ryabushinsky mansion on Spiridonovka, dachas in Gorki and Teselli (Crimea). Here he receives an order from Stalin - to prepare the ground for the 1st Congress of Soviet Writers, and for this to hold among them preparatory work. Gorky created many newspapers and magazines: the book series "History of Factories and Plants", "History civil war”, “Library of the poet”, “History young man XIX century”, the journal “Literary Studies”, he writes the plays “Egor Bulychev and Others” (1932), “Dostigaev and Others” (1933).
* 1934 - Gorky "conducts" the I 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 was never completed.
* On May 11, 1934, Gorky's son, Maxim Peshkov, unexpectedly dies. M. Gorky died on June 18, 1936 in Gorki, having outlived his son by a little more than two years. After his death, he was cremated, the ashes were placed in an urn in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow. Before cremation, the brain of M. Gorky was removed and taken to the Moscow Brain Institute for further study.

Death

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

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

Addresses in St. Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad

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

Bibliography

Novels

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

Tale

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

Stories, essays

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

Plays

* 1901 - "Philistines"
* 1902 - "At the bottom"
* 1904 - "Summer Residents"
* 1905 - "Children of the Sun", "Barbarians"
* 1906 - "Enemies"
* 1910 - "Vassa Zheleznova" (revised in December 1935)
* 1915 - "The Old Man" (first published as a separate book by the publishing house of IP Ladyzhnikov in Berlin (no later than 1921; staged on January 1, 1919 on the stage of the State Academic Maly Theater).
* 1930-1931 - "Somov and others"
* 1932 - "Egor Bulychov and others"
* 1933 - "Dostigaev and others"

Publicism

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

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

Movie incarnations

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

Memory

* In 1932, Nizhny Novgorod was renamed the city of Gorky. The historical name was returned to the city in 1990.
* In Nizhny Novgorod, the central district children's library, the drama theater, the street, and the square in the center of which there is a monument to the writer by sculptor V.I. Mukhina bear the name of Gorky. But the most remarkable is the museum-apartment of M. Gorky.
* In 1934, a Soviet propaganda multi-seat 8-engine passenger aircraft was built at an aviation plant in Voronezh, the largest aircraft of its time with a land chassis - ANT-20 "Maxim Gorky".
* In Moscow, there was Maxim Gorky lane (now Khitrovsky), Maxim Gorky embankment (now Kosmodamianskaya), Maxim Gorky square (formerly Khitrovskaya), Gorkovskaya metro station (now Tverskaya) of the Gorky-Zamoskvoretskaya (now Zamoskvoretskaya) line, Gorky street (now divided into Tverskaya and 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya streets).

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

* In St. Petersburg, a metro station is named after Maxim Gorky.
* Moscow Literary Institute named after A. M. Gorky.
* In 1932, the Moscow Art Academic Theater was named after Maxim Gorky.
* Primorsky Academic Regional Theater named after M. Gorky in Vladivostok.
* Azerbaijan Theater for Young Spectators named after. M. Gorky in Baku.
* Russian Drama Theater named after M. Gorky in Astana.
* Before 1993 Turkmen State University in Ashgabat bore the name of M. Gorky (now named after Makhtumkuli).
* The name of M. Gorky is the Tula Drama Theater
* National Academic Drama Theater named after M. Gorky (Russian theater) in Minsk
* The main university of Yekaterinburg is named after Gorky (USU named after A. M. Gorky).
* Libraries in Baku, Vladimir, Volgograd, Zaporozhye, Krasnoyarsk, Lugansk, Odessa, Ryazan, St. Petersburg, Tver are named after Gorky.
* Saratov city park of culture and recreation is named after M. Gorky.
* Central Park named after Maxim Gorky in Minsk, Belarus.
* The Central Park of Krasnoyarsk bears the name of M. Gorky.
* Central Park of Culture and Leisure named after Maxim Gorky, as well as a street, lane and entrance in Kharkov, Ukraine.
* Named after Gorky district center in the Omsk region (the village of Gorkovskoye).
* Maxim Gorky Park in Odessa, Ukraine.
* Donetsk State Medical University. M. Gorky, Donetsk, Ukraine.

Gallery

Maxim Gorky on postage stamps

Literature about life and work

* Korney Chukovsky New works by Gorky
* Roots Chukovsky Gorky from the book Contemporaries
* Shulyatikov, Vladimir Mikhailovich About Maxim Gorky. Courier. 1901. No 222, 236 w m/text 0430.shtml
* Maksimov P. Kh. Memories of Gorky. - Ed. 3rd, rev. and additional - M.: Soviet writer, 1956. - 191 p.

Notes

1. Borovkova Serafima Nikolaevna. - Protected Zvenigorod land. - 3rd ed. - M.: Mosk. worker, 1982
2. Memories. Bunin I. A.
3. Biography on Biographer.ru
4. Peshkov, Alexei Maksimovich // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg: 1890-1907.
5. GALO: Alexei Maksimovich Gorky. To the 140th anniversary of his birth.
6. Shilin N. K. Depot: The history of the locomotive depot of the Maxim Gorky station of the Volgograd branch of the Volga Railway. - Volgograd: GU "Publisher", 2001, 592 s; ill.
7. The film Arrival of a train at the La Ciotat station is mentioned in an article by Maxim Gorky (published under the pseudonym "M. Pacatus"), dedicated to the first film screenings organized by Charles Aumont at the Nizhny Novgorod Fair "Nizhny Novgorod Leaflet", 1896, 4 (16) July, No. 182, p. 31.
8. M. Arias Maxim Gorky's Odyssey on the "Isle of Sirens": "Russian Capri" as a socio-cultural problem. (Russian) // Toronto Slavic Quarterly. - Summer 2006. - No. 17.
9. So, it is known that in 1918 Gorky sent money to V. V. Rozanov, a beggar in Sergiev Posad
10. Solzhenitsyn, A. I. The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956. [In 3 books], Parts III-IV: experience artistic research// A. I. Solzhenitsyn. - Astrel, 2009. - 560 p. - Articles 49-51.
11. Annenkov Yu. Diary of my meetings
12. Tales of Italy
13. Truth and fiction about the giant aircraft ANT-20
14. Scientific library. M. Gorky St. Petersburg State University
15. Numbers according to the CFA and Scott catalogs.

