When bitter was born and he was dying. Biography - Maxim Gorky

If you ask: "What do you think about the work of Alexei Gorky?", Then very few people will be able to give an answer to this question. And not because these people do not read, but because not everyone knows and remembers that this is the well-known writer Maxim Gorky. And if you decide to complicate the task even more, then ask about the works of Alexei Peshkov. Here, for sure, only a few will remember that this is the real name of Alexei Gorky. He was not just a writer, but also an active one. As you already understood, we will talk about a truly popular writer - Maxim Gorky.

Childhood and adolescence

The years of life of Gorky (Peshkov) Alexei Maksimovich - 1868-1936. They fell on an important historical era. The biography of Alexei Gorky is rich in events, starting from his very childhood. The writer's hometown is Nizhny Novgorod. His father, who worked as a manager of a shipping company, he died when the boy was only 3 years old. After the death of her husband, Alyosha's mother remarried. She died when he was 11 years old. The grandfather was engaged in the further education of little Alexei.

As an 11-year-old boy, the future writer was already "going to the people" - he earned his own bread. Whoever he worked: he was a baker, worked as a delivery boy in a store, a dishwasher in a buffet. Unlike the stern grandfather, the grandmother was a kind and religious woman and an excellent storyteller. It was she who instilled in Maxim Gorky a love of reading.

In 1887, the writer will try to commit suicide, which he will associate with the difficult experiences caused by the news of his grandmother's death. Fortunately, he survived - the bullet missed the heart, but damaged his lungs, which caused problems with the respiratory system.

The life of the future writer was not easy, and he could not stand it and ran away from home. The boy wandered around the country a lot, saw the whole truth of life, but in an amazing way he was able to keep faith in the ideal Person. He will describe his childhood, life at his grandfather's house in Childhood, the first part of his autobiographical trilogy.

In 1884, Alexei Gorky tried to enter Kazan University, but due to his financial situation, he found out that this was impossible. During this period, the future writer begins to gravitate towards romantic philosophy, according to which the ideal Man does not look like the real Man. Then he gets acquainted with the Marxist theory and becomes a supporter of new ideas.

The emergence of an alias

In 1888, the writer was arrested for a short period of time for having connections with N. Fedoseev's Marxist circle. In 1891, he decided to start a journey through Russia and eventually was able to reach the Caucasus. Alexey Maksimovich was constantly engaged in self-education, accumulated and expanded his knowledge in various fields. He agreed to any work and carefully preserved all his impressions, they then appeared in his very first stories. Subsequently, he called this period "My Universities".

In 1892, Gorky returned to his native places and took his first steps in the literary field as a writer in several provincial publications. For the first time his pseudonym "Gorky" appeared in the same year in the newspaper "Tiflis", in which his story "Makar Chudra" was published.

The pseudonym was not chosen by chance: it hinted at the "bitter" Russian life and the fact that the writer would write only the truth, no matter how bitter it may be. Maxim Gorky saw the life of the common people and could not, with his character, fail to notice the injustice that was on the part of the wealthy estates.

Early creativity and success

Alexey Gorky was actively involved in propaganda, for which he was under the constant control of the police. With the help of V. Korolenko, in 1895 his story "Chelkash" was published in the largest Russian magazine. Following were published "The Old Woman Izergil", "Song of the Falcon", They were not special from a literary point of view, but they successfully coincided with the new political views.

In 1898 his collection "Essays and Stories" was published, which had an extraordinary success, and Maxim Gorky received all-Russian recognition. Although his stories were not highly artistic, they portrayed the life of the common people, starting from the very bottom, which brought Alexei Peshkov recognition as the only writer who writes about the lower class. During that period he was no less popular than L.N. Tolstoy and A.P. Chekhov.

In the period from 1904 to 1907 the plays "Bourgeois", "At the bottom", "Children of the sun", "Summer residents" were written. His earliest works did not have any social orientation, but the characters had their own types and a special attitude to life, which the readers liked very much.

