Literary and historical notes of a young technician. Gorky, Alexey Maksimovich - brief biography When Gorky was born

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Biography

The famous Russian writer Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov is known to everyone under his literary pseudonym “Maxim Gorky”. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 5 times.

Gorky's life story originates from Nizhny Novgorod from his grandfather Kashirin, who was a very cruel officer, for which he was demoted. He was sent into exile, and then acquired his own dyeing workshop. Little Alyosha was born in Nizhny Novgorod, where Kashirin’s daughter went. A boy somewhere caught cholera at the age of 4, his father, while caring for him, became infected and died, but little Alyosha managed to recover.

The mother gave birth to her second child and decided to return to her parents’ house. On the way, the baby died. Returning to their hometown, the significantly thinned Peshkov family began to live in Kashirin’s house. The boy was taught at home: his mother - reading, and his grandfather - literacy. Old Kashirin often went to church and forced his grandson to pray, which subsequently gave him an extremely negative attitude towards religion.

Maxim began his education at a parish school, but illness prevented him from receiving primary education. Later, the young man studied at the settlement school for two years. The future writer lacked education; there were errors in his manuscripts. The mother remarried and left with her son to join her husband. The relationship did not work out, the new husband often beat his wife, and Alyosha saw this. Having severely beaten his stepfather, he ran away to his grandfather. The teenager had a difficult life, he often stole firewood and food, collected abandoned clothes, and he always smelled bad. He had to quit school, which ended the writer’s education.

Gorky's biography is full of sad moments. Alyosha was soon left without his mother, who died of consumption, his grandfather went bankrupt, and the orphan had to go earn a living. Since the age of 11, Alyosha has been working as a laborer in a shop, washing dishes on a ship, and working as an apprentice in an icon painting workshop. At the age of 16, the young man was unable to enter the University of Kazan due to lack of a certificate and money.

Alexey works at the pier and makes acquaintances with young revolutionary-minded people. His grandmother and grandfather died, and the young man, in a fit of depression, tried to kill himself with a gun. Help arrived quickly in the person of a watchman, an operation was performed in the hospital, but the lungs were still affected.

Writer, books

Alexey begins to be monitored for his connections with revolutionaries, and he is subjected to short-term arrest. He works as a farm laborer, guards the station and works as a fisherman. At one of the stations he fell in love, but he was refused, then he takes a trip to Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich in Yasnaya Polyana. But the meeting did not take place. Maxim decides to show one of his manuscripts to Korolenko, who harshly criticized the creation of the aspiring writer.

The writer's life story often refers to prison dungeons, where he again and again ends up behind bars for his views, and after leaving prison, he travels around Russia on passing carts and freight trains. During these trips, the idea of ​​“Makar Chudra” was born, which is published under the name of Maxim Gorky. (Maxim is like a father, Gorky because of his complex biography).

But the writer felt real fame after the story “Chelkash”. Not everyone accepted the work of the new talent, and the authorities even placed him in one of the castles in Georgia. Alexey Maksimovich moved to St. Petersburg after he was released, and in the northern capital he wrote the famous plays “At the Lower Depths” and “The Bourgeois.”

Even the emperor recognized the courage and directness of Gorky’s statements. He did not even notice the negative attitude of writers towards the autocratic system of Russia. Alexey Maksimovich does not pay attention to police prohibitions and continues to distribute revolutionary literature. Leo Tolstoy and Gorky became great friends. Many famous people, contemporaries of the owner of the house, always gathered in the apartment in the center of Nizhny Novgorod. Writers, directors, artists and musicians held conversations and talked about their works.

Gorky joined the Bolshevik Party in 1904 and met the leader of the proletariat, Lenin. This acquaintance became the reason for another arrest and a cell in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The public demanded the writer's release, after which he left the country for America. He was tormented by tuberculosis for a long time, and he decided to move to Italy.

Because of his revolutionary activities, he was disliked by the authorities. Gorky settled for seven years on the island of Capri. In 1913, Alexey Maksimovich returned to his homeland, lived in the northern capital for 5 years, then went abroad again, and only in 1933 finally moved to Russia. When he visited his sick grandchildren who lived in Moscow, he caught a cold and was no longer able to recover, he fell ill and died.

Personal life

Gorky's chronic illness did not prevent him from being full of strength and energy. The writer’s first marriage was an unofficial relationship with Olga Kamenskaya, an ordinary woman midwife. Their union did not last long. For the second time, the writer decided to marry his second chosen one.

1868 - Alexey Peshkov was born in Nizhny Novgorod in the family of a carpenter - Maxim Savvatyevich Peshkov.

1884 – tried to enter Kazan University. Gets acquainted with Marxist literature and propaganda work.

1888 – arrested for connections with N.E. Fedoseev’s circle. Is under constant police surveillance. In October 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.”