Maksim Gorky. Biography

In 1889, Maxim Gorky worked at the Krutoy station (later Voroponovo, and now the station named after Maxim Gorky) in Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd).

Origin, education, worldview of Maxim Gorky

Father, Maxim Savvatievich Peshkov (1840-71) - the son of a soldier demoted from officers, a cabinetmaker. In recent years, he worked as a manager of a steamship office, died of cholera. Mother, Varvara Vasilievna Kashirina (1842-79) - from a bourgeois family; widowed early, remarried, died of consumption. The childhood of the writer passed in the house of his grandfather Vasily Vasilyevich Kashirin, who in his youth was bubbling, then became rich, became the owner of a dyeing establishment, and went bankrupt in old age. The grandfather taught the boy according to church books, grandmother Akulina Ivanovna introduced her grandson to folk songs and fairy tales, but most importantly, she replaced her mother, “saturating”, according to Gorky himself, “strong strength for a difficult life” (“Childhood”).

A story about the life of Maxim Gorky in Tsaritsyn

Letters from Maxim Gorky to Maria Basargina, the daughter of the head of the Krutaya railway station, where in 1889 M. Gorky served as a weigher.

Gorky did not receive a real education, graduating only from a vocational school. The thirst for knowledge was quenched independently, he grew up "self-taught". Hard work (a crockery on a steamer, a “boy” in a store, a student in an icon-painting workshop, a foreman at fair buildings, etc.) and early hardships taught good knowledge life and inspired dreams of rebuilding the world. “We came into the world to disagree...” - a surviving fragment of the destroyed poem by the young Peshkov “The Song of the Old Oak”.

Hatred of evil and ethical maximalism were the source of moral torment. In 1887 he tried to commit suicide. He took part in revolutionary propaganda, "went among the people", wandered around Rus', and communicated with tramps. He experienced complex philosophical influences: from the ideas of the French Enlightenment and the materialism of J. W. Goethe to the positivism of J. M. Guyot, the romanticism of J. Ruskin and the pessimism of A. Schopenhauer. In his Nizhny Novgorod library, next to Capital by K. Marx and Historical Letters by P. L. Lavrov, there were books by E. Hartmann, M. Stirner and F. Nietzsche.

The rudeness and ignorance of provincial life poisoned his soul, but also - paradoxically - gave birth to faith in Man and his potentialities. Romantic philosophy was born from the clash of conflicting principles, in which Man (ideal essence) did not coincide with man (real being) and even entered into a tragic conflict with him. Gorky's humanism carried rebellious and atheistic traits. His favorite reading was bible book Job, where "God teaches a person how to be equal to God and how to calmly stand next to God" (Gorky's letter to V.V. Rozanov, 1912).

Early works of Gorky (1892-1905)

Gorky began as a provincial newspaperman (published under the name Yehudiel Khlamida). The pseudonym M. Gorky (he signed letters and documents with his real name - A. Peshkov; the designations "A. M. Gorky" and "Aleksey Maksimovich Gorky" contaminate the pseudonym with his real name) appeared in 1892 in the Tiflis newspaper "Caucasus", where the first story Makar Chudra. In 1895, thanks to the help of V. G. Korolenko, he was published in the most popular magazine Russian Wealth (the story Chelkash). In 1898, the book Essays and Stories was published in St. Petersburg, which had a sensational success. In 1899, the prose poem "Twenty-six and One" and the first long story "Foma Gordeev" appeared. Glory to Gorky grew with incredible speed and soon caught up with the popularity of A.P. Chekhov and L.N. Tolstoy.

From the very beginning, there was a discrepancy between what critics wrote about Gorky and what the average reader wanted to see in him. The traditional principle of interpreting works from the point of view of the social meaning contained in them did not work in relation to the early Gorky. The reader was least of all interested in the social aspects of his prose, he sought and found in them a mood consonant with the times. According to critic M. Protopopov, Gorky replaced the problem of artistic typification with the problem of "ideological lyricism." His heroes combined typical features, behind which stood a good knowledge of life and literary tradition, and a special kind of "philosophy", which the author endowed the heroes with own will, not always consistent with the "truth of life". Critics in connection with his texts did not solve social issues and problems of their literary reflection, but directly the “question about Gorky” and the collective lyrical image he created, which began to be perceived as typical for Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. and which criticism compared with Nietzsche's "superman". All this allows, contrary to the traditional view, to consider him a modernist rather than a realist.

Gorky's public position was radical. He was arrested more than once, in 1902 Nicholas II ordered to annul his election as an honorary academician in the category of fine literature (in protest, Chekhov and Korolenko left the Academy). In 1905 he joined the RSDLP (Bolshevik wing) and met V.I. Lenin. They received serious financial support for the revolution of 1905-07.

Gorky quickly showed himself as a talented organizer of the literary process. In 1901, he headed the publishing house of the Znanie partnership and soon began to publish the Collections of the Knowledge partnership, where I. A. Bunin, L. N. Andreev, A. I. Kuprin, V. V. Veresaev, E. N. .Chirikov, N.D. Teleshov, A.S. Serafimovich and others.

Vertex early creativity, the play "At the Bottom", to a large extent owes its fame to the production of K. S. Stanislavsky in the Moscow art theater(1902; played by Stanislavsky, V.I. Kachalov, I.M. Moskvin, O.L. Knipper-Chekhova, etc.) In 1903, the Berlin Kleines Theater hosted a performance of "At the Bottom" with Richard Wallentin in the role of Satin. Gorky's other plays - Petty Bourgeois (1901), Summer Residents (1904), Children of the Sun, Barbarians (both 1905), Enemies (1906) - did not have such sensational success in Russia and Europe.

