Gorky information from his biography. Biography of M

Born on March 28 (March 16, old style) 1868 in Kunavino, Nizhny Novgorod province of the Russian Empire (since 1919 the city of Kanavino, since 1928 it became part of Nizhny Novgorod). Maxim Gorky is the pseudonym of the writer, real name Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov.
Father - Maxim Savvatyevich Peshkov (1840-1871) carpenter, last years life - manager of a shipping company.
Mother - Varvara Vasilievna Kashirina (1842-1879) from a bourgeois family.
Alexey Maksimovich was orphaned early. In 1871 he fell ill with cholera, the father was able to nurse his son, but he himself became infected and died. After the death of his father, Alexey moves with his mother from Astrakhan to Nizhny Novgorod. The mother took little care of her son and the grandmother, Akulina Ivanovna, replaced Alexei’s parents. At this time, Alexey did not attend school for long, and entered the third grade with a certificate of merit. In 1879, after the death of Varvara Vasilievna, his grandfather sent Alexei “to the people” - to earn his living. He worked as a “boy” in a store, as a pantry cook on a ship, as a baker, studied in an icon-painting workshop, etc. You can read more about the writer’s childhood and youth in his autobiographical stories “Childhood” and “In People.”
In 1884, Alexey went to Kazan, hoping to enter Kazan University. But he didn’t have money to study and had to go to work. The Kazan period was the most difficult in Gorky's life. Here he experienced acute need and hunger. In Kazan, he gets acquainted with Marxist literature and tries himself in the role of an educator and propagandist. In 1888, he was arrested for connections with revolutionaries and was soon released, but continued to be under constant police surveillance. In 1891 he went on a journey and even reached the Caucasus. During this period, he made many acquaintances among the intelligentsia.
In 1892, his work “Makar Chudra” was published for the first time.
In 1896 he married Ekaterina Pavlovna Volzhina (1876-1965). From the marriage there was a son, Maxim (1897-1934), and a daughter, Ekaterina (1898-1903).
1897-1898 lived in the village of Kamenka (now the village of Kuvshinovo in the Tver region Russian Federation) from a friend Vasiliev. This period of his life served as material for his novel “The Life of Klim Samgin.”

In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature. But due to the fact that he was under police surveillance, his election was annulled. In this regard, Chekhov and Korolenko refused membership in the Academy.
By 1902, Gorky gained worldwide fame. In 1902, 260 newspaper and 50 magazine articles were published about Gorky, and more than 100 monographs were published.
In 1903, after the death of their daughter, Alexey Maksimovich and Ekaterina Pavlovna decided to separate, but not to formalize a divorce. At that time, divorce was possible only through the church, and Gorky was excommunicated from the church. In 1903 he married Maria Fedorovna Andreeva(1868-1953), whom he had known since 1900.
After “Bloody Sunday” (the shooting of a procession of workers on January 9, 1905), he issued a revolutionary proclamation, for which he was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Many famous European representatives of creative and scientific world. Under their pressure, Gorky was released on February 14, 1905 on bail.
From 1906 to 1913, together with Maria Andreeva, he lived abroad in Italy, first in Naples, and then on the island of Capri. According to the official version, due to tuberculosis. There is also a version that due to political persecution.
In 1907, he took part in the V Congress of the RSDLP (Russian Social Democratic Party) workers' party), which took place in London as a delegate with an advisory vote.
At the end of 1913, on the occasion of the three hundredth anniversary of the House of Romanov, a general amnesty was declared. After this, Gorky returns to Russia to St. Petersburg.
From 1917 to 1919 he was active in social and political activities. In 1919 he separated from Maria Andreeva and in 1920 he began to live with Maria Ignatievna Budberg (1892-1974). In 1921, at the insistence of Lenin, he went abroad. One of the versions is due to the resumption of the disease. According to another version, due to the aggravation of ideological differences with the Bolsheviks. Since 1924 he lived in Sorrento in Italy.
In 1928, at the invitation of the Soviet government and Stalin personally, he came to the USSR for the first time. But he doesn’t stay and leaves for Italy. In 1929, on his second visit to the Union, he visited the Solovetsky special purpose camp and wrote a positive review of its regime. In October 1929 he returned to Italy. And in 1932 he finally returned to the Soviet Union.
In 1934, with the help of Gorky, the Union of Writers of the USSR was organized. The Charter of the Writers' Union was adopted at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, at which Gorky made the main report.
In 1934, Gorky's son Maxim died.
At the end of May 1936, Gorky caught a cold and after three weeks of illness, he died on June 18, 1936. After cremation, his ashes were placed in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow.
There are many rumors associated with the death of Gorky and his son. There were rumors of poisoning. According to Yagoda's interrogations, Gorky was killed on Trotsky's orders. Some blame Stalin for the death. In 1938, three doctors were involved in the “Doctors' Case” and were accused of murdering Gorky.
Now the circumstances and causes of death of Gorky and his son Maxim remain the subject of debate.

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

Alexei Peshkov had to earn his living from childhood, which prompted the writer to later take the pseudonym Gorky. IN early childhood served as an errand worker in a shoe store, then as a draftsman's apprentice. Unable to withstand the humiliation, he ran away from home. He worked as a cook on a Volga steamship. At the age of 15, he came to Kazan with the intention of getting an education, but, without any financial support, he was unable to fulfill his intention.

