Gorky's voice Gorky's voice sounded in the Himalayas. Among the snowy peaks - a Russian voice. Good invocative words filled the space. called great writer congress of writers for mutual respect. Let's learn to respect each other, reject indifference and learn

The beginning of the work of the reserve. Tragedy in the village of Cairo-su. Return of the Lykovs to Altai. Another tragedy. The final departure of the Lykovs to the “deserts” But let us return again to the beginning of the activity of the reserve. The recruited observers immediately set to work, first

About Gorky's death Could Maxim Gorky and his son have been killed by participants in the last Moscow trial? Who and why could they need their death? What were Gorky's relations with Stalin and Yagoda? Who is Kryuchkov? Many asked such questions

About Maxim Gorky's suicide mania The personality of Maxim Gorky in the light of his attempted suicide in December 1887. Dr. I. B. Galant Suicidal attraction or suicidomania (suicidomania) - a phenomenon that, like many other incomprehensible phenomena, has become in science

Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov (better known as pseudonym Maxim Gorky, March 16 (28), 1868 - June 18, 1936) - Russian and Soviet writer, public figure, founder of the style of socialist realism.

Childhood and youth of Maxim Gorky

Gorky was born in Nizhny Novgorod. His father, Maxim Peshkov, who died in 1871, in the last years of his life worked as the manager of the Astrakhan shipping office of Kolchin. When Alexei was 11 years old, his mother also died. The boy was brought up after that in the house of his maternal grandfather, Kashirin, the ruined owner of a dyeing workshop. The stingy grandfather early forced the young Alyosha to "go to the people", that is, to earn money on his own. He had to work as a delivery boy at a store, a baker, and wash dishes in a canteen. These early years Gorky later described his life in Childhood, the first part of his autobiographical trilogy. In 1884, Alexei unsuccessfully tried to enter Kazan University.

Gorky's grandmother, unlike her grandfather, was a kind and religious woman, an excellent storyteller. Alexei Maksimovich himself associated his suicide attempt in December 1887 with heavy feelings about his grandmother's death. Gorky shot himself, but survived: the bullet missed the heart. She, however, seriously damaged the lung, and the writer suffered all his life afterwards from respiratory weakness.

In 1888, Gorky was arrested for a short time for his connection with the Marxist circle of N. Fedoseev. In the spring of 1891 he set off to wander around Russia and reached the Caucasus. Expanding his knowledge by self-education, getting a temporary job either as a loader or a night watchman, Gorky accumulated impressions that he later used to write his first stories. He called this life period "My Universities".

In 1892, 24-year-old Gorky returned to his native place and began to collaborate as a journalist in several provincial publications. Aleksey Maksimovich first wrote under the pseudonym Yehudiel Khlamida (which, translated from Hebrew and Greek, gives some associations with “cloak and dagger”), but soon came up with another one for himself - Maxim Gorky, hinting at both “bitter” Russian life, and the desire to write only the "bitter truth". For the first time, the name "Gorky" was used by him in correspondence for the Tiflis newspaper "Kavkaz".

Maksim Gorky. video film

Gorky's literary debut and his first steps in politics

In 1892, Maxim Gorky's first short story "Makar Chudra" appeared. He was followed by "Chelkash", "Old Woman Izergil" (see summary and full text), "Song of the Falcon" (1895), " former people"(1897), etc. All of them were not distinguished not so much by great artistic merit as by exaggerated pompous pathos, but they successfully coincided with the new Russian political trends. Until the mid-1890s, the left-wing Russian intelligentsia worshiped the Narodniks, who idealized the peasantry. But from the second half of this decade, Marxism began to gain increasing popularity in radical circles. Marxists proclaimed that the dawn of a bright future would be kindled by the proletariat and the poor. Tramps-lumpen were the main characters of the stories of Maxim Gorky. Society began to applaud them vigorously as a new fiction fashion.

In 1898, Gorky's first collection, Essays and Stories, was published. He had a resounding (albeit completely inexplicable for reasons of literary talent) success. Public and creative career Gorky abruptly took off. He portrayed the life of beggars from the very bottom of society (“tramps”), depicting their difficulties and humiliations with strong exaggerations, strenuously introducing the simulated pathos of “humanity” into his stories. Maxim Gorky earned a reputation as the only literary spokesman for the interests of the working class, defender of the idea of ​​radical social, political and cultural transformation of Russia. His work was praised by intellectuals and "conscious" workers. Gorky struck up a close acquaintance with Chekhov and Tolstoy, although their attitude towards him was not always unambiguous.

