Writer Maxim Gorky autobiography. Gorky's early romantic works

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Maksim Gorky - pseudonym Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov, the incorrect use of the writer's real name in combination with a pseudonym is also well-established - Alexei Maksimovich Gorky, (March 16 (28), 1868, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian empire- June 18, 1936, Gorki, Moscow region, USSR) - Russian writer, prose writer, playwright. One of the most significant and famous Russian writers and thinkers in the world. On the turn of XIX and XX centuries, he became famous as the author of works with a revolutionary tendency, personally close to the Social Democrats and in opposition to the tsarist regime.

Gorky was initially skeptical October revolution. However, after several years of cultural work in Soviet Russia(in Petrograd he headed the World Literature publishing house, interceded with the Bolsheviks for those arrested) and life abroad in the 1920s (Berlin, Marienbad, Sorrento), returned to the USSR, where in last years life received official recognition as the founder of socialist realism.

Alexei Maksimovich 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 Savvatevich Peshkov (1840-1871), who was the son of a soldier demoted from officers. M. S. Peshkov in the last years of his life worked as a manager of a steamship office, died of cholera. Mother - Varvara Vasilievna, nee Kashirina (1842-1879) - from a bourgeois family; widowed early, remarried, died of consumption. Gorky's grandfather Savvaty Peshkov rose to the rank of officer, but was demoted and exiled to Siberia "for ill-treatment of the lower ranks", after which he signed up as a tradesman. His son Maxim ran away from his father five times and left home forever at the age of 17. 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”: he worked as a “boy” at a store, as a buffet utensil on a steamer, as a baker, studied at an icon-painting workshop, etc.

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

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.

1897 - " former people"," Orlov's Spouses "," Malva "," Konovalov ".
From October 1897 to mid-January 1898, he lived in the village of Kamenka (now the city of Kuvshinovo, Tver Region) in the apartment of his friend Nikolai Zakharovich Vasiliev, who worked at the Kamensk paper factory and led an illegal working Marxist circle. Subsequently, the life impressions of this period served as material for the writer's novel "The Life of Klim Samgin".
1898 - The publishing house of Dorovatsky and A.P. Charushnikov published the first volume of Gorky's works. In those years, the circulation of the first book young author rarely exceeded 1000 copies. A. I. Bogdanovich advised to publish the first two volumes of "Essays and Stories" by M. Gorky, 1200 copies each. Publishers "took a chance" and released more. The first volume of the 1st edition of Essays and Stories was published in 3,000 copies.
1899 - the novel "Foma Gordeev", a poem in prose "The Song of the Falcon".
1900-1901 - the novel "Three", a personal acquaintance with 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 the Marxist workers' circles of Nizhny Novgorod, Sormov, St. Petersburg; wrote a proclamation calling for a fight against the autocracy. Arrested and expelled from Nizhny Novgorod.

In 1901, M. Gorky turned to dramaturgy. Creates the plays "Petty Bourgeois" (1901), "At the bottom" (1902). In 1902, he became the godfather and adoptive father of the Jew Zinovy ​​Sverdlov, who took the surname Peshkov and converted to Orthodoxy. This was necessary in order for Zinovy ​​to receive the right to live in Moscow.
February 21 - the election of M. Gorky to the honorary academicians of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature.

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. For the revolutionary proclamation and in connection with the execution on January 9, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Famous artists G. Hauptman, A. France, O. Rodin, T. Hardy, J. Meredith, Italian writers G. Deledda, M. Rapisardi, E. de Amicis, composer J. Puccini, philosopher B. Croce and other representatives of creative and scientific world from Germany, France, England. Student demonstrations took place in Rome. On February 14, 1905, under public pressure, he was released on bail. Member of the revolution 1905-1907. In November 1905 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.

1906, February - Gorky and Maria Andreeva set off through Europe to America. Abroad, the writer creates satirical pamphlets about the "bourgeois" culture of France and the United States ("My Interviews", "In America"). He writes the play "Enemies", creates the novel "Mother". Because of tuberculosis, he settled in Italy on the island of Capri, where he lived for 7 years (from 1906 to 1913). He settled in the prestigious hotel Quisisana. From March 1909 to February 1911 he lived at the Spinola villa (now Bering), stayed at the villas (they have commemorative plaques about his stay) Blasius (from 1906 to 1909) and Serfina (now Pierina) ). On Capri, Gorky wrote "Confession" (1908), where his philosophical differences with Lenin and rapprochement with the god-builders Lunacharsky and Bogdanov were clearly identified.

1907 - a delegate with an advisory vote to the V Congress of the RSDLP.
1908 - the play "The Last", the story "The Life of an Unnecessary Man".
1909 - the novels "The Town of Okurov", "The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin".
1913 - Gorky edits the Bolshevik newspapers Zvezda and Pravda, art department Bolshevik journal Enlightenment, publishes the first collection of proletarian writers. Writes Tales of Italy.
At the end of December 1913, after the announcement of a general amnesty on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanovs, Gorky returned to Russia and settled in St. Petersburg.

1914 - founded the Chronicle magazine and the Parus publishing house.
1912-1916 - M. Gorky creates a series of stories and essays that compiled the collection "Across Russia", autobiographical novels "Childhood", "In People". In 1916, the publishing house "Sail" published the autobiographical story "In People" and a series of essays "Across Russia". The last part of the My Universities trilogy was written in 1923.
1917-1919 - M. Gorky does a lot of public and political work, criticizes the methods of the Bolsheviks, condemns their attitude towards the old intelligentsia, saves a number of its representatives from the repressions of the Bolsheviks and hunger.

Emigration

1921 - M. Gorky's departure abroad. official reason departure was the resumption of his illness and the need, at the insistence of Lenin, to be treated abroad. According to another version, Gorky was forced to leave due to the aggravation of ideological differences with the established government. In 1921-1923. lived in Helsingfors (Helsinki), Berlin, Prague.
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 Soviet Union».
1929 - 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 USSR

(From November 1935 to June 1936)

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 Soviet writers, and for this to carry out preparatory work among them.
Gorky created many newspapers and magazines: the book series "The History of Factories and Plants", "The History of the Civil War", "The Poet's Library", "The History of the Young human XIX centuries”, the journal “Literary Studies”, he writes the plays “Egor Bulychev and Others” (1932), “Dostigaev and Others” (1933).