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

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

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

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

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

After the October Revolution of 1917, Gorky became the initiator of the creation and first chairman of the Union of Writers of the USSR. He organizes a publishing house World literature", where many writers of that time got the opportunity to work, thereby saving themselves from hunger. He is also credited with saving members of the intelligentsia from arrest and death. Often during these years Gorky was last hope persecuted by the new government.

In 1921, the writer’s tuberculosis worsened, and he went to Germany and the Czech Republic for treatment. Since 1924 he lived in Italy. In 1928 and 1931, Gorky traveled around Russia, including visiting the Solovetsky special purpose camp. In 1932, Gorky was practically forced to return to Russia.

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

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

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

He died near Moscow in Gorki, in the same house where V.I. died. Lenin. The ashes are in the Kremlin wall on Red Square. The writer's brain was sent to the Moscow Brain Institute for study.

Maxim Gorky (1868 - 1936) - famous Russian writer and playwright, author of works on revolutionary themes, founder socialist realism, nominee for Nobel Prize in the field of literature. He spent many years in exile.

early years

Born on March 16 (28), 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod in a poor family of a carpenter. The real name of Maxim Gorky is Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov. His parents died early, and little Alexey stayed to live with my grandfather.

His grandmother became a mentor in literature, who led her grandson into the world of folk poetry. He wrote about her briefly, but with great tenderness: “In those years, I was filled with my grandmother’s poems, like a beehive with honey; It seems that I was thinking in the forms of her poems.”

Gorky's childhood was spent in harsh, difficult conditions. WITH early years the future writer was forced to do part-time work, earning a living whatever he could.

Training and beginning of literary activity

In Gorky's life, only two years were devoted to studying at the Nizhny Novgorod School. Then, due to poverty, he went to work, but was constantly engaged in self-education. 1887 was one of the most difficult years in Gorky's biography. Due to the troubles that beset him, he tried to commit suicide, but nevertheless survived.

Traveling around the country, Gorky propagated the revolution, for which he was taken under police surveillance and then arrested for the first time in 1888.

Gorky's first published story, "Makar Chudra", was published in 1892. Then, his essays in two volumes, “Essays and Stories,” published in 1898, brought fame to the writer.

In 1900-1901 he wrote the novel “Three”, met Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy.

In 1902 he was awarded the title of member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, but by order of Nicholas II it was soon invalidated.

TO famous works Gorky includes: the story “Old Woman Izergil” (1895), the plays “Philistines” (1901) and “At the Lower Depths” (1902), the stories “Childhood” (1913-1914) and “In People” (1915-1916), the novel “ The Life of Klim Samgin" (1925-1936), which the author never finished, as well as many cycles of stories.

Gorky also wrote fairy tales for children. Among them: “The Tale of Ivanushka the Fool”, “Sparrow”, “Samovar”, “Tales of Italy” and others. Remembering his difficult childhood, Gorky paid special attention to children, organized holidays for children from poor families, and published a children's magazine.

Emigration, return to homeland

In 1906, in the biography of Maxim Gorky, he moved to the USA, then to Italy, where he lived until 1913. Even there, Gorky’s work defended the revolution. Returning to Russia, he stops in St. Petersburg. Here Gorky works in publishing houses and is involved in social activities. In 1921, due to worsening illness, at the insistence of Vladimir Lenin, and disagreements with the authorities, he again went abroad. The writer finally returned to the USSR in October 1932.

Last years and death

At home, he continues to actively write and publishes newspapers and magazines.

Maxim Gorky died on June 18, 1936 in the village of Gorki (Moscow region) under mysterious circumstances. There were rumors that the cause of his death was poisoning and many blamed Stalin for this. However, this version was never confirmed.

Abroad

Return to the Soviet Union

Bibliography

Stories, essays

Journalism

Film incarnations

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

At first, Gorky was skeptical about the Bolshevik revolution. After several years of cultural work in Soviet Russia, Petrograd (World Literature publishing house, 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 he was surrounded official recognition as the “petrel of the revolution” and “the great proletarian writer”, the founder of socialist realism.

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

Biography

Alexey Maksimovich came up with a pseudonym for himself. Subsequently, he told me: “I shouldn’t write Peshkov in literature...” (A. Kalyuzhny) More information about his biography can be found in his autobiographical stories “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities”.

Childhood

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

Youth

In 1884 he tried to enter Kazan University. I became acquainted with Marxist literature and propaganda work.
In 1888, he was arrested for connections with N. E. Fedoseev’s circle. He was under constant police surveillance. In October 1888, he became a watchman at the Dobrinka station of the Gryaze-Tsaritsyn Railway. Impressions from his stay in Dobrinka will serve as the basis for the autobiographical story “Watchman” and the story “Boredom for the Sake.”
In January 1889, at a personal request (a complaint in verse), he was transferred to the Borisoglebsk station, then as a weighmaster to the Krutaya station.
In the spring of 1891, he set out to wander around the country and reached the Caucasus.

Literary and social activities

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

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

In 1901, M. Gorky turned to drama. Creates the plays “The Bourgeois” (1901), “At the Lower Depths” (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 - election of M. Gorky to honorary academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of belles-lettres. "In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. But before Gorky could exercise his new rights, his election was annulled by the government, since the newly elected academician “was under police surveillance.” In this regard, Chekhov and Korolenko refused membership in the Academy.
1904-1905 - writes the plays “Summer Residents”, “Children of the Sun”, “Barbarians”. Meets Lenin. He was arrested for the revolutionary proclamation and in connection with the execution on January 9, but then released under public pressure. Participant in the revolution of 1905-1907. In the fall 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” and creates the novel “Mother”. Due to 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 outlined.
1907 - delegate to the V Congress of the RSDLP.
1908 - play “The Last”, story “The Life of an Useless Person”.
1909 - the stories “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 Prosveshchenie, and publishes the first collection of proletarian writers. Writes "Tales of Italy".