Revolutionary activity

The writer Alexei Gorky was an ardent supporter of Marxist Social Democracy and in 1901 wrote The Song of the Petrel, which called for revolution. For open propaganda of revolutionary actions, he was arrested and expelled from Nizhny Novgorod. In 1902 Gorky met Lenin, in the same year his election to the Imperial Academy in the category of fine literature was canceled.

The writer was also an excellent organizer: from 1901 he was the head of the Znaniye publishing house, which published the best writers of that period. He supported the revolutionary movement not only spiritually but also materially. The writer's apartment was used as a headquarters for revolutionaries before important events. Lenin even spoke at his apartment in St. Petersburg. Later, in 1905, Maxim Gorky, out of fear of arrest, decided to leave Russia for a while.

Living abroad

Alexei Gorky went to Finland and from there - to Western Europe and the USA, where he collected funds for the struggle of the Bolsheviks. At the very beginning he was greeted there friendly: the writer made acquaintance with Theodore Roosevelt and Mark Twain. His famous novel "Mother" is published in America. Later, however, the Americans began to resent his political actions.

In the period from 1906 to 1907, Gorky lived on the island of Capri, from where he continued to support the Bolsheviks. At the same time, he creates a special theory of "god-building". The point was that moral and cultural values ​​are much more important than political ones. This theory formed the basis of the novel "Confession". Although Lenin rejected these beliefs, the writer continued to adhere to them.

Return to Russia

In 1913 Alexey Maksimovich returned to his homeland. During the First World War, he lost faith in the power of Man. In 1917, his relations with the revolutionaries deteriorated, he became disillusioned with the leaders of the revolution.

Gorky understands that all his attempts to save the intelligentsia do not meet with a response from the Bolsheviks. But after in 1918 he admits his beliefs erroneous and returns to the Bolsheviks. In 1921, despite a personal meeting with Lenin, he was unable to save his friend, the poet Nikolai Gumilyov, from being shot. After that, he leaves Bolshevik Russia.

Repeated emigration

Due to the intensification of attacks of tuberculosis and according to Lenin, Alexey Maksimovich leaves Russia for Italy, in the city of Sorrento. There he completes his autobiographical trilogy. The author remains in exile until 1928, but continues to maintain contacts with the Soviet Union.

He does not leave his writing activity, but writes already in accordance with new literary trends. Far from the Motherland he wrote the novel "The Artamonovs Case", short stories. An extensive work "The Life of Klim Samgin" was started, which the writer did not manage to finish. In connection with the death of Lenin, Gorky wrote a book of memoirs about the leader.

Return to the Motherland and the last years of life

Alexei Gorky visited the Soviet Union several times, but did not stay there. In 1928, during a trip around the country, he was shown the "ceremonial" side of life. The delighted writer wrote essays on the Soviet Union.

In 1931, at the personal invitation of Stalin, he returned to the USSR for good. Alexei Maksimovich continues to write, but in his works he praises the image of Stalin and the entire leadership, without mentioning the numerous repressions. Of course, this state of affairs did not suit the writer, but at that time they did not tolerate statements contradicting the authorities.

In 1934, Gorky's son dies, and on June 18, 1936, Maxim Gorky dies under unclear circumstances. On the last journey of the people's writer, the entire leadership of the country saw off. The urn with his ashes was buried in the Kremlin wall.

Features of creativity Maxim Gorky

His work is unique in that it was during the period of the collapse of capitalism that he was able to very vividly convey the state of society through the description of ordinary people. After all, no one before him had described the life of the lower strata of society in such detail. It was this blatant truth of the life of the working class that won him the love of the people.

His faith in man can be traced in his early works, he believed that a person could make a revolution with the help of his spiritual life. Maxim Gorky managed to combine bitter truth with faith in moral values. And it was this combination that made his works special, heroes memorable, and made Gorky himself a worker writer.