1934 - Gorky holds the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, speaks at it with the main report.
1934 - co-editor of the book "Stalin's Channel".
In 1925-1936 he wrote the novel "The Life of Klim Samgin", which remained unfinished.
On May 11, 1934, Gorky's son, Maxim Peshkov, unexpectedly dies. M. Gorky died on June 18, 1936 in Gorki, having outlived his son by a little more than two years.
After his death, he was cremated, the ashes were placed in an urn in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow.

The circumstances of the death of Maxim Gorky and his son are considered by many to be "suspicious", there were rumors of poisoning, which, however, were not confirmed. 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 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.

“Medicine is innocent here ...” This is exactly what the doctors Levin and Pletnev, who treated the writer in recent months of his life, and later brought in as defendants in the process of the "Right-Trotsky bloc". Soon, however, they "recognized" the deliberately wrong treatment...
and even "showed" that their accomplices were nurses who gave the patient up to 40 injections of camphor per day. But as it was in fact, there is no consensus.
The historian L. Fleischlan directly writes: "The fact of Gorky's murder can be considered irrevocably established." V. Khodasevich, on the contrary, believes in the natural cause of the death of a proletarian writer.

On the night when Maxim Gorky was dying, a terrible thunderstorm broke out at the government dacha in Gorki-10.

The autopsy was carried out right here, in the bedroom, on the table. The doctors were in a hurry. “When he died,” Gorky’s secretary Pyotr Kryuchkov recalled, “the attitude of the doctors towards him changed. He became just a corpse for them ...

They treated him horribly. The orderly began to change his clothes and turned him from side to side, like a log. The autopsy began ... Then they began to wash the insides. The incision was sewn up somehow with a simple twine. The brain was put in a bucket ... "

This bucket, intended for the Institute of the Brain, Kryuchkov personally carried to the car.

In Kryuchkov's memoirs there is a strange entry: "Alexey Maksimovich died on the 8th."

Ekaterina Peshkova, the writer's widow, recalls: "June 8, 6 pm. Alexei Maksimovich's condition worsened so much that the doctors, who had lost hope, warned us that the near end was inevitable ... Alexei Maksimovich - in a chair with eyes closed, with his head bowed, leaning now on one, then on the other hand, pressed to his temple and resting his elbow on the arm of the chair.

The pulse was barely noticeable, uneven, breathing weakened, the face and ears and limbs of the hands turned blue. After a while, as we entered, hiccups began, restless movements of his hands, with which he seemed to be pushing something away or filming something ... "

And suddenly the mise-en-scene changes... New faces appear. They were waiting in the living room. Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov enter with a cheerful gait to the resurrected Gorky. They had already been informed that Gorky was dying. They came to say goodbye. Behind the scenes - the head of the NKVD Heinrich Yagoda. He arrived before Stalin. The leader didn't like it.

"And why is this one hanging out here? So that he wouldn't be here."

Stalin behaves in the house in a businesslike way. Shuganul Genrikh, scared Kryuchkov. "Why so many people? Who is responsible for this? Do you know what we can do to you?"

The "owner" has arrived... The leading party is his! All relatives and friends become only a corps de ballet.

When Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov entered the bedroom, Gorky came to his senses so much that they started talking about literature. Gorky began to praise women writers, mentioned Karavaeva - and how many of them, how many more will appear, and everyone should be supported ... Stalin jokingly besieged Gorky: "We'll talk about business when you get better.
Thinking of getting sick, get better soon. Or maybe there is wine in the house, we would drink a glass to your health.

They brought wine... They all drank... As they left, at the door, Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov waved their hands. When they left, Gorky seemed to say: "What good guys! How much strength they have ..."

But how much can one trust these memoirs of Peshkova? In 1964, when asked by the American journalist Isaac Levin about Gorky's death, she replied: "Don't ask me about it! I won't be able to sleep for three days..."

The second time Stalin and his comrades came to the terminally ill Gorky on June 10 at two in the morning. But why? Gorky was asleep. No matter how afraid the doctors were, they did not let Stalin in. Stalin's third visit took place on 12 June. Gorky did not sleep. The doctors gave ten minutes to talk. What were they talking about? About Bolotnikov's peasant uprising... We moved on to the position of the French peasantry.

It turns out that on June 8, the main concern of the Secretary General and Gorky, who returned from the other world, were writers, and on the 12th, French peasants became. All this is somehow very strange.

The visits of the leader seemed to magically enliven Gorky. It was as if he did not dare to die without Stalin's permission. It's unbelievable, but Budberg will be blunt about it:
"He died, in fact, on the 8th, and if not for a visit to Stalin, he would hardly have returned to life."

Stalin was not a member of the Gorky family. So the nighttime intrusion attempt was driven by necessity. And on the 8th, and the 10th, and the 12th, Stalin needed or straight Talk with Gorky, or steely confidence that such a frank conversation would not take place with someone else. For example, with Louis Aragon, who was traveling from France. What would Gorky say, what statement could he make?

After Gorky's death, Kryuchkov was accused of having "killed" Gorky's son Maxim Peshkov, along with doctors Levin and Pletnev, on the instructions of Yagoda, by "wrecking methods of treatment". But why?

If we follow the testimony of other defendants, the "customers" - Bukharin, Rykov and Zinoviev - had a political calculation. In this way, they allegedly wanted to hasten the death of Gorky himself, fulfilling the task of their "leader" Trotsky. Nevertheless, even at this trial, it was not about the direct murder of Gorky. This version would be too incredible, because the patient was surrounded by 17 (!) Doctors.

One of the first to talk about the poisoning of Gorky was the revolutionary émigré B.I. Nikolaevsky. Allegedly, Gorky was presented with a bonbonniere with poisoned sweets. But the candy version doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Gorky did not like sweets, but he loved to treat them to guests, orderlies and, finally, his beloved granddaughters. Thus, anyone around Gorky could be poisoned with sweets, except for himself. Only an idiot would think of such a murder. Neither Stalin nor Yagoda were idiots.

There is no evidence of the murder of Gorky and his son Maxim. Meanwhile, tyrants also have the right to the presumption of innocence. Stalin committed enough crimes to hang on him one more - unproven.

The reality is this: on June 18, 1936, the great Russian writer Maxim Gorky died. His body, contrary to the will to bury him next to his son in the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent, was cremated by order of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the urn with the ashes was placed in the Kremlin wall.