1912-1916 - M. Gorky creates a series of stories and essays that made up the collection “Across Rus'”, autobiographical stories “Childhood”, “In People”. The last part of the trilogy, “My Universities,” 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 famine. In 1917, having disagreed with the Bolsheviks on the issue of the timeliness of the socialist revolution in Russia, he did not undergo re-registration of party members and formally dropped out of it.

Abroad

1921 - M. Gorky’s departure abroad. In Soviet literature, there was a myth that the reason for his departure was the resumption of his illness and the need, at Lenin’s insistence, for treatment abroad. In fact, A. M. Gorky was forced to leave due to worsening 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 - novel “The Artamonov Case”.

1928 - at the invitation of the Soviet government and Stalin personally, he tours the country, during which Gorky is shown the achievements of the USSR, which are reflected in the series of essays “Around the Soviet Union.”
1931 - Gorky visits the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp and writes a laudatory review of its regime. A fragment of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s work “The Gulag Archipelago” is dedicated to this fact.

1932 - Gorky returns to the Soviet Union. The government provided him with the former mansion of Ryabushinsky on Spiridonovka, dachas in Gorki and Teselli (Crimea). Here he receives Stalin’s order - to prepare the ground for the 1st Congress of Soviet Writers, and to do this, to hold among them preparatory work. Gorky created many newspapers and magazines: the book series “History of Factories”, “History of the Civil War”, “Poet’s Library”, “History young man XIX century", the magazine "Literary Studies", he writes the plays "Yegor Bulychev and others" (1932), "Dostigaev and others" (1933).
1934 - Gorky “conducts” the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, giving the main report at it.
1934 - co-editor of the book “Stalin Canal”
In 1925-1936 he wrote the novel “The Life of Klim Samgin,” which was never finished.
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 and his ashes were placed in an urn in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow. Before cremation, M. Gorky's brain 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 “suspicious” by many; there were rumors of poisoning, which, however, were not confirmed. At the funeral, among others, Molotov and Stalin carried Gorky’s coffin. It is interesting that among other accusations against Genrikh Yagoda at the so-called Third Moscow Trial of 1938 was the accusation of poisoning Gorky’s son. According to Yagoda's interrogations, Maxim Gorky was killed on Trotsky's orders, 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), accused of the murders of Gorky and others.

Family

First wife - Ekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova(nee Volozhina).

Son - Maxim Alekseevich Peshkov (1897—1934) + Vvedenskaya, Nadezhda Alekseevna("Timosha")

Peshkova, Marfa Maksimovna + Beria, Sergo Lavrentievich

daughters Nina And Hope, son Sergey

Peshkova, Daria Maksimovna

Second wife - Maria Fedorovna Andreeva(1872-1953; civil marriage)
Long-term life partner - Budberg, Maria Ignatievna

Addresses in St. Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad

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

Bibliography

Novels

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

Stories

1908 - “The Life of an Useless Man.”
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” (fairy tale poem, published in July 1917 in the newspaper “ New life»)
1892 — “Makar Chudra”
1895 - “Chelkash”, “Old Woman Izergil”.
1897 - “Former People”, “The Orlov Spouses”, “Malva”, “Konovalov”.
1898 - “Essays and Stories” (collection)
1899 - “Song of the Falcon” (prose poem), “Twenty-six and one”
1901 - “Song of the Petrel” (prose poem)
1903 - “Man” (prose poem)
1911 - “Tales of Italy”
1912-1917 - “Across Rus'” (cycle of stories)
1924 - “Stories of 1922-1924”
1924 - “Notes from a Diary” (series of stories)

Plays

Journalism

1906 - “My Interviews”, “In America” (pamphlets)
1917-1918 - series of articles " Untimely thoughts"in the newspaper "New Life" (published in 1918 separate publication)
1922 — “On the Russian peasantry”

Initiated the creation of a series of books “History of factories and factories” (IFZ), took the initiative to revive the pre-revolutionary series “Life wonderful people»

Film incarnations

Alexey Lyarsky (“Gorky’s Childhood”, 1938)
Alexey Lyarsky (“In People”, 1938)
Nikolai Valbert (“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 darkness, 1965, The incredible Yehudiel Chlamida, 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)
Nikolai Kachura (“Yesenin”, 2005)
Georgy Taratorkin (“Captive 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 regional children's library bears the name of Gorky, Theatre of Drama, street, as well as a square, in the center of which there is a monument to the writer by sculptor V. I. Mukhina. But the most interesting thing is the museum-apartment of M. Gorky.

In 1934, at the Voronezh aviation plant, a Soviet propaganda passenger multi-seat 8-engine aircraft was built, the largest aircraft of its time with a land landing gear - the ANT-20 Maxim Gorky.

In Moscow there was Maxim Gorky Lane (now Khitrovsky), Maxim Gorky Embankment (now Kosmodamianskaya), Maxim Gorky Square (formerly Khitrovskaya), Gorkovskaya (now Tverskaya) metro station of the Gorkovsko-Zamoskvoretskaya (now Zamoskvoretskaya) line, Gorky Street ( now divided into Tverskaya and 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya streets).