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Maxim Gorky (real name - Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov). Born March 16 (28), 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod - died 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 for the Nobel Prize in Literature 5 times. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, he became famous as an author of works with a revolutionary tendency, personally close to the Social Democrats and in opposition to the tsarist regime.

Initially, Gorky was skeptical of the October Revolution. However, after several years of cultural work in Soviet Russia (in Petrograd he headed 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 the participants of this movement maintain a factional school on the island of Capri for workers, which he called "the literary center of god-building."

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. In the last years of his life, M. S. Peshkov worked as a manager of a steamship office, died of cholera. Alyosha Peshkov fell ill with cholera at the age of 4, his father managed to get out of him, but at the same time he became infected and did not survive; the boy barely remembered his father, but the stories of his relatives 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; 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 cruel treatment of lower ranks", after which he enrolled in the bourgeoisie. His son Maxim ran away from his father five times and left home forever at the age of 17. Orphaned early, Alexei 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 cupboard on a steamer, as a baker, studied in an icon-painting workshop, etc.

In 1884 he tried to enter Kazan University. I got acquainted with Marxist literature and propaganda work. In 1888, he was arrested for being in touch with N. Ye. Fedoseev's circle. Was under constant police surveillance. In October 1888 he entered the Dobrinka station of the Gryaze-Tsaritsyn railway as a watchman. The impressions of the stay in Dobrinka will serve as the basis for the autobiographical story "The Watchman" and the story "Boredom".

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

In the spring of 1891 he set off 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, Samarskaya Gazeta, Nizhegorodsky Leaflet, and others.

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 mill and led an illegal Marxist workers' circle. Subsequently, the life impressions of this period served as material for the writer for the novel The Life of Klim Samgin. 1898 - The first volume of Gorky's works was published by the publishing house of Dorovatsky and A.P. Charushnikov. In those years, the circulation of the first book of a young author rarely exceeded 1000 copies. AI Bogdanovich advised the release of the first two volumes of "Essays and Stories" by M. Gorky, 1200 copies each. The publishers took a chance and released more. The first volume of the 1st edition of Essays and Stories was published with a circulation of 3000 copies.

1899 - the novel "Foma Gordeev", the prose poem "The Song of the Falcon".

1900-1901 - novel "Three", personal acquaintance with,.

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

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

In 1901 M. Gorky turned to drama. Creates the plays "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 academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature.

1904-1905 - wrote the plays "Summer Residents", "Children of the Sun", "Varvara". 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 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, spoke in defense of Gorky. England. Student demonstrations took place in Rome. Under public pressure on February 14, 1905, 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 his actual wife, actress Maria Andreeva, go through Europe to America, where they stayed until the fall. Abroad, the writer creates satirical pamphlets about the "bourgeois" culture of France and the United States ("My Interviews", "In America"). Returning to Russia in the fall, writes the play "Enemies", 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). He settled in the prestigious Quisisana hotel. From March 1909 to February 1911 he lived at the Villa Spinola (now Bering), stayed at the villas (they have memorial plaques about his stay) "Blesius" (from 1906 to 1909) and "Serfina" (now "Pierina" ). In Capri, Gorky wrote Confession (1908), where his philosophical differences with Lenin and rapprochement with the god-builders Lunacharsky and Bogdanov were clearly marked.

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 Person".

1909 - the stories "Okurov Town", "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 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 Letopis magazine and the Parus publishing house.

1912-1916 - M. Gorky creates a series of stories and essays that compose the collection "In Russia", autobiographical stories "Childhood", "In people". In 1916, the Parus publishing house published the autobiographical story In People and the cycle of essays Across Russia. The last part of the My Universities trilogy was written in 1923.

1917-1919 - M. Gorky conducts 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 the repression of the Bolsheviks and hunger.

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

1925 - the novel The Artamonovs Case.

1928 - at the invitation of the Soviet government and personally, he 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 cycle of essays "Around the Soviet Union". But he does not stay in the USSR, he leaves 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 his regime. On October 12, 1929, Gorky leaves for Italy.

