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Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) |
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Maxim Gorky was a Russian and then Soviet writer, playwright, editor, and a passionate activist in the cause of socialism.
Alexie Maximovich Peshkov, which become famous with the pen name of Maxime Gorkey was born on March 28, in Nizhny Novgorod, the Volga region of Russia. His father Maxim Savvatyevich, a cabinet maker died of cholera when Gorky was only 3 years old. When Gorky was 12 years old, his mother Varvara Vasilieva Kashirina died of tuberculosis.
As an orphan, Gorky was raised by his maternal grandparents. His grandmother was a kind storyteller who engraved on him a love for tales and travel. But his grandfather Vasily Kashirin, was a rough man who forced him to leave school and get to work.
Deeply affected by the death of his grandmother, apathy for his grandfather, and the harsh living conditions, Gorky decided to commit suicide at the age of 19, but survived the bullet, which he shot near his heart; however, it seriously damaged his left lung which caused him respiratory weakness for the rest of his life.
Gorky then travelled on foot across parts of the Russian empire for about five years, frequently changing different jobs, allowing him to gather knowledge and experience, which would later have great impact on his writings.
>Witnessing the dire sufferings of the working-class and the disadvantaged across the Russian empire motivated Gorky to become active in movements for achieving social justice and peace in his homeland.
In 1892, at the age of 24, Gorky worked as a journalist for several provincial publications under different pseudonyms. He then used Gorky (bitter) as pseudonym for all his life while he was writing for the Tiflis newspaper, Kavkaz (the Caucasus). The name reflected, his seething anger about the living conditions in the Tsarist Russia and his determination to tell the bitter truth.
In 1893, Gorky was hired as a permanent editor at the Samara Journal. Then in 1895, he became editor-in-chief of Russkoe bogatstvo. In 1896, the Magazine Messenger of the North in Saint Petersburg published his story, called The Rascal (Ozornik). During this time, he met Ekaterina Voljina in the city of Samara. She was a revolutionary woman working at the local newspaper. They married in 1896, and had 2 children, Maxime, and a girl named Ekaterina who died at the age of 5 of meningitis.
In 1902, Gorky's political activism started with the emerging Marxist social democratic movement. He had a close association with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
The Russian Revolution of 1905 and the brutal suppression of workers had a great role in Gorky's radicalization. He was detained several times for his revolutionary activism.
Before and during the 1905 Revolution, Gorky wrote several plays; among them were Children of the Sun, and the Lower Depths. He was imprisoned but released after a European-wide campaign, which was supported by Anatole France, Marie Curie, famous French sculptor Auguste Rodin, and several others.
At the same time Gorky's apartment in Moscow was raided by the black shirted monarchist-religious groups, Black Hundreds. He fled to Finland for his safety. In 1906 Gorky and Estonian revolutionary, Ivan Narodny (Jaan Sibbul) were sent to the United States by the Bolsheviks to raise funds for the Revolution.
Gorky resided in New York City with the invitation of Mark Twain, and some other writers. He wrote his famous novel, Mother, when visiting the Adirondack Mountains in Northeastern New York State. The novel was first published in English in Appleton's Magazine in 1906, and then in Russian in 1907.
Gorky is considered the founder of socialist realism, with its purpose being to expand class awareness of the root causes of social problems. He was a close friend with other Russian writers such as Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov.
Gorky stayed for a while in Italy for health problems, and to keep away from Russian Government persecution. Following amnesty in 1913, he returned to Russia and continued his covert political activities.
During events of the October Revolution of 1917, Gorky became critical of harshness and strictness carried out by some revolutionaries. But witnessing the anti-revolutionaries' hypocrisy and hostility towards the Revolution, it turned him into becoming radicalized.
For instance, in the cases of two prominent Tsarist Generals, Alexander Kolchak, and Anton Denikin, when Gorky saw how these generals who had been captured by Bolsheviks and released simply by writing a letter of loyalty, and in turn broke their oaths and formed the brutal White Guards, he realized his mistake.
These two Generals were the key elements in starting the bloody Russian Civil War (1917-1921). More than 10 million people were killed in battlefields, by hunger and diseases.
Immediately after the Revolution, the White Tsarist Guards and religious organizations started arm resistance against Soviets. The left Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists all refused Lenin's invitation for cooperation and started terrors and war against the Revolution.
On August 30, 1918, the third assassination attempt against Lenin by a Socialist Revolutionary woman became successful and he got seriously wounded.
At the same time forces of imperialist and militarist countries: English, French, Americans, Japanese, poles, Austrians, Greeks, Romanians, Remains of the Ottoman empire, Canadians, Australian, Estonians, Finns, and Italian forces, invaded the Socialist Country from Arkhangelsk in the north, the Caucasus in the south, Ukraine in the west and from Vladivostok in the east, killing people, destroying the Country and plundering its resources.
The hostility of the imperialist elements towards the novice Revolutionary Russia was mostly because this was the first time in the history of the world, for an anti-capitalist workers rule to gain power. Secondly, it was due to the fact that this revolutionary government had helped end the Great Imperialist WWI. The rulers of the belligerent imperialists became enraged and wanted the War to continue until the partition of Russia. Among these warmongers was the British War Secretary, rabid Winston Churchill who insisted that the War should continue until the destruction of the Soviet Government.
These events were the reasons behind Gorky's passionate support for the Revolution. During the War his Petrograd apartment was converted into a Bolshevik meeting room. He became a prominent member of the Soviet Nomenklatura (elite of the Communist Party).
Gorky participated in educational and teaching of socialism as a science, to inform and educate the workers and the common people of the country. The October Revolution also had a dimension of Cultural Revolution as well.
In 1921, Gorky left Russia to rest in temperate Italy, because of his worsening tuberculosis.
Encouraged by Stalin to leave Mussolini's Fascist Italy, Gorky returned to now USSR in 1929. He continued his political and literary career in his homeland.
In 1933, Gorky was awarded the Order of Lenin and in 1934 was elected President of the Union of Soviet writers. Many locations were named after him. For instance, the largest aircraft in the World built in the mid-1930s, the Tupolev ANT-20 was also named Gorky.
In May of 1935, the blow of the sudden death of his 40 years old son due to pneumonia, weakened Gorky's health. As a result of this, his tuberculosis deteriorated and led to his death in June 18th 1936.
During Gorky's funeral, Stalin and Molotov were two of the pallbearers. The event was staged as a national and international event on June 20th, at the Red Square in Moscow.
Gorky wrote hundreds of novels, stories, plays, articles and autobiographies.
Some of his other famous works are:
Poor Pavel (1894).
Foma Gordeev (1899).
Sketches and Stories (1899).
Three (1900-1901).
The Philistines (play), 1901.
Comrade (1906).
The Life of a Useless Man (1908).
Confession (1908).
Summer (1909).
Tales of Italy (1911).
The Master (1912).
Across Russia (1912-1917).
My Childhood (1913-1914).
The People (1915-1916).
In the World (1916).
The Old Man (play). 1915.
My University (1923).
The Artamonov Case (1925).
The Life of Klim Samgin (1925-1936). 4 volumes.
Egor Bulychov and Others (play), 1931.
Dostigaev and Others (play),1932.