Maxim Gorky description by another writer. The mysterious death of Maxim Gorky

The first Mongol-Tatar invasions of Rus' began across the Black Sea steppes in the first half of the 13th century. Genghis Khan (Temuchin) intended in this way to expand his huge state, which by this time extended from the shores of the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea.

At that time, Cuman tribes lived in the southern steppes off the coast of the Black Sea. They began to call on the Russian princes for help, arguing that if today the Mongol-Tatars captured the Polovtsian land, then tomorrow they would reach the Russian land.

The emergence of new, hitherto unknown powerful enemies caused great fear in Rus'. Only the princes of the southern lands decided to help the Polovtsy in expelling the enemy. They set out as a united army, but were completely defeated during the Battle of the Kalka River. The Mongol-Tatars also suddenly decided to leave Russian lands after their victory.

In 1227, the invincible Genghis Khan died, and first divided his vast possessions among his sons, giving the supremacy over all to Udegei.

Part of the land also went to Genghis Khan’s grandson, Batu. He decided to continue the aggressive policy of his grandfather and expand the borders of his new possessions.

In 1236 huge army The Mongol-Tatars, led by Batu, easily captured the capital of the Volga-Kama Bulgarians, the city of Great Bulgar, and by 1237 they came close to the borders of the Ryazan principality. Batu sent his envoys to the local princes demanding that they recognize his power and agree to pay tithes. They proudly replied: “Everything is yours if we are gone.”

The Ryazan princes turned to the Vladimir prince for help. But here the consequences of the long-term fragmentation and disunity of Rus' were felt. Prince Yuri Vsevolodovich of Vladimir decided not to give help, but to prepare for battle and fight on his own.

In two years, the Mongol-Tatar invasion conquered the entire northeast of Rus'. The most fierce resistance was provided by residents of the small town of Kozelsk. For this, the invaders slaughtered every single one of them, and left only ruins of the city.

By 1240, Batu’s troops also captured southwestern Russian territories. Chernigov and Pereslavl fell. In the winter of 1240, Kyiv was captured by the Mongol-Tatars. Rus' was conquered.

For the next few years, the horde walked through the territories of Hungary, Silesia, Moravia and Poland. But the Tatars could not stay there for long and retreated. Extreme western borders The principalities of Volyn and Galicia became conquests.

After this, the Mongol-Tatars decided to stop in the southwest of the Russian Plain and founded a new khanate there - the Golden Horde. Legally it was subordinate to the Great Mongol Khan, but gradually became an independent state. Golden Horde ruled over all Russian lands, the Black Sea region, the Urals and parts of the Western Siberian steppes.

The Tatar Khan did not abolish the power of the Russian princes, but stood on top of it. After the princes recognized the supreme power of the Horde, they could officially rule in their principalities, receiving the so-called “label”. Batu personally decided which of the surviving princes should be given to rule which principality. At the same time, the power of the Russian princes over their people only increased, since they now relied on the enormous external force of the troops of the Golden Horde.

The entire population of the principalities was carefully rewritten and imposed a heavy tribute. Initially, its collection was entrusted to the Baskaks - special officials from the Horde. Sometimes this was done by Basurman merchants, who paid the required amount of tribute from their own treasury, and then independently collected it from the local population, profiting from it.

Extortions, oppression and violence repeatedly caused popular uprisings against the Tatars. But local princes they tried to come to an agreement with the Horde so as not to bring repeated extermination on their people. At the beginning of the 14th century, the Tatar authorities nevertheless considered it more convenient to entrust the collection of tribute directly to the Russian princes.

The power of the Golden Horde gradually weakened - there were no longer strong rulers there, and the internecine disputes of the khans only worsened the situation. In November 1480, in a decisive clash, the troops of the Russian princes were able to defeat the Mongol-Tatar army. As a result, the conquerors were forced to return to their historical territories. Thus, the long-term Mongol-Tatar yoke officially ended, and Rus' became free again.

Initially, Gorky was skeptical about October revolution. However, after several years cultural work V Soviet Russia(in Petrograd he headed the publishing house " World literature", interceded with the Bolsheviks for those arrested) and life abroad in the 1920s (Marienbad, Sorrento), returned to the USSR, where last years life was surrounded by official recognition as the “petrel of the revolution” and “the great proletarian writer”, the founder socialist realism.

Biography

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

Childhood

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

Youth

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

Literary and social activities

In 1892 he first appeared in print with the story “Makar Chudra”. Back in Nizhny Novgorod, publishes reviews and feuilletons in Volzhsky Vestnik, Samara Gazeta, Nizhegorodsky Listok, etc.
1895 - “Chelkash”, “Old Woman Izergil”.
1896 - Gorky writes a response to the first cinematic session in Nizhny Novgorod:

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

1900-1913 - participates in the work of the publishing house "Knowledge"
March 1901 - “Song of the Petrel” was created by M. Gorky in Nizhny Novgorod. Participation in Marxist workers' circles in Nizhny Novgorod, Sormovo, St. Petersburg, wrote a proclamation calling for the fight against autocracy. Arrested and expelled from Nizhny Novgorod. According to contemporaries, Nikolai Gumilyov highly valued the last stanza of this poem.