1932, March - two central Soviet newspapers "Pravda" and "Izvestia" simultaneously published an article-pamphlet by Gorky under the title, which became the catch phrase - "Who are you, 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 an order from Stalin - 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 Plants", "History of the Civil War", "Poet's Library", "History of a Young Man of the 19th Century", the magazine "Literary Study", he writes the plays "Yegor Bulychev and others" (1932), "Dostigaev and others" (1933).

1934 - Gorky holds the I All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, speaks at it with the main report.

1934 - co-editor of the book "The Stalin 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. 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 by many to be "suspicious", there were rumors about the poisoning, which, however, were not confirmed.

On May 27, 1936, after visiting the grave of his son, Gorky caught a cold in the cold windy weather and fell ill. He was ill for three weeks, and on June 18 he died. At the funeral, among others, Stalin carried the coffin with Gorky's body. Interestingly, among the other accusations against 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 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 charges 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 in 1896-1903 - Ekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova (née Volzhina) (1876-1965). The divorce was not officially 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 (carry the surname of the Peshkovs).

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

Daughter - Ekaterina Alekseevna Peshkova (1898-1903).

Adopted and godson - Peshkov, Zinovy ​​Alekseevich, brother of Yakov Sverdlov, godson of Gorky, 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 is the actual state councilor of Zhelyabuzhsky, Andrei Alekseevich).

The adopted son is Zhelyabuzhsky, Yuri Andreevich (father is the actual state councilor of Zhelyabuzhsky, Andrei Alekseevich).

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

The novels of Maxim Gorky:

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

The story of Maxim Gorky:

1894 - "The miserable Paul"
1900 - "Man. Essays "(remained unfinished, the third chapter was not published during the life of the author)
1908 - "The Life of an Unnecessary Person".
1908 - "Confession"
1909 - "Summer"
1909 - "Small town Okurov", "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 Pilyay"
1892 - "Grandfather Arkhip and Lyonka"
1895 - "Chelkash", "Old Woman Izergil", "Song of the Falcon" (prose poem)
1897 - Former People, The Orlovs, 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 Russia" (cycle of stories)
1924 - "Stories from 1922-1924"
1924 - "Notes from the Diary" (cycle of stories)
1929 - "Solovki" (essay).

Plays by Maxim Gorky:

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

Publicism of Maxim Gorky:

1906 - "My Interviews", "In America" ​​(pamphlets)
1917-1918 - a series of articles "Untimely Thoughts" in the newspaper "New Life" (in 1918 it was published as a separate edition).
1922 - "On the Russian peasantry."

Gorky Maxim

Autobiography

A.M. Gorky

Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov, pseudonym Maksim Gorky

Born March 14, 1869 in Nizhny Novgorod. The father is the son of a soldier, the mother is a bourgeois woman. Father's grandfather was an officer, demoted by Nicholas I for cruel treatment of lower ranks. He was a man so tough that my father ran from him five times from the age of ten to seventeen. The last time my father managed to run away from his family forever, he came on foot from Tobolsk to Nizhny and here he became an apprentice to a draper. Obviously, he had the ability and he was literate, for for twenty-two years the shipping company of Kolchin (now Karpova) had appointed him manager of their office in Astrakhan, where in 1873 he died of cholera, which he contracted from me. According to my grandmother's stories, my father was an intelligent, kind and very cheerful person.

The grandfather from his mother's side began his career as a barge haule on the Volga, after three fishing trips he was already a salesman on the caravan of the Balakhna merchant Zayev, then took up dyeing yarn, got hold of it and opened a dyeing establishment in Nizhny on a broad basis. Soon he had several houses and three workshops for printing and dyeing fabric in the city, was chosen as a foreman, served in this position for three three years, after which he refused, offended by the fact that he had not been chosen as a handicraftsman. He was very religious, despotic to the point of cruelty and painfully stingy. He lived for ninety-two years and lost his mind a year before his death, in 1888.

