by Maxim Gorky,
first published in 1913
From aged 10, Gorky worked everywhere - as a shopkeeper's assistant, on a Volga steamboat and an icon-maker’s apprentice. This young lad saw much of the brutal side of life and stored up impressions for his later works. At 16 Gorky failed to enter the Kazan Uni, so for the next 6 years he wandered about Russia, Ukraine and the Caucasus.
In 1887 Gorky saw a Nizhny Novgorid pogrom and was deeply shocked; thus he became a life-long opponent of racism. Gorky worked with the Liberation of Labour group and in Oct 1889 he was arrested, accused of spreading revolutionary propaganda. He was later released but the Okhrana Department for Protecting Public Security and Order decided to keep him under police surveillance.
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Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky
in Yalta, 1900
In 1906 Gorky left Russia for America, fundraising for fellow revolutionists and in a year there, he wrote his novel Mother. It told of a simple working-class woman who became a militant activist in the class struggle. Mother was considered a classic of socialist realism.
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Mother, by Gorky
First published in 1906, Amazon
In 1932 after brief visits, Gorky returned permanently to Soviet Russia, his return from Fascist Italy being a victory for Soviet propaganda. He was placed in a rich Art Deco Moscow mansion of the railroad tycoon Ryabushinsky, which is today the Gorky Museum. He was made the Chairman of the Soviet Writer's Union, and a figurehead of socialist realism. And as Gorky was an icon of the Soviet cultural establishment, his birth city Nizhnyi Novgorod was renamed Gorky in 1932!!
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The Soviet cult of Gorky made him even more celebrated as the greatest C20th Russian writer. Many theatres, museums, universities and collective farms were named after him.
In 1887 Gorky saw a Nizhny Novgorid pogrom and was deeply shocked; thus he became a life-long opponent of racism. Gorky worked with the Liberation of Labour group and in Oct 1889 he was arrested, accused of spreading revolutionary propaganda. He was later released but the Okhrana Department for Protecting Public Security and Order decided to keep him under police surveillance.
in Yalta, 1900
As Gorky developed more revolutionary sympathies, he was arrested for anti-government activities in 1889. From then on, he was “risky”. In 1891-2 he lived in Tiflis where he worked in railroad workshops, and where his first published short story appeared.
Praised by Anton Chekhov, Gorky’s play The Lower Depths (1892) was successfully played in Europe and USA. From then on Gorky devoted himself to literature, and in the next 5 years his stories appeared chiefly in Volga news papers. His first collection of stories, published in 1898, made him famous across Russia, and his fame spread internationally. These early stories featured derelicts and outcasts, allowing Gorky to portray the oppressed and to demonstrate the need for social reform. He found individual dignity in even the most brutalised derelicts, and thus became known as a powerful spokesman for illiterates and their dreams.
Foma Gordeyev (1899), the story of a well-intentioned but weak man who felt disgust and guilt inheriting a profitable family business, firmly established Gorky’s reputation. The man rebelled against his class but he was lacking in moral fibre, and eventually the forces of tradition defeated him. In all his works from then, Gorky despised capitalism.
Moscow Art Theatre produced Gorky’s most famous play, The Lower Depths, in 1902. It showed the misery of people at the bottom of Russian society and examined the illusions by which many of the unfortunates sustained themselves. Gorky even wore coarse dress and showed crude manners to identify with the unfortunates.
But even as a young man, his personality was attractive and he made many influential friends, including the two most famous writers of the day, Leo Tolstoy & Anton Chekhov. His memoirs of these two men, written many years later, were very fine works.Gorky became increasingly active in the Revolutionary Movement. He was arrested briefly in 1898, and in 1901 he was exiled to the provinces for having helped organise an underground press. When Gorky was elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1902, Czar Nicholas II vetoed that selection because the author was “subversive”. Gorky was charged with inciting the people to revolt after Bloody Sunday 1905. As a result, a wide-world protest at Gorky's imprisonment in Peter and Paul Fortress and the Czar agreed for him to be deported. Praised by Anton Chekhov, Gorky’s play The Lower Depths (1892) was successfully played in Europe and USA. From then on Gorky devoted himself to literature, and in the next 5 years his stories appeared chiefly in Volga news papers. His first collection of stories, published in 1898, made him famous across Russia, and his fame spread internationally. These early stories featured derelicts and outcasts, allowing Gorky to portray the oppressed and to demonstrate the need for social reform. He found individual dignity in even the most brutalised derelicts, and thus became known as a powerful spokesman for illiterates and their dreams.