Gorky between two revolutions (1905-1917)

After the defeat of the revolution of 1905-07, Gorky emigrated to the island of Capri (Italy). The “Capri” period of creativity made it necessary to reconsider the notion of the “end of Gorky” (D. V. Filosofov), which had developed in criticism, which was caused by his passion for the political struggle and the ideas of socialism, which were reflected in the story “Mother” (1906; second edition 1907). He created the novels "The Town of Okurov" (1909), "Childhood" (1913-14), "In People" (1915-16), a cycle of stories "Across Rus'" (1912-17). Disputes in criticism caused the story "Confession" (1908), highly appreciated by A. A. Blok. For the first time, the theme of god-building was sounded in it, which Gorky, with A. V. Lunacharsky and A. A. Bogdanov, preached in the Capri party school for workers, which caused him to disagree with Lenin, who hated "flirting with God."

The First World War seriously affected Gorky's state of mind. It symbolized the beginning of the historical collapse of his idea of ​​"collective mind", to which he came after being disappointed with Nietzsche's individualism (according to T. Mann, Gorky stretched a bridge from Nietzsche to socialism). Unlimited faith in the human mind, accepted as the only dogma, was not confirmed by life. The war became a blatant example of collective madness, when Man was reduced to a "trench louse", "cannon fodder", when people went berserk before their eyes and the human mind was powerless before the logic of historical events. Gorky's 1914 poem contains the lines:
“How are we going to live then?
What will this horror bring us?
What now from hatred for people
Save my soul?"

The years of emigration of Maxim Gorky (1917-28)

The October Revolution confirmed Gorky's fears. Unlike Blok, he heard in it not “music”, but the terrible roar of a hundred million peasant element, breaking through all social prohibitions and threatening to sink the remaining islands of culture. In "Untimely Thoughts" (a series of articles in the newspaper "New Life"; 1917-18; published in a separate edition in 1918), he accused Lenin of seizing power and unleashing terror in the country. But in the same place he called the Russian people organically cruel, "bestial" and thereby, if not justifying, then explaining the ferocious treatment of these people by the Bolsheviks. The inconsistency of the position was also reflected in his book On the Russian Peasantry (1922). The undoubted merit of Gorky was the energetic work to save the scientific and artistic intelligentsia from starvation and executions, gratefully appreciated by his contemporaries (E. I. Zamyatin, A. M. Remizov, V. F. Khodasevich, V. B. Shklovsky, etc.) Barely Is it not for the sake of this that such cultural events as the organization of the publishing house "World Literature", the opening of the "House of Scientists" and the "House of Arts" (communes for creative intelligentsia described in the novel by O. D. Forsh "The Crazy Ship" and the book by K. A. Fedin "A Bitter Among Us"). However, many writers (including Blok, N. S. Gumilyov) could not be saved, which became one of the main reasons for Gorky's final break with the Bolsheviks.

From 1921 to 1928 Gorky lived in exile, where he went after too persistent advice from Lenin. Settled in Sorrento (Italy), without interrupting ties with young Soviet literature (L. M. Leonov, V. V. Ivanov, A. A. Fadeev, I. E. Babel, etc.) Wrote the cycle "Stories of 1922-24" ”, “Notes from a Diary” (1924), the novel “The Artamonov Case” (1925), began working on the epic novel “The Life of Klim Samgin” (1925-36). Contemporaries noted the experimental nature of Gorky's works of this time, which were created with an undoubted eye on the formal search for Russian prose of the 1920s.

Gorky's return to the Soviet Union

In 1928, Gorky made a "trial" trip to the Soviet Union (in connection with the celebration arranged on the occasion of his 60th birthday), having previously entered into cautious negotiations with the Stalinist leadership. The apotheosis of the meeting at the Belorussky railway station decided the matter; Gorky returned to his homeland. As an artist, he completely immersed himself in the creation of The Life of Klim Samgin, a panoramic picture of Russia over forty years. As a politician, he actually provided Stalin with moral cover in the face of the world community. His numerous articles created an apologetic image of the leader and were silent about the suppression of freedom of thought and art in the country - facts that Gorky could not have been unaware of. He stood at the head of the creation of a collective writer's book, which glorified the construction by prisoners of the White Sea-Baltic Canal. Stalin. He organized and supported many enterprises: the Academia publishing house, the book series History of Factories and Plants, History of the Civil War, the Literary Study magazine, and the Literary Institute, later named after him. In 1934 he headed the Union of Writers of the USSR, created on his initiative. Gorky's death was surrounded by an atmosphere of mystery, as was the death of his son, Maxim Peshkov. However, versions of the violent death of both have not yet been documented. The urn with Gorky's ashes is placed in the Kremlin wall in Moscow.

P. V. Basinsky

Maxim Gorky - life and work.

The first works of Maxim Gorky

Maxim Gorky (Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov) was born in March 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod in the family of a carpenter. He received his primary education at the Sloboda-Kunavinsky School, from which he graduated in 1878. From that time on, Gorky's working life began. In subsequent years, he changed many professions, traveled around and around half of Russia. In September 1892, when Gorky was living in Tiflis, his first story, Makar Chudra, was published in the Kavkaz newspaper. In the spring of 1895, Gorky, having moved to Samara, became an employee of the Samara Newspaper, in which he led the departments of the daily chronicle Essays and Sketches and Incidentally. In the same year, such famous stories, as “Old Woman Izergil”, “Chelkash”, “Once Upon a Fall”, “The Case with Fasteners” and others, and in one of the issues of the Samara Newspaper the famous “Song of the Falcon” was printed. Feuilletons, essays and stories by Gorky soon attracted attention. His name became known to readers, the strength and lightness of his pen was appreciated by fellow journalists.