In 1901, M. Gorky turned to drama. Creates the plays “The Bourgeois” (1901), “At the Lower Depths” (1902). In 1902, he became the godfather and adoptive father of the Jew Zinovy Sverdlov, who took the surname Peshkov and converted to Orthodoxy. This was necessary in order for Zinovy to receive the right to live in Moscow.
February 21 - election of M. Gorky to honorary academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences according to the category belles lettres.

1904-1905 - writes the plays “Summer Residents”, “Children of the Sun”, “Varvars”. Meets Lenin. He was arrested for the revolutionary proclamation and in connection with the execution on January 9, but then released under public pressure. Participant in the revolution of 1905-1907. In the fall of 1905 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.

1906 - travels abroad, creates satirical pamphlets about the “bourgeois” culture of France and the USA (“My Interviews”, “In America”). He writes the play “Enemies” and creates the novel “Mother”. Due to tuberculosis, he settled in Italy on the island of Capri, where he lived for 7 years (from 1906 to 1913). Checked into the prestigious Quisisana Hotel. From March 1909 to February 1911 he lived at the Villa Spinola (now Bering), stayed at the villas (they have commemorative plaques about his stay) Blesius (from 1906 to 1909) and Serfina (now Pierina) ). On Capri, Gorky wrote “Confession” (1908), where his philosophical differences with Lenin and rapprochement with Lunacharsky and Bogdanov were clearly outlined.

1907 - delegate to the V Congress of the RSDLP.
1908 - play “The Last”, story “The Life of an Useless Person”.
1909 - the stories “The Town of Okurov”, “The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin”.
1913 - Gorky edits the Bolshevik newspapers Zvezda and Pravda, the art department of the Bolshevik magazine Prosveshchenie, publishes the first collection proletarian writers. Writes "Tales of Italy".
1912-1916 - M. Gorky creates a series of stories and essays that made up the collection “Across Rus'”, autobiographical stories “Childhood”, “In People”. The last part of the trilogy, “My Universities,” was written in 1923.
1917-1919 - M. Gorky does a lot of social and political work, criticizes the “methods” of the Bolsheviks, condemns their attitude towards the old intelligentsia, saves many of its representatives from Bolshevik repression and famine.

Abroad

1921 - M. Gorky’s departure abroad. IN Soviet literature a myth has developed that the reason for his departure was the resumption of his illness and the need, at Lenin’s insistence, for treatment abroad. In fact, A. M. Gorky was forced to leave due to an exacerbation ideological differences with established power. In 1921-1923 lived in Helsingfors, Berlin, Prague.
Since 1924 he lived in Italy, in Sorrento. Published memoirs about Lenin.
1925 - novel “The Artamonov Case”.

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

Return to the USSR

1932 - Gorky returns to Soviet Union. The government provided him with the former Ryabushinsky mansion on Spiridonovka, dachas in Gorki and Teselli (Crimea). Here he receives Stalin’s order - to prepare the ground for the 1st Congress of Soviet Writers, and for this to carry out preparatory work among them. Gorky created many newspapers and magazines: the book series “History of factories and factories”, “History civil war", "Poet's Library", "History young man XIX century", the magazine "Literary Studies", he writes the plays "Yegor Bulychev and others" (1932), "Dostigaev and others" (1933).

1934 - Gorky conducts I All-Union Congress Soviet writers, gives a keynote speech.
1934 - co-editor of the book “Stalin Canal”
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 and his ashes were placed in an urn in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow. Before cremation, M. Gorky's brain was removed and taken to the Moscow Brain Institute for further study.

Death

The circumstances of the death of Maxim Gorky and his son are considered “suspicious” by many; there were rumors of poisoning, which, however, were not confirmed. At the funeral, among others, Molotov and Stalin carried Gorky’s coffin. It is interesting that among other accusations against Genrikh Yagoda at the Third Moscow Trial in 1938 was the accusation of poisoning Gorky’s son. According to Yagoda's interrogations, Maxim Gorky was killed on Trotsky's orders, and the murder of Gorky's son, Maxim Peshkov, was his personal initiative.

Some publications blame Stalin for Gorky's death. An important precedent for the medical side of the accusations in the “Doctors’ Case” was the Third Moscow Trial (1938), where among the defendants were three doctors (Kazakov, Levin and Pletnev), accused of the murders of Gorky and others.