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

()

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

en.wikipedia.org

Biography

Surprisingly, no one still has an accurate idea of much of Gorky’s life. Who knows his biography reliably?
Memories. Bunin I. A.

Alexey Maksimovich came up with a pseudonym for himself. Subsequently, he told me: “I shouldn’t write in literature - Peshkov...” (A. Kalyuzhny) More information about his biography can be found 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 office of the shipping company I. S. Kolchin) - Maxim Savvatyevich Peshkov (1839-1871). Mother - Varvara Vasilievna, nee Kashirina (1842-1879). Having been orphaned early, he spent his childhood years in the house of his grandfather Kashirin (see Kashirin's House). From the age of 11 he was forced to go “to the people”; worked as a “boy” at a store, as a pantry cook on a steamship, as an apprentice in an icon-painting workshop, as a baker, etc.

Youth

* In 1884 he tried to enter Kazan University. I became acquainted with Marxist literature and propaganda work.
* In 1888 - arrested for connections with N. E. Fedoseev’s circle. He was under constant police surveillance. In October 1888, he became a watchman at the Dobrinka station of the Gryaze-Tsaritsyn Railway. Impressions from his stay in Dobrinka will serve as the basis for the autobiographical story “Watchman” and the story “Boredom for the Sake.”
* In January 1889, at a personal request (a complaint in verse), he was transferred to the Borisoglebsk station, then as a weighmaster to the Krutaya station.
* In the spring of 1891, he set out to wander around the country and reached the Caucasus.

Literary and social activity

* In 1892 he first appeared in print with the story “Makar Chudra”. Returning to Nizhny Novgorod, he publishes reviews and feuilletons in Volzhsky Vestnik, Samara Gazeta, Nizhny Novgorod Listok, etc.
* 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 railway train appears on the screen. He rushes like an arrow straight towards you - watch out! It seems that he is about to rush into the darkness in which you are sitting, 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”, “The Orlov Spouses”, “Malva”, “Konovalov”.
* From October 1897 to mid-January 1898, he lived in the village of Kamenka (now the city of Kuvshinovo, Tver Region) in the apartment of his friend Nikolai Zakharovich Vasiliev, who worked at the Kamensk paper factory and led an illegal workers’ Marxist circle. Subsequently, the life impressions of this period served the writer as material for the novel “The Life of Klim Samgin.”
* 1898 - The publishing house of Dorovatsky and A.P. Charushnikov published the first volume of Gorky’s works. In those years, the circulation of the young author's first book rarely exceeded 1,000 copies. A. I. Bogdanovich advised releasing the first two volumes of M. Gorky’s “Essays and Stories” in 1,200 copies each. Publishers “took a chance” and released more. The first volume of the 1st edition of “Essays and Stories” was published in a circulation of 3,000 .m/text 0520.shtml
* 1899 - novel “Foma Gordeev”, prose poem “Song of the Falcon”.
* 1900-1901 - the novel “Three”, personal acquaintance with Chekhov, Tolstoy.
* 1900-1913 - participates in the work of the publishing house "Knowledge"
* March 1901 - “Song of the Petrel” was created by M. Gorky in Nizhny Novgorod. Participation in Marxist workers' circles in Nizhny Novgorod, Sormovo, St. Petersburg, wrote a proclamation calling for the fight against autocracy. Arrested and expelled from Nizhny Novgorod.
“Many people do not consider Gorky a poet, and it’s completely wrong. For example, “The Wallachian Legend” (aka “The Legend of Marco”). I happened to hear something modern song written on this poem. I immediately became interested in whether there would be a last stanza or not. As I expected, she was not there. The line “At least a song remains from Marco” was followed by a vocalise (obviously the song mentioned was meant). But for the sake of this last, Nietzschean stanza, Gorky wrote his ballad based on a fairly typical folklore plot.”
- Vadim Nikolaev, “Notes on Russian Poetry”

According to contemporaries, Nikolai Gumilev highly valued the last stanza of this poem (“Gumilev without gloss”, St. Petersburg, 2009).
* In 1901, M. Gorky turned to drama. Creates the plays “The Bourgeois” (1901), “At the Lower Depths” (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 - election of M. Gorky to honorary academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of belles-lettres. "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 police surveillance.” 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. He was arrested for the revolutionary proclamation and in connection with the execution on January 9, but then released under public pressure. Participant in the revolution of 1905-1907. In the fall 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” and creates the novel “Mother”. Due to 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 outlined (see “The Capri School”).
* 1907 - delegate to the V Congress of the RSDLP.
* 1908 - the play “The Last”, the story “The Life of an Useless Person”.
* 1909 - the stories “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 “Prosveshchenie”, publishes the first collection of proletarian writers. Writes "Tales of Italy".
* 1912-1916 - M. Gorky creates a series of stories and essays that made up the collection “Across Rus'”, autobiographical stories “Childhood”, “In People”. The last part of the trilogy, “My Universities,” 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 famine. In 1917, having disagreed with the Bolsheviks on the issue of the timeliness of the socialist revolution in Russia, he did not undergo re-registration of party members and formally dropped out of it. [source not specified 666 days]

Abroad

* 1921 - M. Gorky’s departure abroad. In Soviet literature, there was a myth that the reason for his departure was the resumption of his illness and the need, at Lenin’s insistence, for treatment abroad. In fact, A. M. Gorky was forced to leave due to worsening 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 - novel “The Artamonov Case”.
* 1928 - at the invitation of the Soviet government and Stalin personally, he tours the country, during which Gorky is shown the achievements of the USSR, which are reflected in the series of essays “Around the Soviet Union.”
* 1931 - Gorky visits the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp and writes a laudatory review of its regime. A fragment of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s work “The Gulag Archipelago” is dedicated to this fact.