A turning point in the fate of the writer Gorky

The turning point in Gorky's fate was 1898, when two volumes of his works were published as a separate publication. The stories and essays that had previously been published in various provincial newspapers and magazines were collected together for the first time and became available to the general reader. The publication was a huge success and sold out instantly. In 1899, a new edition in three volumes went out in exactly the same way. The following year, Gorky's collected works began to be published. In 1899, his first story "Foma Gordeev" appeared, which was also met with extraordinary enthusiasm. It was a real boom. In a matter of years, Gorky turned from an unknown writer into a living classic, into a star of the first magnitude in the sky of Russian literature. In Germany, six publishing companies at once undertook to translate and publish his works. In 1901, the novel "Three" and "Song of the Petrel" appeared. The latter was immediately banned by censors, but this did not in the least prevent its distribution. According to contemporaries, the Petrel was reprinted in every city on a hectograph, on typewriters, rewritten by hand, read at evenings among young people and in workers' circles. Many people knew her by heart. But truly world fame came to Gorky after he turned to the theater. His first play, Petty Bourgeois (1901), staged in 1902 by the Art Theatre, was later performed in many cities. In December 1902, the premiere took place new play"At the bottom", which had an absolutely fantastic audience, incredible success. The staging of it by the Moscow Art Theater caused an avalanche of enthusiastic responses. In 1903, the procession of the play began on the stages of theaters in Europe. With triumphant success, she walked in England, Italy, Austria, Holland, Norway, Bulgaria and Japan. Warmly welcomed "At the bottom" in Germany. Only the Reinhardt Theater in Berlin, with a full house, played it more than 500 times!

The secret of young Gorky's success

The secret of the exceptional success of the young Gorky was explained primarily by his special attitude. Like all great writers, he posed and solved the "damned" questions of his age, but he did it in his own way, not like others. The main difference was not so much in the content as in the emotional coloring of his writings. Gorky came to literature at the moment when the crisis of the old critical realism began to emerge and the themes and plots of the great literature XIX V. tragic note, which was always present in the works of famous Russian classics and gave their work a special - mournful, suffering flavor, no longer aroused the former upsurge in society, but caused only pessimism. The Russian (and not only Russian) reader is fed up with the image of the Suffering Man, the Humiliated Man, the Man Who Should be Pity, passing from the pages of one work to another. There was an urgent need for a new goodie, and Gorky was the first to respond to it - he brought out on the pages of his stories, novels and plays the Man-Wrestler, the Man capable of Overcoming the Evil of the World. His cheerful, hopeful voice sounded loud and confident in the stale atmosphere of Russian timelessness and boredom, the general tone of which was determined by works like Chekhov's Chamber No. 6 or Saltykov-Shchedrin's Gentlemen Golovlevs. It is not surprising that the heroic pathos of such things as "Old Woman Izergil" or "Song of the Petrel" was like a breath of fresh air for contemporaries.

In the old dispute about Man and his place in the world, Gorky acted as an ardent romantic. No one in Russian literature before him created such a passionate and sublime hymn to the glory of Man. For in the Gorky Universe there is no God at all, it is all occupied by Man, who has grown to cosmic scales. Man, according to Gorky, is the Absolute Spirit, which should be worshiped, into which they leave and from which all manifestations of being originate. ("Man - that's the truth! - exclaims one of his heroes. - ... This is huge! In this - all beginnings and ends ... Everything is in a person, everything is for a person! There is only a person, everything else is his business Hands and his brain! Man! This is magnificent! It sounds ... proud!") However, depicting in his early creations a "breaking out" Man, a Man breaking with the petty-bourgeois environment, Gorky was not yet fully aware of the ultimate goal of this self-affirmation. Intensely reflecting on the meaning of life, he at first paid tribute to the teachings of Nietzsche with his glorification " strong personality but Nietzscheanism could not seriously satisfy him. From the glorification of Man, Gorky came to the idea of ​​Mankind. By this, he understood not just an ideal, well-organized society that unites all the people of the Earth on the way to new achievements; Mankind was presented to him as a single transpersonal being, as a "collective mind", a new Deity, in which the abilities of many will be integrated. individual people. It was a dream of a distant future, which had to be started today. Gorky found its most complete embodiment in socialist theories.

Gorky's fascination with the revolution

Gorky's fascination with the revolution logically followed both from his convictions and from his relations with the Russian authorities, which could not remain good. Gorky's works revolutionized society more than any incendiary proclamations. Therefore, it is not surprising that he had many misunderstandings with the police. The events of Bloody Sunday, which took place before the eyes of the writer, prompted him to write an angry appeal “To all Russian citizens and public opinion European states". “We declare,” it said, “that such an order should no longer be tolerated, and we invite all citizens of Russia to an immediate and stubborn struggle against the autocracy.” On January 11, 1905, Gorky was arrested, and the next day he was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. But the news of the writer's arrest caused such a storm of protests in Russia and abroad that it was impossible to ignore them. A month later, Gorky was released on a large bail. In the autumn of the same year, he joined the RSDLP, which he remained until 1917.

Gorky in exile

After the suppression of the December armed uprising, to which Gorky openly sympathized, he had to emigrate from Russia. On the instructions of the Central Committee of the party, he went to America to collect money through agitation for the Bolshevik cash desk. In the USA he completed Enemies, the most revolutionary of his plays. It was here that the novel "Mother" was mainly written, conceived by Gorky as a kind of gospel of socialism. (This novel, which has the central idea of ​​the resurrection from the darkness of the human soul, is filled with Christian symbols: in the course of action, the analogy between the revolutionaries and the apostles of primitive Christianity is repeatedly played out; Pavel Vlasov's friends merge in the dreams of his mother into the image of the collective Christ, with the son in the center, Pavel himself is associated with Christ, and Nilovna with the Mother of God, who sacrifices her son for the salvation of the world. The central episode of the novel - the May Day demonstration in the eyes of one of the characters turns into "a religious procession in the name of the New God, the God of light and truth, the God of reason and goodness." The path of Paul, as you know, ends with the sacrifice of the cross. All these moments were deeply thought out by Gorky. He was sure that the element of faith is very important in introducing the people to socialist ideas (in the articles of 1906 "On the Jews" and "On the Bund" he directly wrote that socialism is "the religion of the masses"). One of the important points of Gorky's worldview was that God is created by people, invented, constructed by them in order to fill the emptiness of the heart. Thus, the old gods, as has repeatedly happened in world history, can die and give way to new ones if the people believe in them. The motif of God-seeking was repeated by Gorky in the story "Confession" written in 1908. Her hero, disillusioned with the official religion, painfully searches for God and finds him merging with the working people, who thus turns out to be the true "collective God".