Family and personal life

Wife - Ekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova (nee Volozhina).
1. Son - Maxim Alekseevich Peshkov (1897-1934) + Vvedenskaya, Nadezhda Alekseevna (“Timosha”)
  1. Peshkova, Marfa Maksimovna + Beria, Sergo Lavrentievich
    1. daughters Nina and Nadezhda, son Sergei (they bore the surname “Peshkov” because of the fate of Beria)
  2. Peshkova, Daria Maksimovna + Grave, Alexander Konstantinovich
    1. Maxim and Ekaterina (carried the surname Peshkov)
      1. Alexey Peshkov, son of Catherine
2. Daughter - Ekaterina Alekseevna Peshkova (died as a child)
3. Peshkov, Zinovy Alekseevich, brother of Yakov Sverdlov, godson of Peshkov, who took his last name, and de facto adopted son + (1) Lydia Burago
Concubine 1906-1913 - Maria Fedorovna Andreeva (1872-1953)
1. Ekaterina Andreevna Zhelyabuzhskaya (Andreeva’s daughter from her first marriage, Gorky’s stepdaughter) + Abram Garmant
2. Zhelyabuzhsky, Yuri Andreevich (stepson)
3. Evgeniy G. Kyakist, Andreeva’s nephew
4. A. L. Zhelyabuzhsky, nephew of Andreeva’s first husband
Long-term life partner - Budberg, Maria Ignatievna

Environment

Shaikevich Varvara Vasilievna - the wife of A.N. Tikhonov-Serebrova, Gorky’s lover, who allegedly had a child from him.
Tikhonov-Serebrov Alexander Nikolaevich - assistant.
Rakitsky, Ivan Nikolaevich - artist.
Khodasevichi: Valentin, his wife Nina Berberova; niece Valentina Mikhailovna, her husband Andrey Diederichs.
Yakov Izrailevich.
Kryuchkov, Pyotr Petrovich - secretary, later, together with Yagoda,

Gorky Maxim

Autobiography

A.M.Gorky

Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov, pseudonym Maxim Gorky

Born on March 14, 1869 in Nizhny Novgorod. The father is the son of a soldier, the mother is a bourgeois. My paternal grandfather was an officer, demoted by Nicholas the First for cruel treatment of lower ranks. He was such a cool man that my father ran from him five times from the age of ten to seventeen. Last time my father managed to escape from his family forever - he came on foot from Tobolsk to Nizhny and here he became an apprentice to a draper. Obviously, he had abilities and was literate, because for twenty-two years the Kolchin Shipping Company (now Karpova) appointed him as manager of its office in Astrakhan, where in 1873 he died of cholera, which he contracted from me. According to my grandmother, my father was a smart, kind and very cheerful person.

My grandfather on my mother’s side began his career as a barge hauler on the Volga, three years later he was already a clerk on the caravan of the Balakhna merchant Zaev, then he started dyeing yarn, got rich and opened a dyeing establishment in Nizhny on a broad basis. Soon he had several houses and three workshops in the city for printing and dyeing fabric, was elected to the guild foreman, served in this position for three three years, after which he refused, offended by the fact that he was not elected to the craft head. He was very religious, cruelly despotic and painfully stingy. He lived for ninety-two years and went crazy a year before his death, in 1888.

The father and mother got married with a “roll-your-own” cigarette, because the grandfather could not, of course, marry off his beloved daughter to a rootless man with a dubious future. My mother had no influence on my life, because, considering me the cause of my father’s death, she did not love me and, having soon married a second time, she completely handed me over to my grandfather, who began my upbringing with the psalter and book of hours. Then, at the age of seven, I was sent to school, where I studied for five months. I studied poorly, hated school rules, and my comrades too, because I always loved solitude. Having contracted smallpox at school, I ended my studies and never resumed it. At this time, my mother died of transient consumption, and my grandfather went bankrupt. In his family, which was very large, since two sons lived with him, married and had children, no one loved me except my grandmother, an amazingly kind and selfless old woman, whom I will remember all my life with a feeling of love and respect for her. My uncles loved to live generously, that is, to drink and eat a lot and well. When they got drunk, they usually fought among themselves or with guests, of whom we always had a lot, or beat their wives. One uncle nailed two wives into the coffin, another - one. Sometimes they beat me too. In such a situation, there can be no talk of any mental influences, especially since all my relatives are semi-literate people.

At the age of eight I was sent as a “boy” to a shoe store, but two months later I cooked my hands with boiling cabbage soup and was sent by the owner back to my grandfather. Upon recovery, I was apprenticed to a draftsman, a distant relative, but a year later, due to very difficult conditions life, I ran away from him and became an apprentice to a cook on a ship. This was a retired non-commissioned officer of the Guard, Mikhail Antonov Smury, a man of fabulous physical strength, rude, very well read; he aroused my interest in reading books. Until that time, I hated books and all kinds of printed paper, but with beatings and caresses my teacher made me convinced of the great significance of the book and made me love it. The first book I really liked was “The Legend of How a Soldier Saved Peter the Great.” Smury had a whole chest filled mostly with small volumes bound in leather, and it was the strangest library in the world. Eckarthausen lay next to Nekrasov, Anna Radcliffe - with a volume of Sovremennik, there was also Iskra for 1864, The Stone of Faith and books in the Little Russian language.