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

1891 , spring - went to wander around the country and reached the Caucasus.

1892 – 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.

1897 – “Former People”, “The Orlov Spouses”, “Malva”, “Konovalov”.

1897, October - mid-January 1898 - lives in the village of Kamenka (now the city of Kuvshinovo, Tver Region) in the apartment of his friend N.Z. Vasilyev, who worked at the Kamensk paper factory and led an illegal workers' Marxist circle. Life impressions of this period served as material for the novel “The Life of Klim Samgin.”

1898 – the publishing house of Dorovatsky and A.P. Charushnikov releases the first volume of Gorky’s works “Essays and Stories” in a circulation of 3,000 copies.

1899 - novel "Foma Gordeev".

1900–1901 – novel “Three”, personal acquaintance with Chekhov, Tolstoy.

1900–1913 – participates in the work of the publishing house "Znanie".

1901 , March - “Song of the Petrel” was created 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.
Turns to dramaturgy. Creates the play "The Bourgeois".

1902 - play "At the Bottom". Elected an honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. But before Gorky could exercise his new rights, his election was annulled by the government because the writer was “under police surveillance.”

1904–1905 - plays "Summer Residents", "Children of the Sun", "Barbarians". Meeting Lenin. He was arrested for a revolutionary proclamation in connection with the execution on January 9, but then released under public pressure. Participant in the revolution 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”).
The play "Enemies", the novel "Mother". Due to tuberculosis, Gorky settled in Italy on the island of Capri, where he lived for 7 years.

1907 - Delegate to the V Congress of the RSDLP.

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

1909 – stories “Town of Okurov”, “Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin”.

1913 - 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 - creates a series of stories and essays that make up the collection “Across Rus'”, autobiographical stories “Childhood”, “In People”. The last part of the trilogy “My Universities” was written in 1923.

1917–1919 – carries out extensive social and political work.

1921 – M. Gorky’s departure abroad.

1921–1923 – lives in Helsingfors, Berlin, Prague.

1924 – lives in Italy, in Sorrento. Published memoirs about Lenin.

1925 - the novel “The Artamonov Case”, begins to write the novel “The Life of Klim Samgin”, which was never finished.

1928 - at the invitation of the Soviet government, makes a trip around the country, during which Gorky is shown the achievements of the USSR, depicted by the writer in the series of essays “Around the Soviet Union.”

1931 – visits the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp.

1932 - returns to the Soviet Union. Under the leadership of Gorky, many newspapers and magazines were created: the book series “History of Factories and Factories”, “History of the Civil War”, “Library of the Poet”, “History of a Young Man of the 19th Century”, and the magazine “Literary Studies”.
The play "Egor Bulychev and others."

1933 - play "Dostigaev and others".

1934 – Gorky holds the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers and makes the main report at it.

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 of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, famous for his portrayal of a romanticized déclassé character (“tramp”), the 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 about the Bolshevik revolution. After several years of cultural work in Soviet Russia, Petrograd (World Literature publishing house, petition to the Bolsheviks for those arrested) and life abroad in the 1920s (Marienbad, Sorrento), Gorky returned to the USSR, where the last years of his life he was surrounded official recognition 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 came up with a pseudonym for himself. Subsequently, he told me: “I shouldn’t write in literature - Peshkov...” (A. Kalyuzhny) 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 satrap 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 “to the people”; worked as a “boy” in a store, as a pantry cook on a ship, 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 of the Gryaze-Tsaritsyn Railway. Impressions from his stay in Dobrinka will serve as the basis for the autobiographical story “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 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 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 1,000 copies. A. I. Bogdanovich advised releasing the first two volumes of M. Gorky’s “Essays and Stories” in 1,200 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.
• 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 Gumilev highly valued the last stanza of this poem (“Gumilev without gloss”, St. Petersburg, 2009).

• 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 belles-lettres. "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 annulled by the government, since the newly elected academician “was under police surveillance.” In this regard, Chekhov and Korolenko refused membership in the Academy.
• 1904-1905 - writes the plays “Summer Residents”, “Children of the Sun”, “Barbarians”. 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 - M. Gorky 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, Gorky settled in Italy on the island of Capri, where he lived for 7 years. Here he writes “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 - M. 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".

• 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. In 1917, having disagreed with the Bolsheviks on the issue of the timeliness of the socialist revolution in Russia, he did not undergo re-registration of party members and formally dropped out of it.