From America, Gorky went to Italy and settled on the island of Capri. During the years of emigration, he wrote "Summer" (1909), "The Town of Okurov" (1909), "The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin" (1910), the play "Vassa Zheleznova", "Tales of Italy" (1911), "The Master" (1913) , the autobiographical story "Childhood" (1913).

Gorky's return to Russia

At the end of December 1913, taking advantage of the general amnesty announced on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanovs, Gorky returned to Russia and settled in St. Petersburg. In 1914, he founded his own magazine "Chronicle" and publishing house "Sail". Here in 1916 his autobiographical story"In people" and a series of essays "Across Rus'".

Gorky accepted the February Revolution of 1917 with all his heart, but his attitude to further events, and especially to the October Revolution, was very ambiguous. In general, after the 1905 revolution, Gorky's worldview underwent an evolution and became more skeptical. Despite the fact that his faith in Man and faith in socialism remained unchanged, he had doubts about the fact that the modern Russian worker and modern Russian peasant are able to perceive bright socialist ideas as they should. As early as 1905, he was struck by the roar of the awakened popular element, breaking out through all social prohibitions and threatening to sink the miserable islands of material culture. Later, several articles appeared that determined Gorky's attitude towards the Russian people. Great impression His article “Two Souls”, which appeared in the “Chronicles” at the end of 1915, produced his contemporaries. While paying tribute to the wealth of the soul of the Russian people, Gorky nevertheless treated its historical possibilities with great skepticism. The Russian people, he wrote, are dreamy, lazy, their powerless soul can flare up beautifully and brightly, but it does not burn for long and quickly fades away. Therefore, the Russian nation definitely needs an “external lever” capable of moving it off the ground. Once the role of the "lever" was played by Peter I. Now the time has come for new achievements, and the role of the "lever" in them must be performed by the intelligentsia, primarily the revolutionary, but also the scientific, technical and creative. It should bring Western culture to the people and instill in them an activity that will kill the “lazy Asian” in their soul. Culture and science were, according to Gorky, just that force (and the intelligentsia - the bearer of this force) that "will allow us to overcome the abomination of life and relentlessly, stubbornly strive for justice, for the beauty of life, for freedom."

Gorky developed this theme in 1917-1918. in his newspaper "New Life", in which he published about 80 articles, later combined into two books "Revolution and Culture" and "Untimely Thoughts". The essence of his views was that the revolution (reasonable transformation of society) should be fundamentally different from the "Russian rebellion" (which senselessly destroys it). Gorky was convinced that the country was not now ready for a constructive socialist revolution, that first the people "must be incinerated and cleansed of the slavery nurtured in them by the slow fire of culture."

Gorky's attitude to the revolution of 1917

When the Provisional Government was nevertheless overthrown, Gorky sharply opposed the Bolsheviks. In the first months after the October Revolution, when an unbridled crowd smashed the palace cellars, when raids and robberies were committed, Gorky wrote with anger about the rampant anarchy, about the destruction of culture, about the cruelty of terror. During these difficult months, his relations with Lenin escalated to the extreme. The bloody horrors of the Civil War that followed made a depressing impression on Gorky and freed him from his last illusions about the Russian peasant. In the book "On the Russian Peasantry" (1922), published in Berlin, Gorky included many bitter, but sober and valuable observations on negative sides Russian character. Looking the truth in the eye, he wrote: "I explain the cruelty of the forms of the revolution solely by the cruelty of the Russian people." But of all the social strata of Russian society, he considered the peasantry to be the most guilty of it. It was in the peasantry that the writer saw the source of all the historical troubles of Russia.

Gorky's departure for Capri

Meanwhile, overwork and a bad climate caused an exacerbation of tuberculosis in Gorky. In the summer of 1921 he was forced to leave again for Capri. The following years were filled with hard work for him. Gorky wrote the final part of the autobiographical trilogy "My Universities" (1923), the novel "The Artamonov Case" (1925), several stories and the first two volumes of the epic "The Life of Klim Samgin" (1927-1928) - a striking picture of the intellectual and social life Russia in the last decades before the revolution of 1917

Gorky's acceptance of socialist reality

In May 1928 Gorky returned to the Soviet Union. The country amazed him. At one of the meetings, he admitted: "It seems to me that I have not been in Russia for not six years, but at least twenty." He greedily sought to get to know this unfamiliar country and immediately began to travel around the Soviet Union. The result of these travels was a series of essays "On the Union of Soviets."

Gorky's efficiency during these years was amazing. In addition to multilateral editorial and community service, he devotes a lot of time to journalism (over the last eight years of his life he published about 300 articles) and writes new works of art. In 1930 Gorky conceived drama trilogy about the revolution of 1917. He managed to finish only two plays: "Egor Bulychev and Others" (1932), "Dostigaev and Others" (1933). Also left unfinished was the fourth volume of Samghin (the third came out in 1931), on which Gorky had been working in recent years. This novel is important in that Gorky says goodbye to his illusions in relation to the Russian intelligentsia. Samghin's life catastrophe is the catastrophe of the entire Russian intelligentsia, which, in crucial moment Russian history was not ready to become the head of the people and become the organizing force of the nation. In a more general, philosophical sense, this meant the defeat of Reason before the dark element of the Masses. A just socialist society, alas, did not develop (and could not develop - Gorky was now sure of this) by itself from the old Russian society, just as the Russian Empire could not be born from the old Muscovy. For the triumph of the ideals of socialism, violence had to be used. Therefore, a new Peter was needed.

One must think that the consciousness of these truths in many ways reconciled Gorky with socialist reality. It is known that he did not really like Stalin - he treated Bukharin and Kamenev with much greater sympathy. However, his relationship with the Secretary General remained smooth until his death and was not overshadowed by any major quarrel. Moreover, Gorky put his enormous authority at the service of the Stalinist regime. In 1929, together with some other writers, he traveled around the Stalinist camps, and visited the most terrible of them in Solovki. The result of this trip was a book that for the first time in the history of Russian literature glorified forced labor. Gorky welcomed collectivization without hesitation and wrote to Stalin in 1930: “... the socialist revolution is assuming a truly socialist character. This is an almost geological upheaval, and it is greater, immeasurably greater and deeper than all that has been done by the Party. The system of life that has existed for millennia is being destroyed, the system that has created a man of extremely ugly originality and capable of terrifying with his animal conservatism, his instinct of ownership. In 1931, under the impression of the process of the "Industrial Party", Gorky wrote the play "Somov and Others", in which he brings out pest engineers.