From that moment in my life I began to read everything that came to hand; At the age of ten I began to keep a diary, where I recorded impressions from life and books. Future life very varied and complex: from a cook I returned to being a draftsman, then I traded in icons, served as a watchman on the Gryaz-Tsaritsyn railway, was a pretzel maker, a baker, happened to live in slums, and went on foot to travel around Russia several times. In 1888, while living in Kazan, he first met students and participated in self-education circles; in 1890 I felt out of place among the intelligentsia and went to travel. He walked from Nizhny to Tsaritsyn, Don region, Ukraine, entered Bessarabia, from there along the southern coast of Crimea to Kuban, to the Black Sea region. In October 1892 he lived in Tiflis, where he published his first essay “Makar Chudra” in the newspaper “Kavkaz”. I was praised a lot for it, and after moving to Nizhny, I tried to write short stories for the Kazan newspaper Volzhsky Vestnik. They were readily accepted and published. I sent the essay “Emelyan Pilyai” to Russkie Vedomosti, which was also accepted and published. I should perhaps note here that the ease with which provincial newspapers publish the works of "beginners" is truly amazing, and I believe that it must testify either to the extreme kindness of the editors or to their complete lack of literary sense.

In 1895, my story “Chelkash” was published in “Russian Wealth” (book 6) - “Russian Thought” spoke about it - I don’t remember in which book. In the same year, my essay “Error” was published in “Russian Thought” - there were no reviews, it seems. In 1896, in the New Word, the essay “Melancholy” was a review in the September book “Educations”. In March of this year, the “New Dictionary” published an essay on “Konovalov.”

Until now, I have not yet written a single thing that would satisfy me, and therefore I do not save my works - ergo*: I cannot send them. It seems that there were no remarkable events in my life, but however, I have a unclear idea of what exactly should be meant by these words.

---------* Therefore (lat.)

NOTES

The autobiography was first published in the book "Russian Literature of the 20th Century", vol. 1, ed. "Mir", M. 1914.

The autobiography was written in 1897, as evidenced by the author’s note in the manuscript: “Crimea, Alupka, village of Hadji Mustafa.” M. Gorky lived in Alupka in January - May 1897.

The autobiography was written by M. Gorky at the request of the literary critic and bibliographer S.A. Vengerov.

Apparently, at the same time or somewhat later, M. Gorky wrote an autobiography, published in extracts in 1899 in the article by D. Gorodetsky “Two Portraits” (magazine “Family”, 1899, number 36, September 5):

“Born on March 14, 1868 or 9 in Nizhny, in the family of the dyer Vasily Vasilyevich Kashirin, from his daughter Varvara and the Perm tradesman Maxim Savvatiev Peshkov, by trade as a draper or upholsterer. Since then, with honor and unblemished I have carried the title of a workshop paint shop. .. My father died in Astrakhan when I was 5 years old, my mother in Kanavino-Sloboda. After my mother’s death, my grandfather sent me to a shoe store; at that time I was 9 years old and my grandfather taught me to read and write in the psalter and book of hours. From the "boys" he ran away and became an apprentice to a draftsman - he ran away and entered an icon-painting workshop, then on a ship, as a cook, then as a gardener's assistant. He lived in these occupations until he was 15 years old, all the time diligently reading classical works unknown authors, something like: “Guac, or irresistible loyalty”, “Andrei Fearless”, “Yapancha”, “Yashka Smertensky”, etc.

Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov (better known under the literary 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 then brought up in the house of his maternal grandfather, Kashirin, a bankrupt owner of a dyeing workshop. The stingy grandfather early forced young Alyosha to “go among the people,” that is, to earn money on his own. He had to work as a store delivery boy, a baker, and wash dishes in a cafeteria. These early years Gorky later described his life in “Childhood,” the first part of his autobiographical trilogy. In 1884, Alexey unsuccessfully tried to enter Kazan University.

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

In 1888, Gorky was briefly arrested 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 through self-education, getting temporary work as either a loader or a night watchman, Gorky accumulated impressions, which he later used to write his first stories. He called this period of his life “My Universities.”

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

Maksim Gorky. Video

Gorky's literary debut and his first steps in politics

In 1892, Maxim Gorky’s first story “Makar Chudra” appeared. It 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 so different artistic merit, much with exaggerated pompous pathos, however, they successfully coincided with 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 ignited by the proletariat and the poor. Lumpen tramps were the main characters of Maxim Gorky's stories. Society began to vigorously applaud them as a new fictional fashion.