Gorky acted as a staunch supporter of the Marxist social democracy, openly hostile to "tsarism." In 1901, he wrote the "Song of the Petrel" openly calling for revolution. For compiling a proclamation calling for a "fight against the autocracy", he was arrested in the same year and expelled from Nizhny Novgorod. Maxim Gorky became close friends with many revolutionaries, including Lenin, whom he first met in 1902. He became even more famous when he exposed as the author of the "Protocols Elders of Zion» secret police officer Matvey Golovinsky. Golovinsky then had to leave Russia. When the election of Gorky (1902) as a member of the Imperial Academy by category belles-lettres was annulled by the government, academicians A.P. Chekhov and V.G. Korolenko also resigned in solidarity.

Maksim Gorky

In 1900-1905. Gorky's work became more and more optimistic. Of his works of this period of life, several plays stand out, closely connected with public affairs. The most famous of them is "At the Bottom" (see its full text and summary). Produced not without censorship difficulties in Moscow (1902), it was a great success, and then given throughout Europe and in the United States. Maxim Gorky became closer and closer to the political opposition. During the revolution of 1905, he was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg for the play "Children of the Sun", which was formally dedicated to the cholera epidemic of 1862, but clearly alluded to current events. The "official" companion of Gorky in 1904-1921 was the former actress Maria Andreeva - a long-standing Bolshevik, who became the director of theaters after the October Revolution.

Having grown rich through his writing, Maxim Gorky provided financial support to the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party ( RSDLP) while supporting liberal calls for civic and social reform. The death of many people during the manifestation on January 9, 1905 ("Bloody Sunday"), apparently, gave impetus to Gorky's even greater radicalization. Without openly joining the Bolsheviks and Lenin, he agreed with them on most issues. During the December armed rebellion in Moscow in 1905, the headquarters of the rebels was located in the apartment of Maxim Gorky, not far from Moscow University. At the end of the uprising, the writer left for St. Petersburg. At his apartment in this city, a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP was held under the chairmanship of Lenin, which decided to stop the armed struggle for the time being. A. I. Solzhenitsyn writes (“March 17th”, ch. 171) that Gorky “in Nine Hundred and Fifth, in his Moscow apartment during the days of the uprising, kept thirteen Georgian combatants, and bombs were made from him.”

Fearing arrest, Alexei Maksimovich fled to Finland, from where he left for Western Europe. From Europe, he traveled to the United States to raise funds for the Bolshevik Party. It was during this trip that Gorky began to write his famous novel "Mother", which was first published on English language in London, and then in Russian (1907). The theme of this is very tendentious work- joining the revolution of a simple working woman after the arrest of her son. In America, Gorky was initially welcomed with open arms. He got acquainted with Theodore Roosevelt and Mark Twain. However, then the American press began to resent the high-profile political actions of Maxim Gorky: he sent a telegram of support to trade union leaders Haywood and Moyer, who was accused of murdering the governor of Idaho. The newspapers did not like the fact that the writer was not accompanied on the trip by his wife Ekaterina Peshkova, but by his mistress, Maria Andreeva. Strongly wounded by all this, Gorky began to condemn the “bourgeois spirit” in his work even more fiercely.

Gorky on Capri

Returning from America, Maxim Gorky decided not to return to Russia for the time being, because he could be arrested there for his connection with the Moscow uprising. From 1906 to 1913 he lived on the Italian island of Capri. From there Alexei Maksimovich continued to support the Russian left, especially the Bolsheviks; he wrote novels and essays. Together with Bolshevik emigrants Alexander Bogdanov and A. V. Lunacharsky Gorky created an intricate philosophical system called " god-building". She claimed to develop from revolutionary myths "socialist spirituality", with the help of which humanity, enriched with strong passions and new moral values, would be able to get rid of evil, suffering and even death. Although these philosophical quests were rejected by Lenin, Maxim Gorky continued to believe that "culture", that is, moral and spiritual values, was more important for the success of the revolution than political and economic activities. This theme underlies his novel The Confession (1908).

Return of Gorky to Russia (1913-1921)

Taking advantage of the amnesty given for the 300th anniversary Romanov dynasty, Gorky returned to Russia in 1913 and continued his active public and literary activity. During this period of his life, he guided young writers from the people and wrote the first two parts of his autobiographical trilogy - "Childhood" (1914) and "In People" (1915-1916).