However, it must be remembered that in the last years of his life Gorky was seriously ill and he did not know much of what was going on in the country. Beginning in 1935, under the pretext of illness, inconvenient people were not allowed to see Gorky, their letters were not handed over to him, newspapers were printed especially for him, in which the most odious materials were absent. Gorky was weary of this guardianship and said that "he was besieged", but he could no longer do anything. He died on June 18, 1936.

K.V. Ryzhov

Alexei Peshkov, better known as the writer Maxim Gorky, is a cult figure for Russian and Soviet literature. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize, was the most published Soviet author throughout the existence of the USSR and was considered on a par with Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin and the main creator of Russian literary art.

Alexey Peshkov - future Maxim Gorky | Pandia

He was born in the town of Kanavino, which at that time was located in Nizhny Novgorod province, and now is one of the districts of Nizhny Novgorod. His father, Maxim Peshkov, was a carpenter, and in the last years of his life he ran a steamship office. Mother Vasilievna died of consumption, so Alyosha Peshkov's parents were replaced by her grandmother Akulina Ivanovna. From the age of 11, the boy was forced to start working: Maxim Gorky was a messenger at the store, a barmaid on a steamer, an assistant baker and an icon painter. The biography of Maxim Gorky is reflected by him personally in the stories "Childhood", "In People" and "My Universities".

Photo of Gorky in his youth | Poetic portal

After an unsuccessful attempt to become a student at Kazan University and an arrest due to connection with a Marxist circle, the future writer became a watchman on the railway. And at the age of 23, the young man sets off to wander around the country and managed to get on foot to the Caucasus. It was during this journey that Maxim Gorky briefly wrote down his thoughts, which would later be the basis for his future works. By the way, the first stories of Maxim Gorky also began to be published around that time.

Alexei Peshkov, pseudonym Gorky | Nostalgia

Having already become a famous writer, Alexei Peshkov leaves for the United States, then moves to Italy. This happened not at all because of problems with the authorities, as some sources sometimes present, but because of changes in family life. Although abroad, Gorky continues to write revolutionary books. He returned to Russia in 1913, settled in St. Petersburg and began working for various publishing houses.

It is curious that, for all his Marxist views, Peshkov took the October Revolution rather skeptically. After the Civil War, Maxim Gorky, who had some disagreements with the new government, again went abroad, but in 1932 he finally returned home.

Writer

The first of the published stories by Maxim Gorky was the famous "Makar Chudra", which was published in 1892. And the fame of the writer was brought by the two-volume Essays and Stories. It is interesting that the circulation of these volumes was almost three times higher than was usually accepted in those years. Of the most popular works of that period, it is worth noting the stories "Old Woman Izergil", "Former People", "Chelkash", "Twenty-Six and One", as well as the poem "Song of the Falcon". Another poem "Song of the Petrel" became a textbook. Maxim Gorky devoted a lot of time to children's literature. He wrote a number of fairy tales, for example, "Sparrow", "Samovar", "Tales of Italy", published the first special children's magazine in the Soviet Union and organized holidays for children from poor families.

Legendary Soviet writer | Kyiv Jewish Community

The plays “At the Bottom”, “Petty Bourgeois” and “Egor Bulychov and Others” by Maxim Gorky are very important for understanding the work of the writer, in which he reveals the talent of the playwright and shows how he sees the life around him. big cultural significance for Russian literature they have the stories "Childhood" and "In People", social novels"Mother" and "The Artamonov Case". Last work Gorky is considered the epic novel "The Life of Klim Samgin", which has the second name "Forty Years". The writer worked on this manuscript for 11 years, but did not have time to finish it.

Personal life

The personal life of Maxim Gorky was quite stormy. For the first and officially the only time he married at the age of 28. The young man met his wife Ekaterina Volzhina at the Samarskaya Gazeta publishing house, where the girl worked as a proofreader. A year after the wedding, the son Maxim appeared in the family, and soon the daughter Ekaterina, named after her mother. Also in the upbringing of the writer was his godson Zinovy ​​Sverdlov, who later took the name Peshkov.

With his first wife Ekaterina Volzhina | Livejournal

But Gorky's love quickly disappeared. He began to be weary of family life and their marriage with Ekaterina Volzhina turned into a parental union: they lived together solely because of the children. When little daughter Katya died unexpectedly, it tragic event led to the breaking of family ties. However, Maxim Gorky and his wife remained friends until the end of their lives and maintained correspondence.

With his second wife, actress Maria Andreeva | Livejournal

After parting with his wife, Maxim Gorky, with the help of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, met the actress of the Moscow Art Theater Maria Andreeva, who became his de facto wife for the next 16 years. It was because of her work that the writer left for America and Italy. From a previous relationship, the actress had a daughter, Ekaterina, and a son, Andrei, who were raised by Maxim Peshkov-Gorky. But after the revolution, Andreeva became interested in party work, began to pay less attention to the family, so in 1919 this relationship also came to an end.

With third wife Maria Budberg and writer HG Wells | Livejournal

Gorky himself put an end to it, declaring that he was leaving for Maria Budberg, the former baroness and concurrently his secretary. The writer lived with this woman for 13 years. The marriage, like the previous one, was unregistered. The last wife of Maxim Gorky was 24 years younger than him, and all the acquaintances were aware that she was "twisting novels" on the side. One of the lovers of Gorky's wife was the English science fiction writer Herbert Wells, to whom she left immediately after the death of her actual husband. There is a huge possibility that Maria Budberg, who had a reputation as an adventurer and clearly collaborated with the NKVD, could be a double agent and also work for British intelligence.