In 1898, Gorky's first collection, Essays and Stories, was published. He was a resounding (albeit completely inexplicable in terms of literary talent) success. Public and creative career Gorky took off sharply. He depicted the life of beggars from the very bottom of society (“tramps”), depicting their difficulties and humiliations with strong exaggeration, intensely introducing feigned pathos of “humanity” into his stories. Maxim Gorky gained a reputation as the only literary exponent of the interests of the working class, a defender of the idea of a radical social, political and cultural transformation of Russia. His work was praised by intellectuals and “conscious” workers. Gorky struck up close acquaintances with Chekhov and Tolstoy, although their attitude towards him was not always clear.

Gorky acted as a staunch supporter of Marxist social democracy, openly hostile to “tsarism.” In 1901 he wrote “Song of the Petrel,” an open call for revolution. For drawing up a proclamation calling for “the fight against autocracy,” he was arrested and expelled from Nizhny Novgorod that same year. Maxim Gorky became a close friend of 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 Gorky's election (1902) to a member of the Imperial Academy in the category of belles-lettres was annulled by the government, academicians A.P. Chekhov and V.G. Korolenko also resigned as a sign of solidarity.

Maksim Gorky

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

Getting rich thanks to his creative 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 demonstration on January 9, 1905 (“Bloody Sunday”) apparently gave impetus to Gorky’s even greater radicalization. Without openly aligning himself with 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. A meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, chaired by Lenin, took place at his apartment in this city, which decided to stop the armed struggle for now. A.I. Solzhenitsyn writes (“March of the Seventeenth,” ch. 171) that Gorky “in 1905, in his Moscow apartment during the days of the uprising, kept thirteen Georgian vigilantes, and he made bombs.”

Fearing arrest, Alexey Maksimovich fled to Finland, from where he left for Western Europe. From Europe he traveled to the United States to raise funds in support of the Bolshevik Party. It was during this trip that Gorky began to write his famous novel"Mother", which was first released on English language in London, and then in Russian (1907). The theme of this very tendentious work is the joining of the revolution by a simple working woman after the arrest of her son. In America, Gorky was initially welcomed with open arms. He met Theodore Roosevelt And Mark Twain. However, then the American press began to be outraged by the high-profile political actions of Maxim Gorky: he sent a telegram of support to the union leaders Haywood and Moyer, who was accused of murdering the governor of Idaho. The newspapers also did not like the fact that the writer was accompanied on the trip not 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 vehemently.

Gorky in Capri

Having returned from America, Maxim Gorky decided not to return to Russia yet, 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, Alexey Maksimovich continued to support the Russian left, especially the Bolsheviks; he wrote novels and essays. Together with Bolshevik emigrants Alexander Bogdanov and A. V. Lunacharsky Gorky created an intricate philosophical system called " god-building" It claimed to develop from revolutionary myths a “socialist spirituality”, with the help of which the enriched strong passions and new moral values humanity will be able to get rid of evil, suffering and even death. Although these philosophical quests were rejected by Lenin, Maxim Gorky continued to believe that “culture,” that is, moral and spiritual values, was more important to the success of the revolution than political and economic events. This theme lies at the heart of his novel 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 social 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, together with a number of other prominent Russian writers participated in the publication of the journalistic collection “Shield”, the purpose of which was to protect Jewry allegedly oppressed in Russia. Speaking at 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 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 the revolutionary year of 1917 his relations with them worsened. Two weeks after the October Revolution of 1917, Maxim Gorky wrote:

However, as the Bolshevik regime strengthened, Maxim Gorky became more and more depressed and increasingly refrained from criticism. On August 31, 1918, having learned about the assassination attempt on Lenin, Gorky and Maria Andreeva sent a joint 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, which he described as follows: “I realized that I was mistaken, went to Ilyich and openly admitted my mistake.” Together with a number of other writers who joined the Bolsheviks, Gorky created the World Literature publishing house under the People's Commissariat of Education. It planned to publish the best classical works, however, in an environment of terrible devastation, almost nothing could be done. Gorky, however, started love affair with one of the employees of the new publishing house - Maria Benkendorf. It continued 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 execution by the security officers. In October of the same year, the writer left Bolshevik Russia and lived in German resorts, completing there the third part of his autobiography, “My Universities” (1923). He then returned to Italy "for treatment of tuberculosis." While living in Sorrento (1924), Gorky maintained contacts with his homeland. After 1928, Alexey Maksimovich came to the Soviet Union several times until he accepted Stalin’s offer to finally return to his homeland (October 1932). According to some literary scholars, the reason for the return was political beliefs writer, his long-standing sympathies for the Bolsheviks, however, there is a more reasonable opinion that main role Gorky’s desire to get rid of debts incurred while living abroad played a role 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 I received detailed information from camp inmates on Solovki about the terrible cruelties that were happening there. This case is in “The Gulag Archipelago” by A. I. Solzhenitsyn. In the West, Gorky's article about the Solovetsky camp aroused 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 an article “Who are you with, masters of culture?” Designed in the style of Lenin-Stalin propaganda, it called on writers, artists and performers to put their creativity at the service of the communist movement.