Softmixer.com›2011/06/blog-post_18.html

The purpose of this article is to find out the true reason for the death of the Russian writer ALEKSEY MAKSIMOVICH PESHKOV by his FULL NAME code.

Watch in advance "Logicology - about the fate of man".

Consider the FULL NAME code tables. \If there is a shift in numbers and letters on your screen, adjust the image scale\.

16 22 47 58 73 76 77 89 95 106 124 130 140 153 154 165 183 193 206 221 224 234 258
P ESH K OVA A L E K S E Y M A K S I M O V I C
258 242 236 211 200 185 182 181 169 163 152 134 128 118 105 104 93 75 65 52 37 34 24

1 13 19 30 48 54 64 77 78 89 107 117 130 145 148 158 182 198 204 229 240 255 258
ALEKSEY M A K S I M O V I CH P E SH K O V
258 257 245 239 228 210 204 194 181 180 169 151 141 128 113 110 100 76 60 54 29 18 3

PESHKOV ALEXEY MAKSIMOVICH \u003d 258 \u003d NATURAL DEATH.

258 \u003d 77-LACK OF \ Oxygen \ + 181- LACK OF OXYGEN.

258 = OXYGEN STARVATION MYO \ karda \.

258 \u003d 165-MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION\ a\ + 93-INFARCTION.

258 \u003d 58-FROM IN \\ infarction ... \ + 200-FROM MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION \ a \.

258 = HYPOXIA OF THE MYOCARDIAL HEART \ a \.

258 \u003d 228-LIDING TO DEATH HEART + 30- ... CT (the end of the word coming towards the HEART).

Let's check this statement:

10 24 45 46 63 74 93
I N F A R C T
93 83 69 48 47 30 19

We see the numbers 19, 30, 48, 93

Let's decrypt individual columns:

89 = DEATH
_____
181 = 77-SHORT + 104-OXYGEN

198 = SUDDEN DEATH
_____________________________
76 = LACK OF Oxygen \

145 = DEAD
___________________________________________________
128 \u003d FROM HYPOXIA \u003d MYOCARDIA WITHOUT CIS / LORD \ \u003d FROM INFARCTION

140 \u003d MYOCARDIA WITHOUT ACID / OROD \
__________________________________
128 \u003d MYOCARDIA WITHOUT KIS\ loroda \

193 = MYOCARDIA WITHOUT OXYGEN
__________________________________
75 = HEART

73 = MYOCARDIA
___________________________________
200 = FROM MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION \ a \

154 = MYOCARDIAL FASTING \ a \
________________________________
105 = FASTING MI\okarda\

165 = NOT ENOUGH
_______________________
104 = OXYGEN

Reference:

Myocardial hypoxia is a condition in which the heart muscle, and the myocardium - this is the muscle of the heart, does not receive the right amount of oxygen.
ddhealth.ru›bolezni-i-lechenie/1190…miocarda

DATE OF DEATH code: 06/18/1936. This is \u003d 18 + 06 + 19 + 36 \u003d 79 \u003d FROM HYPO \ xii \ = FROM INF \ arcta \.

258 = 79 + 179- THE END HAS COME.

Code of the full DATE OF DEATH = JUNE 226-EIGHTEENTH + 55-\ 19 + 36 \-\ code of the YEAR OF DEATH \-DIES = 281.

281 = 75-HEART + 206-OXYGEN HUNGER = HEART ENDED.

281 - 258-\ FULL NAME code \ \u003d 23 \u003d MI \ ocard \.

Code for the number of full YEARS OF LIFE = 177-SIXTY + 84-EIGHT = 261 = SUDDEN MYOCAR INFARCTION \ yes \.

Let's look at the column:

89 = DEATH
______________________________
180 = SIXTY B \ eight \

180 - 89 = 91 = DYING.