Return to the Soviet Union

* 1932 - Gorky returns to the Soviet Union. The government provided him with the former mansion of Ryabushinsky on Spiridonovka, dachas in Gorki and Teselli (Crimea). Here he receives Stalin’s order - to prepare the ground for the 1st Congress of Soviet Writers, and for this to carry out preparatory work among them. Gorky created many newspapers and magazines: the book series “History of Factories”, “History of the Civil War”, “Library of the Poet”, “History of the Young person XIX century", the magazine "Literary Studies", he writes the plays "Yegor Bulychev and others" (1932), "Dostigaev and others" (1933).
* 1934 - Gorky “conducts” the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, giving the main report at it.
* 1934 - co-editor of the book “Stalin Canal”
* In 1925-1936 he wrote the novel “The Life of Klim Samgin,” which was never finished.
* 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 and his ashes were placed in an urn in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow. Before cremation, M. Gorky's brain was removed and taken to the Moscow Brain Institute for further study.

Death

Addresses in St. Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad

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

Bibliography

Novels

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

Stories

* 1908 - “The Life of an Useless Man.”
* 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” (fairy tale poem, published in July 1917 in the newspaper “New Life”)
* 1892 - “Makar Chudra”
* 1895 - “Chelkash”, “Old Woman Izergil”.
* 1897 - “Former People”, “The Orlov Spouses”, “Malva”, “Konovalov”.
* 1898 - “Essays and Stories” (collection)
* 1899 - “Song of the Falcon” (prose poem), “Twenty-six and one”
* 1901 - “Song of the Petrel” (prose poem)
* 1903 - “Man” (prose poem)
* 1911 - “Tales of Italy”
* 1912-1917 - “Across Rus'” (cycle of stories)
* 1924 - “Stories of 1922-1924”
* 1924 - “Notes from a Diary” (series of stories)

Plays

* 1901 - “Bourgeois”
* 1902 - “At the Bottom”
* 1904 - “Summer Residents”
* 1905 - “Children of the Sun”, “Barbarians”
* 1906 - “Enemies”
* 1910 - “Vassa Zheleznova” (reworked in December 1935)
* 1915 - “The Old Man” (first published as a separate book in the publishing house of I.P. 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”

Journalism

* 1906 - “My Interviews”, “In America” (pamphlets)
* 1917-1918 - a series of articles “Untimely Thoughts” in the newspaper “New Life” (published as a separate publication in 1918)
* 1922 - “On the Russian peasantry”

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

Film incarnations

* Alexey Lyarsky (“Gorky’s Childhood”, 1938)
* Alexey Lyarsky (“In People”, 1938)
* Nikolai Valbert (“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 darkness, 1965, The incredible Yehudiel Chlamida, 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)
* Nikolai Kachura (“Yesenin”, 2005)
* Georgy Taratorkin (“Captive 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, drama theater, street, and also 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 interesting thing is the museum-apartment of M. Gorky.
* In 1934, at the Voronezh aviation plant, a Soviet propaganda passenger multi-seat 8-engine aircraft was built, the largest aircraft of its time with a land landing gear - the ANT-20 "Maxim Gorky".
* In Moscow there was Maxim Gorky Lane (now Khitrovsky), Maxim Gorky Embankment (now Kosmodamianskaya), Maxim Gorky Square (formerly Khitrovskaya), Gorkovskaya (now Tverskaya) metro station of the Gorkovsko-Zamoskvoretskaya (now Zamoskvoretskaya) line, Gorky Street (now divided into Tverskaya and 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya streets).

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

* 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 named after Maxim Gorky.
* Primorsky Academic Regional Theater named after M. Gorky in Vladivostok.
* Azerbaijan Theater young viewer them. M. Gorky in Baku.
* Russian Drama Theater named after M. Gorky in Astana.
* Until 1993 Turkmen State University in Ashgabat was named after M. Gorky (now named after Magtymguly).
* The Tula Drama Theater is named after M. Gorky
* National Academic Drama Theater named after M. Gorky (Russian theater) in Minsk
* The main university of Yekaterinburg is named after Gorky (Ural State University 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).
* Park named after Maxim Gorky in Odessa, Ukraine.
* Donetsk State Medical University. M. Gorky, Donetsk, Ukraine.