Upon returning 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 millionaire Nikolai Ryabushinsky before the revolution (now the Gorky Museum), as well as a fashionable dacha in the Moscow region. During demonstrations, Gorky climbed to the podium of the mausoleum along with Stalin. One of the main Moscow streets, Tverskaya, was renamed in honor of the writer, as well as his hometown, Nizhny Novgorod (which regained its historical name only in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union). The largest aircraft in the world, the ANT-20, which was built by Tupolev's bureau in the mid-1930s, was named "Maxim Gorky". There are numerous photographs of the writer with members of the Soviet government. All these honors came at a price. Gorky put his creativity at the service of Stalinist propaganda. In 1934, he co-edited a book that celebrated the slave labor built White Sea-Baltic Canal and convinced that in the Soviet “correctional” camps a successful “reforging” of the former “enemies of the proletariat” was taking place.

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

There is, however, information that all this lie cost Gorky considerable mental anguish. The higher-ups knew about the writer’s hesitations. 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 unexpectedly died, and on June 18, 1936, Gorky himself died of pneumonia. Stalin, who carried the writer’s coffin with Molotov during his funeral, said that Gorky was poisoned by “enemies of the people.” Charges of poisoning were brought against prominent participants in the Moscow trials of 1936-1938. and were considered proven there. Former head OGPU And NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda, admitted that he organized the murder of Maxim Gorky on the orders of Trotsky.

Joseph Stalin and Writers. Maksim Gorky

Gorky's cremated ashes were buried near the Kremlin wall. The writer’s brain had previously been removed from his body and sent “for study” to a Moscow research institute.

Evaluation of Gorky's work

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

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

Gorky himself argued that the center of his work was a deep belief in the value of the human person, the glorification of human dignity and inflexibility in the midst of life's hardships. The writer saw in himself a “restless soul” that strives 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 they convince: these claims were mostly feigned.

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

Maxim Gorky (real name - Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov). Born on March 16 (28), 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod - died on June 18, 1936 in Gorki, Moscow Region. Russian writer, prose writer, playwright. One of the most significant and famous Russian writers and thinkers in the world.

Since 1918, he has been nominated 5 times for Nobel Prize on literature. On turn of the 19th century 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.

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

At the beginning of the twentieth century, he was one of the ideologists of god-building; in 1909, he helped participants in this movement maintain a factional school on the island of Capri for workers, which he called “the literary center of god-building.”

Alexey 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 Savvatyevich Peshkov (1840-1871), who was the son of a soldier demoted from the officers. M. S. Peshkov worked as a manager of a shipping office in the last years of his life, but died of cholera. Alyosha Peshkov fell ill with cholera at the age of 4, his father managed to treat him, but at the same time he became infected and did not survive; the boy hardly remembered his father, but the stories of his loved ones about him left a deep mark - even the pseudonym “Maxim Gorky,” according to old Nizhny Novgorod residents, was taken in memory of Maxim Savvateevich.

Mother - Varvara Vasilievna, nee Kashirina (1842-1879) - from a bourgeois family; Having become a widow at an early age, she remarried and died of consumption. Gorky’s grandfather Savvaty Peshkov rose to the rank of officer, but was demoted and exiled to Siberia “for cruel treatment of lower ranks,” after which he enrolled as a bourgeois. His son Maxim ran away from his father five times and at the age of 17 he left home forever. Orphaned early, Alexey spent his childhood in the house of his grandfather Kashirin. From the age of 11 he was forced to go “into the people”: he worked as a “boy” in a store, as a buffet cook on a steamship, as a baker, studied in an icon-painting workshop, etc.

In 1884 he tried to enter Kazan University. I became acquainted with Marxist literature and propaganda work. In 1888, he was arrested for connections with N. E. Fedoseev’s circle. He was under constant police surveillance. In October 1888, he became a watchman at the Dobrinka station of the Gryaze-Tsaritsyn Railway. Impressions from his stay in Dobrinka will serve as the basis for the autobiographical story “The Watchman” and the story “Boredom for the Sake.”

In January 1889, at a personal request (a complaint in verse), he was transferred to the Borisoglebsk station, then as a weighmaster to the Krutaya station.

In the spring of 1891 he set out to wander and soon reached the Caucasus.

In 1892 he first appeared in print with the story “Makar Chudra”. Returning to Nizhny Novgorod, he publishes reviews and feuilletons in Volzhsky Vestnik, Samara Gazeta, Nizhny Novgorod Listok, etc.

1895 - “Chelkash”, “Old Woman Izergil”.

From October 1897 to mid-January 1898, he lived in the village of Kamenka (now the city of Kuvshinovo, Tver Region) in the apartment of his friend Nikolai Zakharovich Vasiliev, who worked at the Kamensk paper factory and led an illegal workers' Marxist circle. Subsequently, the life impressions of this period served the writer as material for the novel “The Life of Klim Samgin.” 1898 - The publishing house of Dorovatsky and A.P. Charushnikov published the first volume of Gorky's works. In those years, the circulation of the young author's first book rarely exceeded 1000 copies. A. I. Bogdanovich advised to release the first two volumes of M. Gorky’s “Essays and Stories”, 1200 copies each. Publishers “took a chance” and released more. The first volume of the 1st edition of “Essays and Stories” was published in a circulation of 3,000 copies.