Reviews

Are you sure that he is a great Russian??? Very doubtful...
Maxim Gorky (real name and surname - Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov; 1868-1936) thanks to his pre-revolutionary writings, enjoyed a reputation as a friend of the poor, a fighter for social justice. Meanwhile, sympathy for people of the social “bottom” merged in these works with arguments that all Russian life is continuous “ lead abomination"(" The town of Okurov "," The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin ", etc.). Gorky argued that the Russian soul is by its very nature "cowardly" and "morbidly evil" (he considered the disgusting old voluptuous Fyodor Karamazov from Dostoevsky's novel to be the most successful portrait of it). He wrote about "the sadistic cruelty inherent in the Russian people" (an afterword to the book by S. Gusev-Orenburgsky on Jewish pogroms in Ukraine, 1923). Perhaps not a single publicist wrote with such hostility about any nation - except perhaps Hitler's ideologists about the Jews. Such accusations as expressed by Gorky in the work "On the Russian Peasantry" are brought only to those whom it is decided to destroy.
And Gorky accepted in this destruction direct participation. In 1905 he joined the RSDLP. In 1917, having parted with the Bolsheviks on the issue of the timeliness of their coup, he formally remained outside the party. He was rich, could afford from 1906 to 1914 to live in a villa on about. Capri and donate large sums to the party fund. He financed the Leninist newspapers Iskra and Vperyod. During the December rebellion of 1905, his Moscow apartment, guarded by the Caucasian squad, became a workshop where bombs were made; where they brought weapons for the militants. In 1906, Gorky went on a tour of America, collected about 10 thousand dollars for the Bolsheviks. After the newspapers printed his proclamation "Don't give money to the Russian government," the US refused to give Russia a loan of half a billion dollars. Gorky thanked America by describing it as a gloomy "country of the yellow devil."
After 1917, Gorky continued to cooperate with the Bolsheviks. In words, often criticizing their policies (with their full permission), he actually took part in their actions. For example, in 1919, on behalf of the Bolsheviks, he formed an expert Commission, the conclusions of which served as the basis for the export of many works of art abroad. This ruined the largest art repositories in Russia.
Although Gorky understood that “the commissars treat Russia as material for experiment” and that “Bolshevism is a national misfortune,” he continued to be on friendly terms with the new government and with its leader, in the essay “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” (1920; not to be confused with the later “V. I. Lenin”) equated them with saints (I. A. Bunin called this article a “shameless akathist”).
From 1921 to 1931 Gorky lived abroad, mainly in Italy. Even from abroad, the proletarian writer consecrated with his authority death sentences handed down on absurd charges. Returning to the USSR, he energetically joined in the all-out hunt for imaginary "enemies" and "spies." In 1929–1931 Gorky regularly published articles in Pravda, which later compiled the collection Let's Be on Guard! They urge readers to look around them for wreckers who have secretly betrayed the cause of communism. The most famous of these articles is "If the enemy does not surrender, he is destroyed" (1930); its title became a kind of motto for all Soviet politics. At the same time, Gorky, like the punitive organs that admired him, did not need any evidence to attach the label “enemy”. The worst enemies, in his opinion, are those against whom there is no evidence. “Gorky not only sings in the choir of accusers, he writes music for this choir,” says Swiss researcher J. Niva.
The language of these articles by the "humanist writer" is striking: people here are constantly referred to as flies, tapeworms, parasites, semi-human beings, degenerates. “There are traitors, traitors, spies among the masses of the workers of the Union of Soviets… It is only natural that the workers’ and peasants’ power beats its enemies like a louse.” At the same time, Gorky praised the "historically and scientifically substantiated, truly universal, proletarian humanism of Marx - Lenin - Stalin" (article "Proletarian Humanism"); admired “how simple and accessible the wise comrade Stalin” (“Letter to the delegates of the All-Union Congress of Collective Farm Shock Workers”). Preserving his long-standing hatred of the peasantry, Gorky reminded that “peasant strength is a socially unhealthy force and that the cultural-political, consistent work of Lenin-Stalin is aimed precisely at erasing this ‘strength’ from the consciousness of the peasant, for this strength is ... the instinct of a small owner, expressed, as we know, in the forms of zoological brutality ”(“ An open letter to A. S. Serafimovich ”, 1934). Recall that this was published in the years when the most industrious and economic peasants ("kulaks") were shot or evicted to the permafrost zone.
In support of the “case of the Industrial Party” fabricated by the OGPU, Gorky wrote the play “Somov and Others” (1930). In accordance with this absurd process, wrecking engineers are bred in it, who, in spite of the people, slow down production. In the finale, “just retribution” comes in the person of the OGPU agents, who arrest not only engineers, but also former teacher singing (his crime is that he "poisoned" Soviet youth with talk about the soul and early music). In the articles "To the Workers and Peasants" and "Humanists" Gorky supports an equally ridiculous accusation against Professor Ryazanov and his "accomplices" who were shot for "organizing a food famine."
Gorky did not necessarily approve of all repressions. The arrests of the old Bolsheviks, fighters against "damned tsarism," worried him. In 1932, he even expressed his bewilderment at the arrest of L. Kamenev to the head of the Chekists, G. Yagoda. But the fate of millions of ordinary people sentenced to death did not cause such bewilderment in him. In 1929 Gorky visited the Solovetsky camp. One of the juvenile prisoners, seeing in him a defender of the oppressed, ventured to tell him about the monstrous conditions of life in this camp. Gorky shed a tear, but after talking with the boy (almost immediately shot) in the Book of Reviews of the Solovetsky camp, he left enthusiastic praises for the jailers.
In 1934, under the editorship of Gorky, the collection "The White Sea-Baltic Canal named after Stalin" was published. The book supports all the delusional accusations of those years: that engineers, for example, poison workers with arsenic in factory canteens, and secretly break machine tools. The concentration camp is depicted as a beacon of progress; it is claimed that no one dies in it (in reality, at least 100,000 prisoners died during the construction of the White Sea Canal). Speaking to the builders of the canal on August 25, 1933, Gorky admired “how the OGPU re-educates people,” and spoke with tears of emotion about the excessive modesty of the Chekists. According to A. I. Solzhenitsyn, given by him in The Gulag Archipelago, in the book The White Sea-Baltic Canal named after Stalin, Gorky for the first time in Russian literature glorified slave labor.
Regardless of whether Gorky's talent is considered top-notch or overblown by the press; whether to believe in his sincerity or in the fact that in his heart he did not approve of Stalin's policy; Regardless of whether to trust the version that the 68-year-old writer, who had been treated for a long time for consumption, died not from the disease, but from poison given by order from the Kremlin, the fact remains: Gorky contributed to the organized murder of millions of innocent people.

Maxim Gorky is a great Russian prose writer. His real name is Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov, the writer took his pseudonym in memory of his father, Maxim Savvatyevich. Gorky is the author of famous works, in the Soviet Union he was the most published writer. He is considered the founder of socialist realism. The life and work of Gorky are filled with many events, the writer had a rich, versatile, partly tragic fate. Next, we will analyze in detail the most important aspects of the biography of the recognized genius of the 20th century.

Alexey Peshkov was born in 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod, the boy was baptized according to the Orthodox rite in infancy. At the age of three, Alexey falls ill with cholera, his father, Maxim Savvatevich Peshkov, becomes infected with the disease from his son and dies. Alexei's mother, Varvara Vasilievna, suffered an equally tragic fate - after the death of her husband, she marries a second time, but soon dies of consumption.

Alexei, having lost his parents early, lived with his grandparents. The boy almost did not remember his father, but because of the stories of his grandfather, he greatly appreciated the memory of his father. The future writer had to work at the age of 11: a baker, an errand boy, etc. Peshkov also studied at a parish school, but left due to illness. At school, teachers considered Lyosha a difficult child, from a very early age he did not believe in God, considering himself a convinced atheist. Another school for Gorky was the street, he talked a lot with homeless children, which in the future will affect the theme of his work.

And although Gorky never received a secondary education, he read a lot, had an incredible memory and a mobile mind. He was well acquainted with the serious works of many philosophers, read Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hartmann and many others. And yet, according to biographers, until the age of 30, Maxim Gorky wrote with large quantity mistakes that his wife carefully corrected.

Youth and education

In 1884, Alexey tries to enter a university, but to no avail, because he never graduated from school. The guy had to work, and in the service he communicates with revolutionary-minded young people, gets acquainted with the works of Karl Marx. In 1887, Peshkov's grandparents died, so he suffered from a prolonged depression.

In 1888, Alexey makes a feasible contribution to the revolutionary movement and is arrested. The police begin to closely monitor the young rebel. Peshkov still has to do hard work.