Gallery

Maxim Gorky on postage stamps

Literature about life and creativity

* Korney Chukovsky New works by Gorky
* Korney 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. - Reserved Zvenigorod land. - 3rd ed. - M.: Moscow. worker, 1982
2. Memories. Bunin I. A.
3. Biography on Biographer.ru
4. Peshkov, Alexey Maksimovich // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg: 1890-1907.
5. GALO: Alexey Maksimovich Gorky. To the 140th anniversary of his birth.
6. Shilin N.K. Depot: History of the locomotive depot of the Maxim Gorky station of the Volgograd branch of the Volga Railway. - Volgograd: State Institution “Publisher”, 2001, 592 p.; 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 shows organized by Charles Aumont at the Nizhny Novgorod fair “Nizhny Novgorod leaf”, 1896, July 4 (16), no. 182, p. 31.
8. M. Arias Maxim Gorky’s Odyssey on the “Island of Sirens”: “Russian Capri” as a socio-cultural problem. (Russian) // Toronto Slavic Quarterly. - Summer 2006. - No. 17.
9. Thus, it is known that in 1918 Gorky sent money to V.V. Rozanov, a beggar in Sergiev Posad
10. Solzhenitsyn, A. I. GULAG Archipelago, 1918-1956. [In 3 books], Parts III-IV: experience artistic research// A. I. Solzhenitsyn. - Astrel, 2009. - 560 p. - Art. 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 named after. M. Gorky St. Petersburg State University
15. Catalog numbers TsFA and Scott.

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 the officers, a cabinetmaker. In recent years he worked as a manager of a shipping office, but died of cholera. Mother, Varvara Vasilyevna Kashirina (1842-79) - from a bourgeois family; Having become a widow at an early age, she remarried and died of consumption. The writer spent his childhood in the house of his grandfather Vasily Vasilyevich Kashirin, who in his youth was a barracks worker, then became rich, became the owner of a dyeing establishment, and went bankrupt in his old age. The grandfather taught the boy from church books, grandmother Akulina Ivanovna introduced her grandson to folk songs and fairy tales, but most importantly, replaced the mother, “saturating,” in the words of Gorky himself, “strong strength for 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 weighmaster.

Gorky did not receive a real education, graduating only from a vocational school. His thirst for knowledge was quenched independently; he grew up “self-taught.” Hard work (a boatman on a ship, a “boy” in a store, a student in an icon-painting workshop, a foreman at fair buildings, etc.) and early hardships taught him a good knowledge of life and inspired dreams of reorganizing 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 a source of moral torment. In 1887 he tried to commit suicide. He took part in revolutionary propaganda, “went among the people,” wandered around Rus', 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 rise to faith in Man and his potential. From the collision of contradictory principles, a romantic philosophy was born, in which Man (the ideal essence) did not coincide with man (the real being) and even entered into tragic conflict. Gorky's humanism carried rebellious and atheistic features. His favorite reading was the biblical Book of Job, where “God teaches man how to be equal to God and how to stand calmly 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 Chlamida). Pseudonym M. Gorky (signed letters and documents real name- A. Peshkov; designations "A. M. Gorky" and "Alexey Maksimovich Gorky" contaminate the pseudonym with the real name) appeared in 1892 in the Tiflis newspaper "Caucasus", where the first story "Makar Chudra" was published. In 1895, thanks to the help of V.G. Korolenko, he was published in the 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. Gorky's fame grew with incredible speed and soon became equal to the popularity of A.P. Chekhov and L.N. Tolstoy.

From the very beginning, a discrepancy emerged 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 what they contain social meaning did not work in relation to early Gorky. The reader was least interested in social aspects his prose, he looked for and found in them a mood in tune with the time. According to the 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” that the author endowed the heroes with at will, not always consistent with the “truth of life”. In connection with his texts, critics solved not social issues and problems of their literary reflection, but directly the “question of 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 critics compared to Nietzsche’s “superman”. All this allows, contrary to the traditional view, to consider him more of a modernist than a realist.

Gorky's social position was radical. He was arrested more than once; in 1902, Nicholas II ordered the annulment of 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 ranks of 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 literary process. In 1901 he became the head of the publishing house of the Knowledge Partnership and soon began to publish Collections of the Knowledge Partnership, where I. A. Bunin, L. N. Andreev, A. I. Kuprin, V. V. Veresaev, E. N. were published. .Chirikov, N.D.Teleshov, A.S.Serafimovich and others.

Vertex early creativity, the play “At the Bottom”, owes its fame to a great extent to the production of K. S. Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theater (1902; played by Stanislavsky, V. I. Kachalov, I. M. Moskvin, O. L. Knipper-Chekhova and others .) In 1903, the performance “At the Bottom” with Richard Wallentin in the role of Satin took place at the Berlin Kleines Theater. Gorky's other plays - "The 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 forced us to reconsider the idea that had developed in criticism about the “end of Gorky” (D. V. Filosofov), which was caused by his passion for political struggle and the ideas of socialism, reflected in the story “Mother” (1906; second edition 1907). He creates the stories “The Town of Okurov” (1909), “Childhood” (1913-14), “In People” (1915-16), and the cycle of stories “Across Rus'” (1912-17). The story “Confession” (1908), highly appreciated by A. A. Blok, caused controversy in criticism. In it, for the first time, the theme of god-building was heard, which Gorky preached with A.V. Lunacharsky and A.A. Bogdanov at the Capri party school for workers, which caused his differences with Lenin, who hated “flirting with the little god.”

First World War had a hard impact on state of mind Gorky. It symbolized the beginning of the historical collapse of his idea of “collective reason,” which he came to after disappointment with Nietzschean individualism (according to T. Mann, Gorky built a bridge from Nietzsche to socialism). Boundless faith in human reason, 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 lice”, “cannon fodder”, when people went wild before our eyes and the human mind was powerless before logic historical events. Gorky's 1914 poem contains the lines:
“How will we live then?
What will this horror bring us?
What now from hatred of people
Will he save my soul?