Death

After the final return to his homeland in 1932, Maxim Gorky worked in the publishing houses of newspapers and magazines, created a series of books "The History of Factories and Plants", "The Poet's Library", "The History of the Civil War", organized and held the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. After the unexpected death of his son from pneumonia, the writer wilted. During the next visit to the grave of Maxim, he caught a bad cold. For three weeks Gorky had a fever that led to his death on June 18, 1936. The body of the Soviet writer was cremated, and the ashes were placed in Kremlin wall on the Red Square. But first, the brain of Maxim Gorky was removed and transferred to the Research Institute for further study.

In the last years of life | Digital library

Later, the question was raised several times that the legendary writer and his son could have been poisoned. By this case passed People's Commissar Genrikh Yagoda, who was the lover of Maxim Peshkov's wife. They also suspected involvement and even. During the repressions and consideration of the famous "doctors' case", three doctors were blamed, among other things, for the death of Maxim Gorky.

Books by Maxim Gorky

• 1899 - Foma Gordeev
• 1902 - At the bottom
• 1906 - Mother
• 1908 - Life of an unnecessary person
• 1914 - Childhood
• 1916 - In people
• 1923 - My universities
• 1925 - The Artamonov Case
• 1931 - Yegor Bulychov and others
• 1936 - Life of Klim Samgin

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 arrested for a short time for his 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, translated from Hebrew and Greek, gives some associations with “cloak and dagger”), but soon came up with another one for himself - Maxim Gorky, hinting at both “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. The 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 resounding (albeit completely inexplicable for reasons of 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 into his stories the feigned pathos of “humanity”. 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 the secret police officer Matvey Golovinsky as the author of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 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 the former actress Maria Andreeva - a long-standing Bolshevik, who became the director of theaters after the October Revolution.

Get rich with your 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 called " 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, Alexey 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 of the 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

In 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 at different periods of his 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, the glorification of human dignity and inflexibility 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 convince: these claims were for the most part 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 of Russian life is given late XIX century.

Aleksey Peshkov did not receive a real education, he only graduated from a vocational school.

In 1884, the young man came to Kazan with the intention of studying at the university, but did not enter.

In Kazan, Peshkov became acquainted with Marxist literature and propaganda work.

In 1902, the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature. However, the election was annulled by the government because the newly elected academician "was under police surveillance."

In 1901, Maxim Gorky became the head of the publishing house of the Znanie partnership and soon began to publish collections, which published Ivan Bunin, Leonid Andreev, Alexander Kuprin, Vikenty Veresaev, Alexander Serafimovich and others.

The pinnacle of his early work is the play "At the bottom". In 1902, it was staged at the Moscow Art Theater by Konstantin Stanislavsky. Stanislavsky, Vasily Kachalov, Ivan Moskvin, Olga Knipper-Chekhova played in the performances. In 1903, the Berlin Kleines Theater staged a performance of "The Lower Depths" with Richard Wallenthin as Satine. Gorky also created the plays Petty Bourgeois (1901), Summer Residents (1904), Children of the Sun, Barbarians (both 1905), Enemies (1906).

In 1905, he joined the RSDLP (Russian Social Democratic Party, Bolshevik wing) and met Vladimir Lenin. Gorky provided financial support for the revolution of 1905-1907.
The writer took an active part in revolutionary events 1905, was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, released under pressure from the world community.

In early 1906, Maxim Gorky arrived in America to escape persecution. Russian authorities where he stayed until autumn. Pamphlets "My Interviews" and essays "In America" ​​were written here.

Upon his return to Russia in 1906, Gorky wrote the novel Mother. In the same year, Gorky left Italy for the island of Capri, where he stayed until 1913.

Returning to St. Petersburg, he collaborated with the Bolshevik newspapers Zvezda and Pravda. During this period, the autobiographical novels "Childhood" (1913-1914), "In People" (1916) were published.

After the October Revolution of 1917, Gorky was actively engaged in social activities, participated in the creation of the World Literature publishing house. In 1921 he went abroad again. The writer lived in Helsingfors (Helsinki), Berlin and Prague, and since 1924 - in Sorrento (Italy). In exile, Gorky repeatedly opposed the policy pursued by the Soviet authorities.

The writer was officially married to Ekaterina Peshkova, nee Volzhina (1876-1965). The couple had two children - son Maxim (1897-1934) and daughter Katya, who died in childhood.

Later, Gorky tied himself in a civil marriage with actress Maria Andreeva (1868-1953), and then Maria Brudberg (1892-1974).

The writer's granddaughter Daria Peshkova is an actress of the Vakhtangov Theatre.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

If you ask: "What do you think about the work of Alexei Gorky?", then few people will be able to answer this question. And not because these people do not read, but because not everyone knows and remembers that this is for everyone. famous writer Maksim Gorky. And if you decide to complicate the task even more, then ask about the works of Alexei Peshkov. Here, only a few will remember for sure that this is the real name of Alexei Gorky. It was not just a writer, but also an active one. As you already understood, we will talk about a truly popular writer - Maxim Gorky.

Childhood and youth

The years of life of Gorky (Peshkov) Alexei Maksimovich - 1868-1936. They fell on an important historical epoch. The biography of Alexei Gorky is rich in events, starting from his very childhood. The native city of the writer is Nizhny Novgorod. His father, who worked as a manager of a steamship company, died when the boy was only 3 years old. After the death of her husband, Alyosha's mother remarried. She passed away when he was 11 years old. The grandfather was engaged in the further education of little Alexei.

Being an 11-year-old boy, the future writer already "went among people" - he earned his own bread. Whoever he worked: he was a baker, worked as a delivery boy in a store, a dishwasher in a buffet. Unlike the stern grandfather, the grandmother was a kind and believing woman and an excellent storyteller. It was she who instilled in Maxim Gorky a love of reading.

In 1887, the writer will attempt to commit suicide, which he will associate with the difficult feelings caused by the news of his grandmother's death. Fortunately, he survived - the bullet did not hit the heart, but damaged the lungs, which caused problems with the respiratory system.