In 1915 Gorky, along with a number of other prominent Russian writers participated in the publication of the journalistic collection "Shield", the purpose of which was to protect the allegedly oppressed Jews in Russia. Speaking in the Progressive Circle at the end of 1916, Gorky “dedicated his two-hour speech to all sorts of spitting on the entire Russian people and exorbitant praise of Jewry,” says the Progressive Duma member Mansyrev, one of the founders of the Circle. (See A. Solzhenitsyn. Two hundred years together. Chapter 11.)

During First World War his St. Petersburg apartment again served as a meeting place for the Bolsheviks, but in revolutionary 1917 his relations with them deteriorated. Two weeks after the October Revolution of 1917, Maxim Gorky wrote:

However, as the Bolshevik regime strengthened, Maxim Gorky became more and more despondent and increasingly refrained from criticism. On August 31, 1918, having learned about the assassination attempt on Lenin, Gorky and Maria Andreeva sent a general telegram to him: “We are terribly upset, we are worried. We sincerely wish you a speedy recovery, be of good spirits.” Alexey Maksimovich achieved a personal meeting with Lenin, about which he spoke as follows: “I realized that I was mistaken, went to Ilyich and frankly confessed my mistake.” Together with a number of other writers who joined the Bolsheviks, Gorky created a publishing house under the People's Commissariat of Education " world literature". It planned to publish the best classical works, however, in an atmosphere of terrible devastation, they could not do almost anything. Gorky, however, started love affair with one of the employees of the new publishing house - Maria Benkendorf. It went on for many years.

Gorky's second stay in Italy (1921-1932)

In August 1921, Gorky, despite a personal appeal to Lenin, could not save his friend, the poet Nikolai Gumilyov, from being shot by the Chekists. In October of the same year, the writer left Bolshevik Russia and lived in German resorts, where he completed the third part of his autobiography, My Universities (1923). He then returned to Italy "for the treatment of tuberculosis". Living in Sorrento (1924), Gorky maintained contacts with his homeland. After 1928, Alexei Maksimovich visited the Soviet Union several times until he accepted Stalin's proposal for a final return to his homeland (October 1932). According to some literary critics, the reason for the return was the writer's political convictions, his long-standing sympathies for the Bolsheviks, but there is also a more reasonable opinion that leading role Gorky's desire to get rid of the debts made during his life abroad played here.

The last years of Gorky's life (1932-1936)

Even while visiting the USSR in 1929, Maxim Gorky made a trip to the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp and wrote a laudatory article about Soviet punitive system, although he received detailed information from the campers on Solovki about the terrible atrocities that are happening there. This case is in The Gulag Archipelago by A. I. Solzhenitsyn. In the West, Gorky's article about the Solovetsky camp provoked stormy criticism, and he began to bashfully explain that he was under pressure from Soviet censors. The writer's departure from fascist Italy and return to the USSR were widely used by communist propaganda. Shortly before his arrival in Moscow, Gorky published (March 1932) in Soviet newspapers article "Who are you with, masters of culture?". Designed in the style of Leninist-Stalinist propaganda, it called on writers, artists and artists to put their creativity at the service of the communist movement.

Upon his return to the USSR, Alexei Maksimovich received the Order of Lenin (1933) and was elected head of the Union of Soviet Writers (1934). The government provided him with a luxurious mansion in Moscow, which belonged to the millionaire Nikolai Ryabushinsky before the revolution (now the Gorky Museum), as well as a fashionable dacha in the Moscow region. During the demonstrations, Gorky went up to the podium of the mausoleum together with Stalin. One of the main Moscow streets, Tverskaya, was renamed in honor of the writer, just like his native city, Nizhny Novgorod (which regained its historical name only in 1991, with the collapse Soviet Union). The largest aircraft in the world, the ANT-20, which was built in the mid-1930s by the Tupolev bureau, was named "Maxim Gorky". Exist numerous photos writer with members of the Soviet government. All these honors had to be paid for. Gorky put his work at the service of Stalinist propaganda. In 1934 he co-edited a book that glorified the slave-built White Sea-Baltic Canal and convinced that in the Soviet "correctional" camps a successful "reforging" of the former "enemies of the proletariat" was being carried out.