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 drown the remaining islands of culture. In “Untimely Thoughts” (a series of articles in the newspaper “Novaya Zhizn”; 1917-18; published as a separate publication 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 justified, then explained the ferocious treatment of these people by the Bolsheviks. The inconsistency of his position was also reflected in his book “On the Russian Peasantry” (1922). Gorky’s undoubted merit was his 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 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 the creative intelligentsia, described in the novel “The Crazy Ship” by O. D. Forsh and the book by K. A) were conceived Fedina "Gorky 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 Lenin’s too persistent advice. Settled in Sorrento (Italy), without breaking 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 the 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 quest of Russian prose of the 20s.

Return of Gorky to the Soviet Union

In 1928, Gorky made a “test” trip to the Soviet Union (in connection with the celebration organized 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 station decided the matter; Gorky returned to his homeland. As an artist, he completely immersed himself in creating “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 headed the creation of a collective book of writers glorifying the construction by prisoners of the White Sea-Baltic Canal. Stalin. He organized and supported many enterprises: the publishing house “Academia”, the book series “History of Factories”, “History of the Civil War”, the magazine “Literary Studies”, as well as the Literary Institute, then 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 still not found documentary confirmation. 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 into the family of a carpenter. He received his primary education at the Slobodsko-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 and walked around half of Russia. In September 1892, when Gorky lived in Tiflis, his first story, “Makar Chudra,” was published in the newspaper Kavkaz. 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 “By the Way.” In the same year, his famous stories such as “Old Woman Izergil”, “Chelkash”, “Once in the Autumn”, “The Case with the Clasps” and others appeared, and the famous “Song of the Falcon” was published in one of the issues of the Samara Newspaper. . Gorky's feuilletons, essays and stories soon attracted attention. His name became known to readers, and fellow journalists appreciated the strength and ease of his pen.

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. 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 mass reader. The publication was an extraordinary success and sold out instantly. In 1899, a new edition in three volumes was sold 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 horizon of Russian literature. In Germany, six publishing companies immediately began to translate and publish his works. In 1901, the novel “Three” and “Song of the Petrel” appeared. The latter was immediately banned by censorship, but this did not in the least prevent its spread. According to contemporaries, “Burevestnik” was reprinted in every city on a hectograph, on typewriters, copied by hand, and read at evenings among young people and in workers’ circles. Many people knew it by heart. But truly world fame came to Gorky after he turned to the theater. His first play, “The Bourgeois” (1901), staged in 1902. Art Theater, then went on in many cities. In December 1902, the premiere of the new play “At the Depths” took place, which had an absolutely fantastic, incredible success. Its production by the Moscow Art Theater caused an avalanche of enthusiastic responses. In 1903, the play began to march across the stages of theaters in Europe. It was a triumphant success in England, Italy, Austria, Holland, Norway, Bulgaria and Japan. “At the Lower Depths” was warmly welcomed in Germany. The Reinhardt Theater in Berlin alone played it to full houses more than 500 times!

The secret of young Gorky's success

The secret of young Gorky's exceptional success was explained primarily by his special worldview. 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 lay 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 and themes and plots began to become obsolete great literature XIX century The tragic note, which was always present in the works of famous Russian classics and gave their work a special - mournful, suffering flavor, no longer awakened the previous uplift in society, but caused only pessimism. The Russian (and not only Russian) reader has grown tired of the image of a Suffering Man, a Humiliated Man, a Man Who Must Be Pityed, moving from the pages of one work to another. There was an urgent need for a new positive hero, and Gorky was the first to respond to it - he brought out on the pages of his stories, tales and plays a Man-Fighter, a Man capable of Overcoming the Evil of the World. His cheerful, hopeful voice sounded loudly and confidently in the stuffy atmosphere of Russian timelessness and boredom, the general tonality of which was determined by works like “Ward No. 6” by Chekhov or “The Golovlevs” by Saltykov-Shchedrin. 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 had created such a passionate and sublime hymn to the glory of Man. For in Gorky’s Universe there is no God at all; all of it is occupied by Man, who has grown to cosmic proportions. Man, according to Gorky, is the Absolute spirit, which should be worshiped, into which all manifestations of existence go and from which they originate. (“Man is the truth!” exclaims one of his heroes. “...This is huge! In this are all the beginnings and ends... Everything is in man, everything is for man! Only man exists, everything else is his business hands and his brain! Man! This is great! It sounds... proud! ") However, depicting a “breaking out” Man in his early works, a Man breaking with the bourgeois environment, Gorky was not yet fully aware of the ultimate goal of this self-affirmation. Thinking intensely about the meaning of life, he initially 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 Humanity. By this he meant not just an ideal, well-ordered society that unites all the people of the Earth on the path to new achievements; He saw humanity as a single transpersonal being, as a “collective mind,” a new Divinity in which the abilities of many individual people would be integrated. It was a dream of a distant future, the beginning of which had to be made today. Gorky found its most complete embodiment in socialist theories.

Gorky's fascination with revolution

Gorky's passion for revolution logically followed both from his convictions and from his relationship with Russian authorities who couldn't stay 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 writer’s eyes, 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 persistent 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 cash bail. In the autumn of the same year he became a member of the RSDLP, which he remained until 1917.