The father and mother got married with a "roll-up", for the grandfather could not, of course, marry his beloved daughter for a rootless person with a dubious future. My mother had no influence on my life, for, considering me the cause of my father's death, she did not love me and, soon marrying a second time, completely surrendered me into the arms of my grandfather, who began my education with the Psalter and the Book of Hours. Then, at seven years old, I was sent to school, where I studied for five months. He studied poorly, hated school rules, and comrades too, for I have always loved solitude. Having contracted smallpox at school, I finished my studies and never resumed it. At this time my mother died of fleeting consumption, while my grandfather went bankrupt. In his family, very large, since he had two sons who were 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 widely, that is, drink and eat a lot and well. When we got drunk, we usually fought among ourselves or with guests, of whom we always had a lot, or beat our wives. One uncle hammered two wives into the coffin, the other one. Sometimes they beat me too. In such a situation, there can be no question of any mental influences, especially since all my relatives are semi-literate people.

When I was eight years old, they sent me "to boys" in a shoe store, but two months later I boiled my hands with boiling cabbage soup and was sent back by the owner to my grandfather. When I was wiped out, I was sent to an apprentice to a draftsman, a distant relative, but a year later, due to very difficult living conditions, I ran away from him and entered the steamer as a cook's apprentice. This was a retired non-commissioned officer of the Guard, Mikhail Antonov Smury, a man of fabulous physical strength, rude, very well-read; he piqued my interest in reading books. Until that time, I hated books and any printed paper, but with beatings and caresses my teacher made me convince myself of the great significance of the book, to love it. The first book I liked to madness was "The Legend of How a Soldier Saved Peter the Great." Smuriy had a whole chest filled mostly with small leather-bound volumes, and it was the strangest library in the world. Eckarthausen was lying 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; for ten years he began to keep a diary, where he entered impressions from life and books. Further life is very colorful and complex: from the cooks I again returned to the draftsman, then traded in icons, served as a watchman on the Gryaz-Tsaritsyn railway, was a pretzel-maker, a baker, it happened to live in a slum, and several times went on foot to travel across Russia. In 1888, while living in Kazan, he first met students, participated in self-education circles; in 1890 I felt out of place among the intelligentsia and left to travel. Went from Nizhny to Tsaritsyn, Don region, Ukraine, entered Bessarabia, from there along the southern coast of Crimea to the Kuban, in the Black Sea region. In October 1892 he lived in Tiflis, where he published his first essay "Makar Chudra" in the "Kavkaz" newspaper. I was praised a lot for him, and, having moved 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 Pilyay" to "Russkiye vedomosti", too, was accepted and published. Perhaps I should 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 flair.

In 1895, in "Russian wealth" (book 6) my story "Chelkash" was published - the "Russian thought" responded 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" essay "Tosca" - a review in the September book "Education". In March this year in the "New Dictionary" essay "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 can not send. It seems that there have not been any remarkable events in my life, but by the way, I have no idea what exactly should be meant by these words.

--------- * Hence (lat.)

NOTES

For the first time, his autobiography was published in the book "Russian Literature of the 20th Century", vol. 1, published by "Mir", Moscow, 1914.

An autobiography was written in 1897, as evidenced by the author's note in the manuscript: "Crimea, Alupka, village Khadzhi-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 D. Gorodetsky's article "Two portraits" ("Semya" magazine, 1899, number 36, September 5):

"Born on March 14, 1868, or on March 9, in Nizhny, in the family of the dyer Vasily Vasilyevich Kashirin, from his daughter Varvara and the Perm bourgeoisie Maxim Savvatiev Peshkov, by the craft of a draper or upholsterer. Since then I have honorably and spotlessly carried the title of a workshop paint shop. .. My father died in Astrakhan when I was 5 years old, my mother - in Kanavin-Sloboda After the death of my mother, my grandfather sent me to a shoe store; at that time I was 9 years old and my grandfather was taught to read and write the Psalter and the Book of Hours. He escaped from the "boys" and became an apprentice to a draftsman, - he escaped and entered an icon-painting workshop, then a steamer, a cook, then a gardener's assistant. such as: "Guak, or irresistible loyalty", "Andrey Fearless", "Yapancha", "Yashka Smertensky", etc.