1899 - novel “Foma Gordeev”, prose poem “Song of the Falcon”.

1900-1901 - the novel “Three”, personal acquaintance with,.

1900-1913 - participates in the work of the publishing house "Knowledge".

March 1901 - “Song of the Petrel” was created by M. Gorky in Nizhny Novgorod. Participation in Marxist workers' circles in Nizhny Novgorod, Sormovo, St. Petersburg; wrote a proclamation calling for the fight against autocracy. Arrested and expelled from Nizhny Novgorod.

In 1901, M. Gorky turned to drama. Creates the plays “The Bourgeois” (1901), “At the Lower Depths” (1902). In 1902, he became the godfather and adoptive father of the Jew Zinovy Sverdlov, who took the surname Peshkov and converted to Orthodoxy. This was necessary in order for Zinovy to receive the right to live in Moscow.

February 21 - election of M. Gorky to honorary academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature.

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 Peter and Paul Fortress. They came out in defense of Gorky famous figures art Gerhart Hauptmann, Auguste Rodin, Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, Italian writers Grazia Deledda, Mario Rapisardi, Edmondo de Amicis, composer Giacomo Puccini, philosopher Benedetto Croce and other representatives of the creative and scientific world from Germany, France, England. Student demonstrations took place in Rome. Under public pressure, he was released on bail on February 14, 1905. Participant in the revolution of 1905-1907. In November 1905 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.

1906, February - Gorky and his actual wife, actress Maria Andreeva, travel through Europe to America, where they stayed until the fall. Abroad, the writer creates satirical pamphlets about the “bourgeois” culture of France and the USA (“My Interviews”, “In America”). Returning to Russia in the fall, he writes the play “Enemies” and creates the novel “Mother”. At the end of 1906, due to tuberculosis, he settled in Italy on the island of Capri, where he lived with Andreeva for 7 years (from 1906 to 1913). Checked into the prestigious Quisisana Hotel. From March 1909 to February 1911 he lived at the Villa Spinola (now Bering), stayed at the villas (they have commemorative plaques about his stay) Blesius (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 outlined.

1907 - delegate with the right of advisory vote to the V Congress of the RSDLP.

1908 - play “The Last”, story “The Life of an Useless Person”.

1909 - the stories “The Town of Okurov”, “The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin”.

1913 - Gorky edits the Bolshevik newspapers Zvezda and Pravda, the art department of the Bolshevik magazine Prosveshchenie, and publishes the first collection of proletarian writers. Writes "Tales of Italy".

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 journal “Letopis” and the publishing house “Parus”.

1912-1916 - M. Gorky creates a series of stories and essays that made up the collection “Across Rus'”, autobiographical stories “Childhood”, “In People”. In 1916, the Parus publishing house published autobiographical story“In People” and a series of essays “Across Rus'”. The last part of the trilogy, “My Universities,” was written in 1923.

1917-1919 - M. Gorky does a lot of social and political work, criticizes the methods of the Bolsheviks, condemns their attitude towards the old intelligentsia, saves a number of its representatives from Bolshevik repression and famine.

1921 - M. Gorky’s departure abroad. The official reason for his departure was the resumption of his illness and the need, at Lenin’s insistence, for treatment abroad. According to another version, Gorky was forced to leave due to worsening ideological differences with the established government. In 1921-1923 lived in Helsingfors (Helsinki), Berlin, Prague.

1925 - novel “The Artamonov Case”.

1928 - at the invitation of the Soviet government and personally comes to the USSR for the first time and makes a 5-week trip around the country: Kursk, Kharkov, Crimea, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, during which Gorky is shown the achievements of the USSR, which are reflected in the series of essays “Across the Soviet Union.” But he doesn’t stay in the USSR, he goes back to Italy.

1929 - comes to the USSR for the second time and on June 20-23 visits the Solovetsky special purpose camp and writes a laudatory review of its regime. On October 12, 1929, Gorky left for Italy.

1932, March - two central Soviet newspapers “Pravda” and “Izvestia” simultaneously published an article-pamphlet by Gorky under the title, which became a catchphrase - “Who are you with, masters of culture?”

1932, October - Gorky finally 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 Stalin’s order - to prepare the ground for the 1st Congress of Soviet Writers, and for this to carry out preparatory work among them. Gorky created many newspapers and magazines: the book series “History of Factories”, “History of the Civil War”, “Library of the Poet”, “History of the Young person XIX century", the magazine "Literary Studies", he writes the plays "Yegor Bulychev and others" (1932), "Dostigaev and others" (1933).

1934 - Gorky holds the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, giving the main report at it.