Then he lights up with the idea of ​​​​creating an agricultural colony of the Tolstoy type and even tries to meet with Tolstoy himself, but at that time there were a huge number of people who wanted to talk with him, and Peshkov could not meet with Lev Nikolaevich. He goes back to Nizhny Novgorod.

History of success

In 1891, Peshkov sets off on a spontaneous journey through Russia, during this journey many extraordinary stories happen to Alexei, which he is strongly advised to write down. This is how the story "" appears, biographers often consider this particular work to be the writer's first real work, because it was signed with a pseudonym - Maxim Gorky. This is where the promising creative path of young talent begins.

This is followed by several publications in literary magazines, the writer is slowly but surely gaining momentum. He quickly learns journalism. Work in the editorial office allows the creator to earn a living by intellectual work. Over the course of two and a half years, Gorky published about five hundred articles. At the same time, a new work by Gorky called "" was published. It is this story that brings the writer fame.

creative path

In 1898, the first two volumes of Maxim Gorky's works were published. The publishers took a risk and printed books in large numbers, but the risk was justified - the works were quickly sold out. Glory to Gorky begins to spread rapidly throughout the country.

In 1899, several more works of the writer were published. His works were first translated into foreign languages. For any writer, this is very high level recognition.

A year later, Gorky met the master of prose Chekhov. At the same time, Alexey finally fulfills his old dream - he meets Tolstoy. After all, now Alexey is not just an ambitious young man, but a recognized writer.

During this period of time, the author often got into trouble with the law because of his revolutionary activity, which does not affect its growing popularity. Gorky turned to drama for the first time and undoubtedly had success in this complex genre.

In 1902, Gorky was elected a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, but the writer loses this status incredibly quickly due to his anti-state activities. This case becomes very famous, which creates an aura of a fighter around the writer. Now many famous figures want to get acquainted with a talented creator.

In 1902-1903, Gorky's popularity peaked. He becomes a real trendsetter in literature, establishes the trend of "social realism", the whole country follows every word of the author. It even comes to the appearance of epigones who are trying to copy their idol in everything. Such figures were ironically called "submaxims". But the writer does not bathe in the rays of glory, he continues to work fruitfully. During this period, he completed the play "At the Bottom" and began work on the story "Mother". In 1904-1905, several more plays saw the light, these are: "Barbarians", "Summer Residents", "Children of the Sun".

From 1902 to 1921, Gorky was successfully engaged in publishing activities. His publishing house "Knowledge" opened to readers promising unknown writers. He had a delicate taste and carefully selected the authors whom he would print. In fact, Peshkov is engaged in educational activities, he is again at the forefront, his publishing house is the most popular in Russia, but now he is leading many other authors. The publishing house publishes joint almanacs and collections in large numbers, Gorky and his colleagues incredibly quickly move forward the ponderous literary process.

Two emigrations and one political struggle

First departure

In 1906, Gorky was forced to emigrate to the United States, his native state mercilessly persecuted the writer for his political views and activities. "Knowledge" quickly disintegrates without its ideological founder. It is worth noting that emigration did not affect the author's fame at all, his activities continued to be actively discussed in Russia, and in the USA the writer was received very warmly.

Gorky continues to write despite everything. He completes the novel "Mother", and also writes a new play "Enemies". In 1906, the writer was forced to move to Italy due to tuberculosis. There he continues to work in his large house in Capri. He is working on the Okurov Town trilogy.

In the same place, the creator writes his own new job under the title "Confession", where he points out his differences with the position of Lenin. In 1908, the author completed two works: the play "The Last" and the story "The Life of an Unnecessary Man." In the next four years, several more works were published: “The Town of Okurov”, “The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin”, as well as a cycle of stories “Tales of Italy”.

The writer is experiencing a mental crisis, events in the world are heating up, but this does not prevent Gorky from continuing to do his life's work. It is also important to note that "Tales of Italy" produced good impression on the workers in Russia, this instantly brought the writer closer to the future force of the revolution, and Lenin himself did not hide the pleasure he received from reading the stories.

Return

In 1913 Gorky returned home. The writer again turns to publishing. In 1912-1916, Alexey Maksimovich published the collection "In Russia", the novels "Childhood" and "In People".

In 1919, Gorky organized the publishing house "World Literature". The goal is the same as ten years ago - he publishes classical literature in the best translations to educate the Russian reader. This activity can hardly be called creativity, but this is another confirmation of the author's boundless love for literature.

Second departure

In 1921, the writer again leaves home country. In exile, he takes up the pen and writes the works: “On the Russian Peasantry”, “Notes from a Diary”, “My Universities”, as well as a collection of short stories. The favorable atmosphere of Italy helps him focus on writing. In 1925, the author, continuing his treatment, released a new novel, The Artamonov Case.

In 1928, the writer turns 60 years old. For many, it is already history, a monument. Alexei Maksimovich is forbidden to publish new items in the USSR. Exhibitions dedicated to the writer are held in Europe, his plays are regularly staged in theaters. But personally Gorky did not take part in these events.

Personal life

The family life of Maxim Gorky to this day causes numerous controversies among biographers. Some facts from this life really cause genuine interest.

