Maxim Gorky - Life, Selected works, Works about Gorky

Novelist and playwright, born in Nizhni Novgorod, W Russia. He held a variety of menial posts before becoming a writer, producing several Romantic short stories, then social novels and plays, notably the drama Na dne (1902, The Lower Depths). At first he modelled his plays on Chekhov. An autobiographical trilogy (1915–23) contains his best writing. Involved in strikes and imprisoned in 1905, he was an exile in Italy until 1914, then engaged in revolutionary propaganda for the new regime. He was the first president of the Soviet Writers' Union, and a supporter of Stalinism. He died in mysterious circumstances, and may have been the victim of an anti-Soviet plot. His birthplace was renamed Gorky in his honour (1929–91).

Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov

Gorky's autographed portrait
Pseudonym(s):	Maxim Gorky
Born:	March 28, 1868 [O.S. March 16] Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Empire
Died:	June 18, 1936 Moscow, USSR
Occupation(s):	writer
Literary movement:	socialist realism

Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov (In Russian Алексей Максимович Пешков) (March 28, 1868 [O.S.

Life

Gorky became an orphan at the age of eleven and was brought up by his grandmother, an excellent storyteller. He began using the pseudonym Gorky (literally "bitter") in 1892, while working in Tiflis newspaper Кавказ (The Caucasus). Gorky befriended many professional revolutionaries he encountered and became Lenin's personal friend after they met in 1902.

While briefly imprisoned in Peter and Paul Fortress during the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905, Gorky wrote the play Children of the Sun, nominally set during an 1862 cholera epidemic, but universally understood to relate to present-day events. After his newspaper Novaya Zhizn (Новая Жизнь, "New Life") fell prey to Lenin's repression, Gorky published a collection of essays critical of the Bolsheviks called Untimely Thoughts in 1918. Gorky compares Lenin to both the Tsar and Nechayev. Lenin's 1919 letters to Gorky contain threats: "My advice to you: change your surroundings, your views, your actions, otherwise life may turn away from you." Gorky hurried to Moscow, obtained the order to release Gumilyov from Lenin personally, but upon his return to Petrograd he found out that Gumilyov had already been shot.

According to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Gorky's return was motivated by material interests. In June, 1929 Gorky visited Solovki (cleaned up for this occasion) and wrote a positive article about that Gulag camp, which had already gained ill fame in the West.

Gorky's return from fascist Italy was a major propaganda victory for the Soviets. He was decorated by the Order of Lenin and given a mansion (formerly belonged to millionaire Ryabushinsky, currently Gorky Museum) in Moscow and a dacha in the suburbs.

In 1933 Gorky edited an infamous book about the Belomorkanal, presented as an example of "successful rehabilitation of the former enemies of proletariat."

With the step-up of Stalinist repressions and especially after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, Gorky was placed under unannounced house arrest in his Moscow house.

The sudden death of his son Maxim Peshkov in May 1935 was followed by the death of Maxim Gorky in June 1936.

During the Bukharin trials in 1938, one of the charges brought up was that Gorky was killed by Yagoda's NKVD agents.

Gorky's city of birth was renamed back into Nizhny Novgorod in 1990.

Selected works

Makar Chudra (Макар Чудра), short story, 1892 Chelkash (Челкаш) Petit-Bourgeois (Мещане) Malva Creatures That Once Were Men Twenty-six Men and a Girl Foma Gordeyev (Фома Гордеев), novel, 1899 Three of Them (Трое), 1900 A Confession (Исповедь), 1908 Okurov City (Городок Окуров), novel, 1908 The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin (Жизнь Матвея Кожемякина) Children of the Sun (Дети солнца), drama, 1905 Enemies, drama, 1906 Mother (Мать), novel, 1907 The Lasts, drama, 1908 Children, drama, 1910 The Lower Depths (На дне), 1902 Childhood (Детство), 1913–1914 The Old Man, drama, 1915 In the World (В людях), 1916 Song of a Storm petrel (Песня о Буревестнике) Untimely Thoughts, articles, 1918 Song of a Falcon (Песня о Соколе),short story, 1902 My Universities (Мои университеты), 1923 The Artamonov Business (Дело Артамоновых), 1927 Life of Klim Samgin (Жизнь Клима Самгина), epopeia, 1927-36 Reminiscences of Tolstoy (1919), Chekhov (1905-21), and Andreyev V.I.Lenin (В.И.Ленин), reminiscence, 1924-31 The I.V.Stalin White Sea - Baltic Sea Canal, 1934 (editor-in-chief)

Works about Gorky

The Gorky Trilogy is a series of three feature films—The Childhood of Maxim Gorky, My Apprenticeship, and My Universities—directed by Mark Donskoy, filmed in the Soviet Union, released 1938-1940.