Abroad

Return to the Soviet Union

Bibliography

Stories, essays

Journalism

Film incarnations

Also known as Alexey Maksimovich Gorky(at birth Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov; March 16 (28), 1868, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Empire - June 18, 1936, Gorki, Moscow Region, USSR) - Russian writer, prose writer, playwright. One of the most popular authors at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, famous for portraying a romanticized declassed character ("tramp"), an author of works with a revolutionary tendency, personally close to the Social Democrats, who was in opposition to the tsarist regime, Gorky quickly gained worldwide fame.

At first, Gorky was skeptical of the Bolshevik revolution. After several years of cultural work in Soviet Russia, Petrograd (publishing house "World Literature", a petition to the Bolsheviks for the arrested) and life abroad in the 1920s (Marienbad, Sorrento), Gorky returned to the USSR, where the last years of his life were surrounded officially recognized as the "petrel of the revolution" and "the great proletarian writer", the founder of socialist realism.

Member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR (1929).

Biography

Alexey Maksimovich invented a pseudonym for himself. Subsequently, he told me: "I shouldn't write in literature - Peshkov ..." (A. Kalyuzhny) More details 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 Savvatievich 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 in the bourgeoisie. His son Maxim ran away from his satrap 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"; worked as a "boy" at a store, a panther on a steamer, a baker, studied in an icon-painting workshop, etc.

Youth

• In 1884 he tried to enter Kazan University. I got acquainted with Marxist literature and propaganda work.
• In 1888, he was arrested for being in touch with N. Ye. Fedoseev's circle. Was under constant police surveillance. In October 1888 he entered the Dobrinka station of the Gryaze-Tsaritsyn railway as a watchman. The impressions of the stay in Dobrinka will serve as the basis for the autobiographical story "The Watchman" and the story "Boredom".
• In January 1889, at a personal request (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 to wander around the country and reached the Caucasus.

Literary and social activities

• 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 mill and led an illegal Marxist workers' circle. Subsequently, the life impressions of this period served as material for the writer for the novel The Life of Klim Samgin.
• 1898 - The publishing house of A.P. Dorovatsky and Charushnikov published the first volume of Gorky's works. In those years, the circulation of the first book of a young author rarely exceeded 1,000 copies. AI Bogdanovich advised the release of the first two volumes of "Essays and Stories" by M. Gorky, 1,200 copies each. The publishers took a chance and released more. The first volume of the 1st edition of Essays and Stories was published with a circulation of 3,000.
• 1899 - the novel "Foma Gordeev", the prose poem "The 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 - The Song of the Petrel was created by M. Gorky in Nizhny Novgorod. Participation in the Marxist workers' circles in Nizhny Novgorod, Sormov, St. Petersburg, wrote a proclamation calling for a fight against the autocracy. Arrested and exiled from Nizhny Novgorod.

According to the testimony of contemporaries, Nikolai Gumilyov highly appreciated the last stanza of this poem ("Gumilyov without gloss", St. Petersburg, 2009).

• In 1901 M. Gorky turned to drama. Creates the plays "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 canceled by the government, since the newly elected academician “was under police surveillance.” In this regard, Chekhov and Korolenko refused their membership in the Academy.
• 1904-1905 - wrote 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, but then released under public pressure. Member of the revolution 1905-1907. In autumn 1905 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.
• 1906 - M. Gorky travels abroad, creates satirical pamphlets about the "bourgeois" culture of France and the United States ("My interviews", "In America"). Writes the play "Enemies", creates the novel "Mother". Due to tuberculosis, Gorky settled in Italy on the island of Capri, where he lived for 7 years. Here he wrote Confessions (1908), where his philosophical differences with Lenin and rapprochement with Lunacharsky and Bogdanov were clearly indicated.
• 1907 - delegate to the 5th Congress of the RSDLP.
• 1908 - the play "The Last", the story "The Life of an Unnecessary Person".
• 1909 - the stories "Okurov Town", "The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin".
• 1913 - M. Gorky edits the Bolshevik newspapers Zvezda and Pravda, the art department of the Bolshevik magazine Prosveshchenie, publishes the first collection of proletarian writers. Writes "Tales of Italy".