1934 - co-editor of the book “Stalin Canal”.

In 1925-1936 he wrote the novel “The Life of Klim Samgin”, which 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 and his ashes were placed in an urn in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow. Before cremation, M. Gorky's brain was removed and taken to the Moscow Brain Institute for further study.

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

On May 27, 1936, after visiting his son’s grave, Gorky caught a cold in the cold windy weather and fell ill. He was ill for three weeks and died on June 18. At the funeral, among others, Stalin carried Gorky’s coffin. It is interesting that among other accusations against Genrikh Yagoda at the Third Moscow Trial in 1938 was the accusation of poisoning Gorky’s son. According to Yagoda's interrogations, Maxim Gorky was killed by order, and the murder of Gorky's son, Maxim Peshkov, was his personal initiative. Some publications blame Stalin for Gorky's death. An important precedent for the medical side of the accusations in the “Doctors’ Case” was the Third Moscow Trial (1938), where among the defendants were three doctors (Kazakov, Levin and Pletnev), accused of the murders of Gorky and others.

Personal life of Maxim Gorky:

Wife 1896-1903 - Ekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova (nee Volzhina) (1876-1965). The divorce was not formalized.

Son - Maxim Alekseevich Peshkov (1897-1934), his wife Vvedenskaya, Nadezhda Alekseevna (“Timosha”).

Granddaughter - Peshkova, Marfa Maksimovna, her husband Beria, Sergo Lavrentievich.

Great-granddaughters - Nina and Nadezhda.

Great-grandson - Sergei (they bore the surname “Peshkov” because of the fate of Beria).

Granddaughter - Peshkova, Daria Maksimovna, her husband Grave, Alexander Konstantinovich.

Great-grandson - Maxim.

Great-granddaughter - Ekaterina (bears the surname Peshkov).

Great-great-grandson - Alexey Peshkov, son of Catherine.

Daughter - Ekaterina Alekseevna Peshkova (1898-1903).

Adopted and godson - Peshkov, Zinovy Alekseevich, brother of Yakov Sverdlov, Gorky's godson, who took his last name, and de facto adopted son, his wife Lydia Burago.

Actual wife in 1903-1919. - Maria Fedorovna Andreeva (1868-1953) - actress, revolutionary, Soviet statesman and party leader.

Adopted daughter - Ekaterina Andreevna Zhelyabuzhskaya (father - actual state councilor Zhelyabuzhsky, Andrei Alekseevich).

Adopted son - Zhelyabuzhsky, Yuri Andreevich (father - actual state councilor Zhelyabuzhsky, Andrey Alekseevich).

Cohabitant in 1920-1933 - Budberg, Maria Ignatievna (1892-1974) - baroness, adventurer.

Novels by Maxim Gorky:

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

Stories by Maxim Gorky:

1894 - “Poor Pavel”
1900 - “Man. Essays" (remained unfinished; the third chapter was not published during the author’s lifetime)
1908 - “The Life of an Useless Man.”
1908 - “Confession”
1909 - “Summer”
1909 - “The Town of Okurov”, “The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin”.
1913-1914 - “Childhood”
1915-1916 - “In People”
1923 - “My Universities”
1929 - “At the End of the Earth.”

Stories and essays by Maxim Gorky:

1892 - “The Girl and Death” (fairy tale poem, published in July 1917 in the newspaper “New Life”)
1892 - “Makar Chudra”
1892 - “Emelyan Pilyai”
1892 - “Grandfather Arkhip and Lyonka”
1895 - “Chelkash”, “Old Woman Izergil”, “Song of the Falcon” (prose poem)
1897 - “Former People”, “The Orlov Spouses”, “Malva”, “Konovalov”.
1898 - “Essays and Stories” (collection)
1899 - “Twenty-six and one”
1901 - “Song of the Petrel” (prose poem)
1903 - “Man” (prose poem)
1906 - “Comrade!”, “Sage”
1908 - “Soldiers”
1911 - “Tales of Italy”
1912-1917 - “Across Rus'” (cycle of stories)
1924 - “Stories of 1922-1924”
1924 - “Notes from a Diary” (series of stories)
1929 - “Solovki” (essay).

Plays by Maxim Gorky:

1901 - “The Bourgeois”
1902 - “At the Bottom”
1904 - “Summer Residents”
1905 - “Children of the Sun”
1905 - “Barbarians”
1906 - “Enemies”
1908 - “The Last”
1910 - "Jackass"
1910 - “Children” (“Meeting”)
1910 - “Vassa Zheleznova” (2nd edition - 1933; 3rd edition - 1935)
1913 - “Zykovs”
1913 - “False Coin”
1915 - “The Old Man” (staged on January 1, 1919 on the stage of the State Academic Maly Theater; published 1921 in Berlin).
1930-1931 - “Somov and others”
1931 - “Egor Bulychov and others”
1932 - “Dostigaev and others.”

Journalism of Maxim Gorky:

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