• 1889 Young Alex Peshkov experienced strong love feelings for the daughter of the head of the station. He even asked the boss for the hand of his daughter, but the strict father resolutely refused him this. it love feeling the young writer remembered for a long time, 10 years later Gorky, a successful author and a married man, fondly recalls his youthful feelings in a letter to that woman.
• 1893 A twenty-five-year-old writer at the dawn of his writing career enters into an unmarried marriage with midwife Olga Kamenskaya. She also became the prototype of the heroine in Gorky's late story "On First Love" (1922). Before marriage, young people had known each other for four years, Kamenskaya was nine years older than Peshkov, before that she had already been married, she had a child from her first marriage. The end of this relationship for someone may seem comical: Gorky read aloud his new work "Old Woman Izergil", but when he looked up, he saw that Kamenskaya had fallen asleep.
• 1896 Gorky marries Ekaterina Volzhina. She was younger than spouse for 8 years. For a modest girl working as a proofreader, the chosen one seemed to be a "demigod", and the writer himself treated his passion rather condescendingly. In the same year he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. His wife accompanies him on medical trips and supports him in every possible way. She also became the mother of his children. On July 21, the first-born was born, who was named Maxim without much thought. Four years later, the second child is born - the girl Katya.
• 1902 Gorky lives with his wife and two children in an apartment in Nizhny Novgorod. At that time, the writer received excellent fees, the family was in full prosperity. In the evenings married couple received eminent guests, this period in the life of the Peshkovs seems idyllic. But there is one but...
• 1900 Two years earlier, Gorky met the Moscow Art Theater actress Maria Andreeva. She was married, and the author occasionally spent time with the couple. The rapprochement of a man and a woman was quite romantic: she played Natasha in Gorky's play "At the Bottom", and Alexey Maksimovich was amazed by her genuine game. These relationships greatly influenced the further development of the writer, because of the influence of his beloved, he joined the Leninist party.
• 1903 Andreeva leaves her former family and becomes Gorky's secretary, who does the same: immediately leaves his wife and children and leaves Nizhny Novgorod.
• 1904 Russia is torn apart political struggle. But the writer's family life, on the contrary, is getting better, with Andreeva they live peacefully in a holiday village near St. Petersburg. Life with Maria during this period has a positive effect on the writer: he is calm, inspired and can write. Lovers often visited the neighboring estate in which he lived famous artist Ilya Repin. Then Gorky and Andreeva go to Riga, after which they visit healing springs. This life stage can be called one of the most harmonious and happy.
• 1906 Gorky and his common-law wife visit the USA. In the same place, the writer learns that his youngest daughter fell ill with meningitis and died. Gorky consoles his wife in a letter, subsequently the couple agreed to leave, but did not officially divorce.
• 1906 In February, Andreeva and Gorky embark on a kind of romantic journey on behalf of Lenin. After spending the Finnish festival, they hastily board a steamer to America. There they are collecting donations for a political coup.
• 1906-1912 The writer again suffers from tuberculosis, he is forced to leave for Italy. Maria goes with him. The woman did housework on her own and was always close to the writer's office in order to help him at any time. Andreeva also carefully translated various news articles for her husband, who did not know foreign languages. In the evenings, the couple went out for a walk. The fate of the great writer could have turned out completely differently if this woman had not appeared in his life.
• 1912 Gorky and Andreeva often traveled together, this time after a long stay in Italy the couple went to Paris. There Gorky meets Lenin again.
• 1914 Travelers return to Russia and settle in a large apartment in St. Petersburg. Their new house had exactly 11 rooms. Gorky was famous for his hospitality all his life, he always helped people get out of a difficult financial situation. Thus, about thirty people settled in the writer's apartment, some of them were ordinary hangers-on.
• It is known that Maria Brudberg lived in the next room with Gorky. She appeared in the writer's apartment under interesting circumstances: she brought some papers, but suddenly fainted from hunger. The hosts fed the guest and offered to stay in one of the rooms. After a while, the girl captured the heart of the owner of the house.
• The atmosphere in Gorky's St. Petersburg apartment was very unusual. Every day, crowds of people came to the writer with various complaints, in the evening he was visited by famous artists. Most of the time, the guests drank alcohol, ate a lot, played cards for money, arranged readings of pornographic novels, with big love discussed the work of the Marquis de Sade. During this period, Andreeva and Gorky are, as if on different sides, each of them leads a separate life.
• 1919 Revolutions thundered in Russia, they seriously shook the inner state of the writer, a period of apathy and disharmony sets in. In the same year, there is already a clear cooling in relations with Andreeva. This was influenced by their political differences, which only intensified over time. The main reason for the separation is considered to be a short-term relationship between Gorky and a certain Varvara Shaikevich.
• 1921 Gorky cannot tolerate the state of affairs in the country, he enters into a confrontation with Lenin. The author at this time is very lonely, he opposes everyone without any help from other people. The result was the forced emigration of the writer.
• Alexei Maksimovich is sent to Germany, and then Andreeva is sent to supervise Gorky, Maria must closely monitor her husband's activities. She takes her lover with her - Pyotr Kryuchkov, who becomes an editor at the International Book publishing house. Thus, Kryuchkov became a direct intermediary between Gorky and his literary publications.
• 1928 After isolation, the writer visits the USSR and decides to stay at the house of Ekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova, his legal wife, whom he has not seen for many years.
• 1934 Alexey Maksimovich becomes more and more distant, the writer experiences incredible mental fatigue after treacherous expulsions, he feels that his personal struggle for peace is lost. This year, his first-born, Maxim, dies. At that moment, the author was talking enthusiastically with Speransky about immortality, and suddenly he was informed of the death of his son. The father took note of this and continued his nightly conversation with the same animation.

At the end of his life, the author closed himself in, finding the only salvation - in creativity. Gorky lived a hard life full of hardships, perhaps he was happy with Andreeva in Capri, or maybe in the first year of his life with his lawful wife, or maybe he was not happy at all. Even analyzing Gorky's life from the point of view of an ordinary, human, it turns out that for Alexei Maksimovich, literature has always been in the first place.

Attitude to power

Throughout his life, Maxim Gorky had a clear and well-reasoned political position. Already with youthful years the writer was engaged in social and political activities. He was not afraid of arrests and registrations, exiles and prisons. The author has always honestly and directly stated his views on the future of the whole world and his native country.

Was Gorky lucky to be born in such unstable times, should he have seen revolutions and subsequent injustices and atrocities? Each of us must answer this question for ourselves. And in this chapter we will focus on the political views of the writer, trace their evolution and, of course, analyze Gorky's difficult relationship with the "old" and "new" authorities.

An important element in understanding the writer's political position can be his own self-determination; from an early age, the future writer called himself a man who "came into the world to disagree." And in more later years the creator, already known to the whole world, called himself an "eternal revolutionary."

To the royal

Already in his youth, Peshkov has a long-term conflict with the government Tsarist Russia. He is constantly arrested, expelled and arrested again for his connections with various circles. He is constantly under police surveillance. The tsar even opposes his admission to the Academy of Sciences, and the writer is deprived of his privileged position.