• 1912-1916 - M. Gorky creates a series of stories and essays that compose the collection "In Russia", autobiographical stories "Childhood", "In people". The last part of the My Universities trilogy was written in 1923.
• 1917-1919 - M. Gorky conducts 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 the repression of the Bolsheviks and hunger. In 1917, having disagreed with the Bolsheviks on the issue of the timeliness of the socialist revolution in Russia, he did not go through the re-registration of party members and formally dropped out of it.

Abroad

• 1921 - departure of M. Gorky abroad. In Soviet literature, there was a myth that the reason for leaving was the renewal of his illness and the need, at Lenin's insistence, to be treated abroad. In fact, A. M. Gorky was forced to leave because of the aggravation of ideological differences with the established government. In 1921-1923. lived in Helsingfors, Berlin, Prague.
• From 1924 he lived in Italy, in Sorrento. Published his memoirs about Lenin.
• 1925 - the novel The Artamonovs 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 the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp and writes a laudatory review of his regime. A fragment of A. I. Solzhenitsyn's work "The Gulag Archipelago" is dedicated to this fact.

• 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 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 Plants", "History of the Civil War", "Poet's Library", "History of a Young Man of the 19th Century", the magazine "Literary Study", he writes the plays "Yegor Bulychev and others" (1932), "Dostigaev and others" (1933).
• 1934 - Gorky "conducts" the I All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, makes a keynote speech at it.
• 1934 - co-editor of the book "The Stalin Channel"
• In 1925-1936 he wrote the novel The Life of Klim Samgin, which was never finished.
• 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. 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 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, Molotov and Stalin carried the coffin with Gorky's body. Interestingly, among other accusations against Genrikh Yagoda at the so-called 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 charges 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

1. First wife - Ekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova(nee Volozhina).
1. A son - Maxim Alekseevich Peshkov (1897-1934) + Vvedenskaya, Nadezhda Alekseevna("Timosha")
1. Peshkova, Marfa Maksimovna + Beria, Sergo Lavrent'evich
1. daughters Nina and Hope, a son Sergei
2. Peshkova, Daria Maksimovna
2. Second wife - Maria Fedorovna Andreeva(1872-1953; civil marriage)
3. Long-term companion of life - Budberg, Maria Ignatievna

Addresses in St. Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad

• 09.1899 - V.A.Posse's apartment in Trofimov's house - Nadezhdinskaya street, 11;
• 02. - spring 1901 - V. A. Posse's apartment in Trofimov's house - Nadezhdinskaya street, 11;
• 11.1902 - K.P. Pyatnitsky's apartment in an apartment building - Nikolaevskaya street, 4;
• 1903 - autumn 1904 - K.P. Pyatnitsky's apartment in an apartment building - Nikolaevskaya street, 4;
• autumn 1904-1906 - K.P. Pyatnitsky's apartment in an apartment building - Znamenskaya street, 20, apt. 29;
• beginning 03.1914 - autumn 1921 - E.K.Barsova's apartment building - 23 Kronverksky prospect;
• 30.08. - 09/07/1928 - hotel "Evropeyskaya" - Rakov street, 7;
• 18.06. - 07/11/1929 - hotel "Evropeyskaya" - Rakov street, 7;
• the end of 09.1931 - hotel "Evropeyskaya" - Rakov street, 7.