Gorky in exile

After the suppression of the December armed uprising, which Gorky openly sympathized with, he had to emigrate from Russia. On instructions from the Party Central Committee, he went to America to collect money for the Bolsheviks through campaigning. 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 a central idea of resurrection from darkness human soul, is filled with Christian symbolism: during the course of the action, the analogy between the revolutionaries and the apostles of primitive Christianity is played out many times; Pavel Vlasov's friends merge in his mother's dreams into the image of a collective Christ, with the son in the center, Pavel himself 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." Paul's path, as we know, ends with the sacrifice of the cross. All these points were deeply thought out by Gorky. He was confident that the element of faith was very important in introducing the people to socialist ideas (in his 1906 articles “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 happened many times in world history, can die and give way to new ones if the people believe in them. The motive of seeking God was repeated by Gorky in his story “Confession” written in 1908. Its hero, disillusioned with the official religion, painfully searches for God and finds him in merging with the working people, who thus turn 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) , autobiographical story “Childhood” (1913).

Return of Gorky to Russia

At the end of December 1913, taking advantage of the general amnesty declared on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanovs, Gorky returned to Russia and settled in St. Petersburg. In 1914, he founded his magazine “Letopis” and the publishing house “Parus”. Here in 1916 his autobiographical story “In People” and a series of essays “Across Rus'” were published.

Gorky accepted the February revolution of 1917 with all his heart, but his attitude towards subsequent events, and especially towards the October revolution, was very ambiguous. In general, Gorky’s worldview after the 1905 revolution underwent an evolution and became more skeptical. Despite the fact that his faith in Man and faith in socialism remained unchanged, he doubted that the modern Russian worker and modern Russian peasant were able to perceive bright socialist ideas as they should. Already in 1905, he was struck by the roar of the awakened national element, which broke out through all social prohibitions and threatened to drown the miserable islands material culture. Later, several articles appeared defining Gorky’s attitude towards the Russian people. His article “Two Souls,” which appeared in “Chronicles” at the end of 1915, made a great impression on his contemporaries. While paying tribute to the richness of the soul of the Russian people, Gorky still 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 necessarily needs an “external lever” capable of moving it from a dead point. 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 played by the intelligentsia, primarily revolutionary, but also scientific, technical and creative. She must bring to the people Western culture and instill in him an activity that will kill the “lazy Asian” in his soul. Culture and science were, according to Gorky, precisely the force (and the intelligentsia the bearer of this force) that “will allow us to overcome the abomination of life and tirelessly, 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 revolution (a reasonable transformation of society) should be fundamentally different from the “Russian revolt” (meaninglessly destroying it). Gorky was convinced that the country was now not ready for a creative socialist revolution, that first the people “must be calcined and cleansed of the slavery nurtured in them by the slow fire of culture.”

Gorky's attitude to the 1917 revolution

When the Provisional Government was finally 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 relationship with Lenin became extremely strained. The bloody horrors of the Civil War that followed made a depressing impression on Gorky and freed him from his last illusions in relation to the Russian peasant. In his book “On the Russian Peasantry” (1922), published in Berlin, Gorky included many bitter, but sober and valuable observations on the negative aspects of the Russian character. Looking the truth in the eye, he wrote: “I attribute the cruelty of the forms of the revolution exclusively to the cruelty of the Russian people.” But of all social strata In 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 to Capri

Meanwhile, overwork and bad climate caused an exacerbation of tuberculosis in Gorky. In the summer of 1921 he was forced to leave for Capri again. Next years were filled with hard work for him. Gorky writes the final part of the autobiographical trilogy “My Universities” (1923), the novel “The Artamonov Case” (1925), several short stories and the first two volumes of the epic “The Life of Klim Samgin” (1927-1928) - a picture of intellectual and social life Russia 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 eagerly sought to get to know this unfamiliar country and immediately began traveling around the Soviet Union. The result of these travels was a series of essays “Around the Union of Soviets.”

Gorky's performance during these years was amazing. In addition to his multilateral editorial and social work, 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 a dramatic trilogy about the revolution of 1917. He managed to complete only two plays: “Yegor Bulychev and Others” (1932), “Dostigaev and Others” (1933). Also, the fourth volume of Samgin remained unfinished (the third was published in 1931), on which Gorky worked in recent years. This novel is important because in it Gorky says goodbye to his illusions in relation to the Russian intelligentsia. Samghin’s catastrophe in life is the catastrophe of the entire Russian intelligentsia, which 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 Muscovite kingdom. For the triumph of the ideals of socialism, violence had to be used. Therefore, a new Peter was needed.

One must think that the awareness of these truths largely reconciled Gorky with socialist reality. It is known that he did not like Stalin very much - he was much more sympathetic to Bukharin and Kamenev. However, his relationship with the Secretary General remained smooth until his death and was not marred by a single major quarrel. Moreover, Gorky put his enormous authority at the service of the Stalinist regime. In 1929, together with some other writers, he toured Stalin’s camps and visited the most terrible of them on 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 taking on a truly socialist character. This is an almost geological revolution and it is greater, immeasurably greater and deeper than everything that has been done by the party. A system of life that has existed for millennia is being destroyed, a system that created a man who is extremely ugly and unique 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 portrays sabotage engineers.

We must remember, however, that in the last years of his life Gorky was seriously ill and he did not know much of what was happening in the country. Starting from 1935, under the pretext of illness, inconvenient people were not allowed to see Gorky, their letters were not given to him, and newspaper issues were printed especially for him, in which the most odious materials were absent. Gorky was burdened by this guardianship and said that “he was surrounded,” but he could no longer do anything. He died on June 18, 1936.

K.V.Ryzhov