• 1905 Aggressive attacks on the writer by the authorities continue. For the revolutionary proclamation, Gorky is arrested again, this time exiled to the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he has to stay in solitary confinement. The prisoner calmly endured adversity of this kind, he was not going to retreat.
• 1906 The authorities tighten the penalties, and Gorky has no choice - he becomes a political emigrant. Around the same years, the author met Lenin, and soon the two thinkers would meet again, but under different circumstances. At this stage, the creator believes in revolution, he considers the overthrow of the current regime as the main task.
• 1908 This year Gorky publishes the story "Confession". This is very significant event, since in this example we can observe all the sincerity of a wise writer. He does not hesitate in his work to criticize Lenin and express his disagreement about specific statements. The author is an idealist, for him there are no sides, he has his own opinion, which he broadcasts to the masses. Perhaps that is why the whole life of the writer was associated with attacks by the authorities, whatever it was.

• 1917-1919 After two revolutions that were not accepted by Gorky, the writer is engaged in human rights activities, he vehemently criticizes the activities of the Bolsheviks. Alexei Maksimovich did not understand the cruelty of repression and defended the intelligentsia with all his might. In the end, he resorts to the word - and creates the newspaper "New Life". In it, the writer continues to criticize the newly-born government, he draws attention to the huge problems in the country, which for some reason the authorities are in no hurry to eliminate. Gorky again shows himself as an honest man. He is not ready to agree, not ready to endure, he bluntly criticizes in his articles the people with whom several years ago he walked shoulder to shoulder - against the monarchical regime. He did not need changes for the sake of change, his goal is to make the world cleaner and better, such is the nature of Alexei Maksimovich. On July 29, 1918, the New Life newspaper was immediately closed. For all Gorky's struggle for a better world, people come to power who, in their methods, are no different from the previous rulers. The writer is again taken “on a pencil”, the views of the creator once again do not correspond to the position of those in power.
• In 1918, Gorky again establishes communication with Lenin. The writer is trying to find support in a reasonable leader, but following the results of the debate, Lenin, who respected the former merits of the writer, gently hints that it is better for the author to leave the country for a while. And again - persecution and emigration.
• 1921 Gorky is in Germany, his every step is closely watched. The writer is limited in everything: finances, publications, travel. Emigration turns into imprisonment. For several years he has been trying to continue the fight against the injustice of the new government, and yet the creator understands that nothing can be done about the Soviet giant.
• 1928 Gorky is invited to the USSR. The writer is loved and appreciated in a changed country; without exaggeration, he was the main national writer. For several years the author visits the Soviet Union and finally returns to his homeland. This is the last stage of the writer's unequal struggle with the authorities. Alexey Maksimovich is old, he is physically incapable of counteraction, Soviet authority does everything to finally pacify the "eternal revolutionary". He is actively printed and praised, the years of struggle and disagreement are successfully erased, and Gorky in the eyes of the people becomes "a real Soviet writer."

• On December 12, 1887 (after the death of his grandparents and unsuccessful admission to the university), Alexei shoots himself through the chest with a gun in an attempt to commit suicide. Miraculously, the future genius was saved, but this youthful impulse provoked a long-term illness of the respiratory organs. In the hospital, the patient again tries to commit suicide by drinking a toxic solution. With the help of gastric lavage, the future writer was saved a second time.
• Gorky was nominated for Nobel Prize five times, but never received it.
• The last work of the writer was the epic novel in four parts, The Life of Klim Samgin. The book reflects all those thoughts and experiences that have tormented the writer for the past ten years. And although Alexei Maksimovich did not have time to complete the work, critics perceive the novel as complete and complete. In the USSR, he entered the mandatory reading program.
• Maxim Gorky had a number of unusual physical characteristics, allegedly he did not experience physical pain, and some psychologists claimed that he suffered from mental illness. Others attribute painful hypersexuality to Gorky, finding its reflection in the writer's works, in his relations with women.
• The owners of hotels in the United States, where illegal spouses stayed, were offended by such a brazen violation of American foundations. Andreeva and Gorky almost remained on the street, they were refused to be served.
• Stalin disposed of the body of the writer at his own discretion. It was decided to cremate Gorky's body and place the ashes in the Kremlin wall. The writer's wife asked permission to bury part of Alexei's ashes in the grave of his son Maxim, but Elizabeth Peshkova was denied this. The urn with the ashes was brought to the Kremlin wall personally by Stalin and Molotov.

Death

In the last years of his life, Maxim Gorky felt constant weakness, it was clear that the life of the great writer was coming to an end. In 1936, he visits his grandchildren, who had the flu and, unfortunately, infected their grandfather. After that, Alexei Maksimovich visits his son's grave, poor health makes itself felt, and he catches a cold.

On June 8, doctors came to the disappointing conclusion that Gorky would not recover. The Soviet Union says goodbye to its beloved writer, Stalin visits the dying man three times and has leisurely conversations with him. Also, the closest people visited the author - the only legal wife of a genius, she sat at the bedside of Alexei Maksimovich for a long time, because once she loved him so much. Also paid a visit: Budberg, Chertkova, Kryuchkov and Rakitsky.

June 18 at about 11 am master of words, thinker, public figure, educator, writer and just a man with a big and warm heart Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov died.

After death, an autopsy was performed, which showed that the writer's body was in terrible state Doctors wondered how he lived to a ripe old age.

Gorky lived a long and fruitful life, with his thought he influenced the fate of millions of people, his social activities more than once saved the lives of those in trouble. The author wanted to make the world a better place, he did everything for this. We hope that the imperishable works of one of the best Russian writers are still changing people, making the world kinder, cleaner and more honest. Before his quiet death, Alexey Maksimovich said: “You know, I was arguing with God just now. Wow, how he argued!

(Aleksey 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 were appreciated by fellow journalists.

A turning point in the fate of the writer Gorky

The turning point in Gorky's fate was 1898, when separate edition Two volumes of his works have been published. 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". The latter was immediately banned by censors, but this did not in the least prevent its distribution. According to contemporaries, "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 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 of the 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 and began to outlive themselves themes and plots great literature 19th century The tragic note, which was always present in the works of the famous Russian classics and gave their work a special - mournful, suffering flavor, no longer aroused the former upsurge in society, but only caused 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 it to the pages of his stories, novels and plays Fighter Man, A person who can overcome 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! A man! This is magnificent! It sounds ... proud!") However, in 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 of the "strong personality", but Nietzscheism 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 individual people would be integrated. 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 darkness human soul, 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 important points 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 Russia" were published.