Bibliography

Novels

• 1899 - "Foma Gordeev"
• 1900-1901 - "Three"
• 1906 - "Mother" (second edition - 1907)
• 1925 - "The Artamonovs Case"
• 1925-1936- "The Life of Klim Samgin"

Stories

• 1908 - "The Life of an Unnecessary Person".
• 1908 - "Confession"
• 1909 - "Small town Okurov", "Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin".
• 1913-1914 - "Childhood"
• 1915-1916 - "In People"
• 1923 - "My Universities"

Stories, essays

• 1892 - "The Girl and Death" (fairy tale poem, published in July 1917 in the newspaper "New Life")
• 1892 - "Makar Chudra"
• 1895 - "Chelkash", "Old Woman Izergil".
• 1897 - Former People, The Orlovs, Malva, Konovalov.
• 1898 - "Essays and Stories" (collection)
• 1899 - "Song of the Falcon" (prose poem), "Twenty six and one"
• 1901 - "Song of the Petrel" (prose poem)
• 1903 - "Man" (prose poem)
• 1911 - "Tales of Italy"
• 1912-1917 - "Across Russia" (cycle of stories)
• 1924 - "Stories from 1922-1924"
• 1924 - "Notes from the Diary" (cycle of stories)

Plays

Journalism

• 1906 - "My Interviews", "In America" ​​(pamphlets)
• 1917-1918 - a series of articles "Untimely Thoughts" in the newspaper "New Life" (in 1918 it was published as a separate edition)
• 1922 - "On the Russian peasantry"

He initiated the creation of a series of books "History of Factories and Plants" (IPE), took the initiative to revive the pre-revolutionary series "The Life of Remarkable People"

Film incarnations

• Alexey Lyarsky ("Gorky's Childhood", 1938)
• Alexey Lyarsky (In People, 1938)
• Nikolai Walbert ("My Universities", 1939)
• Pavel Kadochnikov (Yakov Sverdlov, 1940, Pedagogical Poem, 1955, Prologue, 1956)
• Nikolay Cherkasov (Lenin in 1918, 1939, Academician Ivan Pavlov, 1949)
• Vladimir Emelyanov (Appationata, 1963)
• Afanasy Kochetkov (This is how a song is born, 1957, Mayakovsky began like this ..., 1958, Through the icy haze, 1965, The Incredible Yehudil Khlamida, 1969, The Kotsyubinsky Family, 1970, The Red Diplomat, 1971, Trust, 1975, I Am an Actress, 1980)
• Valery Poroshin ("Enemy of the People - Bukharin", 1990, "Under the Sign of Scorpio", 1995)
• Alexey Fedkin ("Empire under attack", 2000)
• Alexey Osipov ("Two Love", 2004)
• Nikolay Kachura (Yesenin, 2005)
• Georgy Taratorkin ("Captivity of Passion", 2010)
• Nikolai Svanidze 1907. Maksim Gorky. "Historical chronicles with Nikolai Svanidze

Memory

• In 1932, Nizhny Novgorod was renamed the city of Gorky. The historical name was returned to the city in 1990.
• In Nizhny Novgorod, the name of Gorky is the central regional children's library, a drama theater, a street, as well as a square in the center of which there is a monument to the writer by sculptor V. I. Mukhina. But the most remarkable is the M. Gorky Museum-Apartment.
• In 1934, a Soviet propaganda passenger multi-seat 8-engine aircraft was built at an aviation plant in Voronezh, the largest aircraft of its time with a land landing gear - ANT-20 "Maxim Gorky".

• In Moscow, there were Maxim Gorky Lane (now Khitrovsky), Maxim Gorky Embankment (now Kosmodamianskaya), Maxim Gorky Square (formerly Khitrovskaya), Gorkovskaya metro station (now Tverskaya), Gorkovsko-Zamoskvoretskaya (now Zamoskvoretskaya) line, Gorky Street ( now divided into Tverskaya and 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya streets).

Also, a number of streets in other settlements of the states of the former USSR bear the name of M. Gorky.