The life of the future writer was not easy, and he, unable to stand it, ran away from home. The boy wandered a lot around the country, saw the whole truth of life, but in an amazing way he was able to maintain faith in the ideal Man. He will describe his childhood years, life in his grandfather's house in "Childhood" - the first part of his autobiographical trilogy.

In 1884, Alexei Gorky tries to enter Kazan University, but because of his financial situation, he learns that this is impossible. During this period, the future writer begins to gravitate towards romantic philosophy, according to which, an ideal person doesn't look like a real person. Then he became acquainted with Marxist theory and became a supporter of new ideas.

The emergence of a pseudonym

In 1888, the writer was arrested for a short period of time for his connection with the Marxist circle of N. Fedoseev. In 1891, he decided to start traveling around Russia and eventually managed to reach the Caucasus. Alexei Maksimovich was constantly engaged in self-education, saving up and expanding his knowledge in various fields. He agreed to any job and carefully kept all his impressions, they later appeared in his very first stories. Subsequently, he called this period "My Universities".

In 1892, Gorky returned to his native places and took his first steps in the literary field as a writer in several provincial publications. For the first time his pseudonym "Gorky" appeared in the same year in the newspaper "Tiflis", in which his story "Makar Chudra" was published.

The pseudonym was not chosen by chance: he hinted at the "bitter" Russian life and that the writer would write only the truth, no matter how bitter it was. Maxim Gorky saw the life of the common people and, with his temperament, could not help but notice the injustice that was on the part of the rich estates.

Early creativity and success

Alexey Gorky was actively engaged in propaganda, for which he was under the constant control of the police. With the help of V. Korolenko in 1895, his story "Chelkash" was published in the largest Russian magazine. Following were printed "Old Woman Izergil", "The Song of the Falcon", They were not special from a literary point of view, but they successfully coincided with the new political views.

In 1898, his collection Essays and Stories was published, which was an extraordinary success, and Maxim Gorky received all-Russian recognition. Although his stories were not highly artistic, they depicted the life of the common people, starting from their very bottom, which brought Alexei Peshkov recognition as the only writer who writes about the lower class. At that time, he was no less popular than L. N. Tolstoy and A. P. Chekhov.

In the period from 1904 to 1907, the plays "Petty bourgeois", "At the Bottom", "Children of the Sun", "Summer Residents" were written. His earliest works did not have any social orientation, but the characters had their own types and special treatment to life, which readers liked very much.

revolutionary activity

The writer Alexei Gorky was an ardent supporter of Marxist social democracy and in 1901 wrote "The Song of the Petrel", which called for revolution. For open propaganda of revolutionary actions, he was arrested and expelled from Nizhny Novgorod. In 1902, Gorky met Lenin, in the same year his election as a member Imperial Academy in the category of belles-lettres was cancelled.

The writer was also an excellent organizer: from 1901 he was the head of the Znanie publishing house, which published the best writers of that period. He supported the revolutionary movement not only spiritually, but also materially. The writer's apartment was used as a headquarters for revolutionaries before important events. Lenin even spoke at his apartment in St. Petersburg. After that, in 1905, Maxim Gorky, for fear of arrest, decided to leave Russia for a while.

Life abroad

Alexey Gorky went to Finland and from there - to Western Europe and the USA, where he raised funds for the struggle of the Bolsheviks. At the very beginning, he was met there friendly: the writer made acquaintance with Theodore Roosevelt and Mark Twain. In America, his famous novel "Mother" is published. However, later the Americans began to resent his political actions.

In the period from 1906 to 1907, Gorky lived on the island of Capri, from where he continued to support the Bolsheviks. At the same time, he creates a special theory of "god-building". The point was that moral and cultural values ​​are much more important than political ones. This theory formed the basis of the novel "Confessions". Although Lenin rejected these beliefs, the writer continued to adhere to them.

Return to Russia

In 1913, Alexei Maksimovich returned to his homeland. During the First World War, he lost faith in the power of Man. In 1917, his relations with the revolutionaries worsened, he became disillusioned with the leaders of the revolution.

Gorky understands that all his attempts to save the intelligentsia do not meet with a response from the Bolsheviks. But later, in 1918, he recognizes his beliefs as erroneous and returns to the Bolsheviks. In 1921, despite a personal meeting with Lenin, he failed to save his friend, the poet Nikolai Gumilyov, from execution. After that, he leaves Bolshevik Russia.

Repeated emigration

In connection with the intensification of bouts of tuberculosis and according to Lenin, Alexei Maksimovich leaves Russia for Italy, in the city of Sorrento. There he completes his autobiographical trilogy. The author was in exile until 1928, but continues to maintain contacts with the Soviet Union.

He does not leave his writing activity, but writes already in accordance with new literary trends. Far from the Motherland, he wrote the novel "The Artamonov Case", stories. An extensive work "The Life of Klim Samgin" was begun, which the writer did not have time to finish. In connection with the death of Lenin, Gorky writes a book of memoirs about the leader.

Return to the Motherland and the last years of life

Alexei Gorky visited the Soviet Union several times, but did not stay there. In 1928, during a trip around the country, he was shown the "front" side of life. The delighted writer wrote essays about the Soviet Union.

In 1931, at the personal invitation of Stalin, he returned to the USSR forever. Aleksey Maksimovich continues to write, but in his works he praises the image of Stalin and the entire leadership, without mentioning the numerous repressions. Of course, this state of affairs did not suit the writer, but at that time statements that contradicted the authorities were not tolerated.

In 1934, Gorky's son dies, and on June 18, 1936, Maxim Gorky dies under unclear circumstances. The entire leadership of the country saw off the national writer on his last journey. The urn with his ashes was buried in the Kremlin wall.

Features of the work of Maxim Gorky

His work is unique in that it was during the period of the collapse of capitalism that he was able to very clearly convey the state of society through the description of ordinary people. After all, no one before him described with such detail the life of the lower strata of society. It was this undisguised truth of the life of the working class that won him the love of the people.

His faith in man can be traced in his early works, he believed that a person can make a revolution with the help of his spiritual life. Maxim Gorky managed to combine the bitter truth with faith in moral values. And it was this combination that made his works special, the characters memorable, and made Gorky himself a writer of workers.