Maxim Gorky on the podium of the mausoleum. Nearby - Kaganovich, Voroshilov and Stalin

There is, however, evidence that all this lies cost Gorky considerable mental anguish. The writer's hesitation was known at the top. After the murder Kirov in December 1934 and the gradual deployment of the "Great Terror" by Stalin, Gorky actually found himself under house arrest in his luxurious mansion. In May 1934, his 36-year-old son Maxim Peshkov died unexpectedly, and on June 18, 1936, Gorky himself died of pneumonia. Stalin, who carried the writer's coffin with Molotov during his funeral, said that Gorky had been poisoned by "enemies of the people." Prominent participants in the Moscow trials of 1936-1938 were charged with poisoning. and are found to be proven. former head OGPU and NKVD, Heinrich Yagoda, confessed that he organized the assassination of Maxim Gorky on the orders of Trotsky.

Joseph Stalin and Writers. Maksim Gorky

The cremated ashes of Gorky were buried at the Kremlin wall. Before that, the writer's brain was removed from his body and sent "for study" to the Moscow Research Institute.

Assessment of Gorky's work

AT Soviet times, before and after the death of Maxim Gorky, government propaganda carefully obscured his ideological and creative throwing, ambiguous relations with the leaders of Bolshevism in different periods life. The Kremlin presented him as the largest Russian writer of his time, a native of the people, true friend Communist Party and the father of "socialist realism". Statues and portraits of Gorky were distributed throughout the country. Russian dissidents saw in Gorky's work the embodiment of a slippery conciliatory compromise. In the West, they emphasized the constant fluctuations of his views on the Soviet system, recalling Gorky's repeated criticism of the Bolshevik regime.

Gorky saw in literature not so much a way of artistic and aesthetic self-expression as a moral and political activity with the aim of changing the world. As the author of novels, short stories, autobiographical essays and plays, Aleksey Maksimovich also wrote many treatises and reflections: articles, essays, memoirs about politicians (for example, about Lenin), about people of art (Tolstoy, Chekhov, etc.).

Gorky himself argued that the center of his work is a deep belief in the value human personality, glorification human dignity and resilience in the midst of life's hardships. The writer saw in himself a “restless soul”, which seeks to find a way out of the contradictions of hope and skepticism, love of life and disgust at the petty vulgarity of others. However, both the style of Maxim Gorky's books and the details of his public biography convince: these claims were for the most part feigned.

The tragedy and confusion of his extremely ambiguous time were reflected in Gorky's life and work, when the promises of a complete revolutionary transformation of the world only masked a selfish thirst for power and bestial cruelty. It has long been recognized that, from a purely literary point of view, most of Gorky's works are rather weak. best quality his autobiographical stories are distinguished, where a realistic and picturesque picture Russian life late XIX century.

Love a book, it will make your life easier, it will friendly help you sort out the motley and stormy confusion of thoughts, feelings, events, it will teach you to respect a person and yourself, it inspires the mind and heart with a feeling of love for the world, for a person.

Maxim Gorky

In their early works the great Russian writer Gorky praised the idea free man. The image of a petrel became the embodiment of the ideas of freedom.

In the novel "Mother" Gorky showed the idea of ​​revolution as the idea of ​​renewing life and even illuminated this idea with the name of Christ. It was during the era of the revolution of 1905 that Gorky staged The Possessed.

In 1917, Gorky wrote letters to the newspaper " New life", which will then be called" Untimely Thoughts ". Gorky asks here the question of what is new in the Russian revolution and how it changes Russian life. Answering all these questions, Gorky comes to the conclusion that the events taking place are not a socialist revolution, but a revelry of zoological instincts: "conscience has died", there has been a total separation of politics and morality. The government that made the revolution is carrying out a cruel experiment on the Russian people, and the people, in turn, show the most cruel instincts. In the midst of the storm of the revolution, Gorky preaches non-violence.

Gorky leaves Russia and stays abroad for a long time, but the authorities of the new country organize a campaign to "lure" him out. Later he becomes a puppet in the hands of Stalin.

Gorky, with his world authority and talents, was necessary for Stalin to create his own image, a portrait of a great ruler, as well as to justify the violent actions that he was preparing. Now very many cruel ideas will be introduced into the masses through the consciousness of the Russian writer. Then Gorky appears famous slogan: "If the enemy does not surrender, he is destroyed." Gorky justifies collectivization and argues that dispossession became a necessary measure. He blesses the Gulag and sings of the White Sea Canal.