Foma Gordeyev (1899), the story of a well-intentioned but weak man who felt disgust and guilt inheriting a profitable family business, firmly established Gorky’s reputation. The man rebelled against his class but he was lacking in moral fibre, and eventually the forces of tradition defeated him. In all his works from then, Gorky despised capitalism.
Moscow Art Theatre produced Gorky’s most famous play, The Lower Depths, in 1902. It showed the misery of people at the bottom of Russian society and examined the illusions by which many of the unfortunates sustained themselves. Gorky even wore coarse dress and showed crude manners to identify with the unfortunates.
In 1906 Gorky left Russia for America, fundraising for fellow revolutionists and in a year there, he wrote his novel Mother. It told of a simple working-class woman who became a militant activist in the class struggle. Mother was considered a classic of socialist realism.
Mother, by Gorky
First published in 1906, Amazon
The only Gorky book I read.
From 1906-13 Gorky lived on the island of Capri, where his home became a centre of literary and political activity for ex-pat Russians. In 1913 he won an amnesty from the Czar's government and bravely returned to Russia! In a few years he completed the 3 volumes of his autobiography, Childhood (1913), My Apprenticeship (1915) and My Universities (1922). Gorky's autobiography was his finest work, describing the people he knew and his adventures to manhood in contemporary Russia. Gorky's nonfictional works were probably superior to his fiction.
From 1906-13 Gorky lived on the island of Capri, where his home became a centre of literary and political activity for ex-pat Russians. In 1913 he won an amnesty from the Czar's government and bravely returned to Russia! In a few years he completed the 3 volumes of his autobiography, Childhood (1913), My Apprenticeship (1915) and My Universities (1922). Gorky's autobiography was his finest work, describing the people he knew and his adventures to manhood in contemporary Russia. Gorky's nonfictional works were probably superior to his fiction.
After the 1917 October Revolution, Gorky worked tirelessly to help preserve Russia’s cultural heritage. He organised homes for writers and artists, founded publishing houses and theatres, and used his influence with the Soviet regime to encourage the arts.
But he criticised Lenin and Trotsky for being corrupted with the dirty poison of power. They were “disrespectful of human rights, freedom of speech and all other civil liberties". In 1921 Gorky travelled back to Europe, spending most of the next 12 years in Germany and Italy, both for medical treatment and because of disagreements with the Soviet government. During this time he wrote the long novels The Artamonov Business (1925) and The Life of Klim Samgin, severely critical of life in pre-revolutionary Russia.
In 1932 after brief visits, Gorky returned permanently to Soviet Russia, his return from Fascist Italy being a victory for Soviet propaganda. He was placed in a rich Art Deco Moscow mansion of the railroad tycoon Ryabushinsky, which is today the Gorky Museum. He was made the Chairman of the Soviet Writer's Union, and a figurehead of socialist realism. And as Gorky was an icon of the Soviet cultural establishment, his birth city Nizhnyi Novgorod was renamed Gorky in 1932!!
Again he was very active on the cultural scene, chiefly in book and magazine publishing and literary criticism. Yet after the murder of politician Sergei Kirov in 1934, Gorky was arrested and died suddenly at Lenin's Moscow dacha under mysterious circumstances, at 48 in 1936.
Designed in 1900 by Fyodor Schechtel for Pavel Ryabushinsky
The Moscow house was given to Gorky in 1932, now Gorky Museum.
The Soviet cult of Gorky made him even more celebrated as the greatest C20th Russian writer. Many theatres, museums, universities and collective farms were named after him.