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. A great impression on his contemporaries was made by his article "Two Souls", which appeared in the "Chronicles" at the end of 1915. 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 he played the role of "lever". Now the time has come for new achievements, and the role of "lever" in them must be played by the intelligentsia, primarily revolutionary, but also 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 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 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 relationship with him escalated to the extreme. Bloody horrors that followed civil war made a depressing impression on Gorky and delivered 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 the negative aspects of the 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 out of all social strata 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 writes the final part 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 of Russia in its scope recent decades before the 1917 revolution

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 public 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 finish only two plays: Yegor 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 reconciled Gorky with socialist reality in many respects. It is known that he did not really like - with much more sympathy he treated Bukharin and Kamenev. 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 assumes 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 created a man with an extremely ugly peculiarity 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.

Russian Soviet writer, playwright, publicist and public figure, founder of socialist realism.

Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov was born on March 16 (28), 1868 in the family of a cabinetmaker Maxim Savvatevich Peshkov (1839-1871). Orphaned at an early age, the future writer spent his childhood in the house of his maternal grandfather, Vasily Vasilyevich Kashirin (d. 1887).

In 1877-1879, A. M. Peshkov studied at the Nizhny Novgorod Sloboda Kunavinsky Primary School. After the death of his mother and the ruin of his grandfather, he was forced to leave his studies and go "to the people." In 1879-1884 he was an apprentice shoemaker, then - in a drawing workshop, after - in an icon painting. He served on a steamer that sailed along the Volga.

In 1884, A. M. Peshkov made an attempt to enter Kazan University, which ended in failure due to lack of funds. He became close to the revolutionary underground, participated in illegal populist circles, conducted propaganda among the workers and peasants. At the same time he was engaged in self-education. In December 1887, a streak of life failures almost led the future writer to suicide.

A. M. Peshkov spent 1888-1891 wandering around in search of work and impressions. He traveled the Volga region, the Don, Ukraine, Crimea, South Bessarabia, the Caucasus, managed to be a farm laborer in the village and a dishwasher, work in the fish and salt mines, watchman at railway and a worker in repair shops. Clashes with the police earned him a reputation for being "unreliable." At the same time, he managed to make the first contacts with the creative environment (in particular, with the writer V. G. Korolenko).

On September 12, 1892, the story of A. M. Peshkov “Makar Chudra” was published in the Tiflis newspaper “Kavkaz”, signed with the pseudonym “Maxim Gorky”.

The formation of A. M. Gorky as a writer took place with the active participation of V. G. Korolenko, who recommended the new author to publishers, corrected his manuscript. In 1893-1895, a number of the writer's stories were published in the Volga press - "Chelkash", "Revenge", "Old Woman Izergil", "Emelyan Pilyai", "Conclusion", "Song of the Falcon", etc.

In 1895-1896, A. M. Gorky was an employee of the Samarskaya Gazeta, where he wrote feuilletons daily under the heading “By the way,” signing with the pseudonym “Yehudiel Khlamida”. In 1896 - 1897 he worked in the newspaper "Nizhny Novgorod Leaf".

In 1898, the first collection of works by Maxim Gorky, Essays and Stories, was published in two volumes. It was recognized by critics as an event in Russian and European literature. In 1899, the writer began work on the novel Foma Gordeev.

A. M. Gorky quickly became one of the most popular Russian writers. He met with,. Neo-realist writers began to rally around A. M. Gorky (, L. N. Andreev).

At the beginning of the twentieth century, A. M. Gorky turned to dramaturgy. In 1902, his plays "At the Bottom" and "Petty Bourgeois" were staged at the Moscow Art Theater. The performances were an exceptional success and were accompanied by anti-government speeches of the public.

In 1902, A. M. Gorky was elected an honorary academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature, but by personal order, the election results were annulled. In protest, V. G. Korolenko also refused their titles of honorary academicians.

A. M. Gorky was arrested more than once for social and political activities. The writer took an active part in the events of the Revolution of 1905-1907. For the proclamation on January 9 (22), 1905, with a call to overthrow the autocracy, he was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress (released under pressure from the world community). In the summer of 1905, A. M. Gorky joined the RSDLP, in November of the same year he met with at a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. His novel "Mother" (1906) received a great response, in which the writer depicted the process of the birth of a "new man" in the course of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.

In 1906-1913, A. M. Gorky lived in exile. He spent most of his time on the Italian island of Capri. Here he wrote many works: the plays "The Last", "Vassa Zheleznova", the novel "Summer", "The Town of Okurov", the novel "The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin". In April 1907, the writer was a delegate to the 5th (London) Congress of the RSDLP. He visited A. M. Gorky on Capri.

In 1913, A. M. Gorky returned to. In 1913-1915, he wrote the autobiographical novels "Childhood" and "In People", since 1915 the writer published the magazine "Chronicle". During these years, the writer collaborated in the Bolshevik newspapers Zvezda and Pravda, as well as in the Enlightenment magazine.

A. M. Gorky welcomed the February and October revolutions of 1917. He began working at the publishing house "World Literature", founded the newspaper "New Life". However, his differences of opinion with the new government gradually increased. The journalistic cycle of A. M. Gorky “Untimely Thoughts” (1917-1918) caused sharp criticism.

In 1921, A. M. Gorky left the Soviet for treatment abroad. In 1921-1924 the writer lived in Germany and Czechoslovakia. His journalistic activity during these years it was aimed at uniting Russian artists abroad. In 1923, he wrote the novel My Universities. Since 1924 the writer lived in Sorrento (Italy). In 1925, he began work on the epic novel The Life of Klim Samgin, which remained unfinished.

In 1928 and 1929, A. M. Gorky visited the USSR at the invitation of the Soviet government and personally. His impressions of traveling around the country were reflected in the books "On the Union of Soviets" (1929). In 1931, the writer finally returned to his homeland and launched a wide literary and social activity. On his initiative, literary magazines and book publishing houses were created, book series were published (“Life wonderful people”, “Library of the poet”, etc.)

In 1934, A. M. Gorky acted as the organizer and chairman of the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. In 1934-1936 he headed the Writers' Union of the USSR.

A. M. Gorky died on June 18, 1936 at a dacha in Pod (now in). The writer is buried in the Kremlin wall behind the Mausoleum on Red Square.

In the USSR, A. M. Gorky was considered the founder of the literature of socialist realism and the founder of Soviet literature.

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 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, fleeing the persecution of the 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 involved in social activities, participated in the creation of the publishing house "World Literature". 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