Abroad

• 1921 - M. Gorky’s departure abroad. In Soviet literature, there was a myth 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 worsening ideological differences with the established government. 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 the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp and writes a laudatory review of its 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 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”, “The Poet’s Library”, “The History of a Young Man of the 19th Century”, the magazine “Literary Studies”, he writes plays “Yegor Bulychev and others” (1932), “Dostigaev and others” (1933).
• 1934 - Gorky “conducts” 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 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 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 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 so-called Third Moscow Trial of 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

1. First 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 Hope, son Sergey
2. Peshkova, Daria Maksimovna
2. Second wife - Maria Fedorovna Andreeva(1872-1953; civil marriage)
3. Long-term life partner - Budberg, Maria Ignatievna

Addresses in St. Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad

• 09.1899 - apartment of V. A. Posse in Trofimov’s house - Nadezhdinskaya street, 11;
• 02. - spring 1901 - apartment of V. A. Posse 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 - apartment of K. P. Pyatnitsky in an apartment building - Znamenskaya street, 20, apt. 29;
• beginning 03.1914 - autumn 1921 - apartment building of E. K. Barsova - Kronverksky Avenue, 23;
• 30.08. - 09/07/1928 - hotel "European" - Rakova street, 7;
• 18.06. - 07/11/1929 - European Hotel - Rakova Street, 7;
• end of 09.1931 - hotel "European" - Rakova street, 7.

Bibliography

Novels

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

Stories

• 1908 - “The Life of an Useless Man.”
• 1908 - “Confession”
• 1909 - “The Town of Okurov”, “The 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 Orlov Spouses”, “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 Rus'” (cycle of stories)
• 1924 - “Stories of 1922-1924”
• 1924 - “Notes from a Diary” (series of stories)

Plays

Journalism

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

Initiated the creation of a series of books “History of Factories and Plants” (IFZ), took the initiative to revive the pre-revolutionary series “Life of Remarkable People”

Film incarnations

• Alexey Lyarsky (“Gorky’s Childhood”, 1938)
• Alexey Lyarsky (“In People”, 1938)
• Nikolai Valbert (“My Universities”, 1939)
• Pavel Kadochnikov (“Yakov Sverdlov”, 1940, “Pedagogical Poem”, 1955, “Prologue”, 1956)
• Nikolai Cherkasov (“Lenin in 1918”, 1939, “Academician Ivan Pavlov”, 1949)
• Vladimir Emelyanov (Appasionata, 1963)
• Afanasy Kochetkov (This is how a song is born, 1957, Mayakovsky began like this..., 1958, Through the icy darkness, 1965, The incredible Yehudiel Chlamida, 1969, The Kotsyubinsky family, 1970, “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 Loves”, 2004)
• Nikolai Kachura (“Yesenin”, 2005)
• Georgy Taratorkin (“Captive of Passion”, 2010)
• Nikolai Svanidze 1907. Maxim 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 central district children's library, drama theater, street, and also the square, in the center of which there is a monument to the writer by sculptor V. I. Mukhina, bear the name of Gorky. But the most interesting thing is the museum-apartment of M. Gorky.
• In 1934, at the Voronezh aviation plant, a Soviet propaganda passenger multi-seat 8-engine aircraft was built, the largest aircraft of its time with a land landing gear - the ANT-20 Maxim Gorky.

• In Moscow there was Maxim Gorky Lane (now Khitrovsky), Maxim Gorky Embankment (now Kosmodamianskaya), Maxim Gorky Square (formerly Khitrovskaya), Gorkovskaya (now Tverskaya) metro station of the 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.

Indeed, the early years of Alexei Maksimovich Gorky (Peshkov) are known only from the autobiographies he himself wrote (there are several versions) and works of art - the autobiographical trilogy: “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities”.

To what extent the “leaden abominations of wild Russian life” set forth in the mentioned works correspond to reality, and to what extent they are the author’s literary fiction is unknown to this day. We can only compare the texts of Gorky’s early autobiographies with his other literary texts, but we also cannot talk about the reliability of this information.

According to the memoirs of Vladislav Khodasevich, Gorky once told with a laugh how one clever Nizhny Novgorod publisher of “books for the people” persuaded him to write his biography, saying: “Your life, Alexey Maksimovich, is pure money.”

It seems that the writer took this advice, but left the prerogative to earn this “money” for himself.

In his first autobiography in 1897, written at the request of the literary critic and bibliographer S.A. Vengerov, M. Gorky wrote about his parents:

“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. The 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.” Gorky A.M. Complete Works, vol. 23, p. 269

In subsequent autobiographies of writers, there is a lot of confusion in dates and inconsistencies with documented facts. Even with the day and year of his birth, Gorky cannot decide unambiguously. In his autobiography of 1897, he indicates the date March 14, 1869, in the next version (1899) - “born on March 14, either 1867 or 1868.”

It is documented that A.M. Peshkov was born on March 16 (28), 1868 in the city of Nizhny Novgorod. Father - cabinetmaker Maxim Savvatievich Peshkov (1839-1871), the son of an officer demoted to soldier. Mother - Varvara Vasilievna (1844-1879), nee Kashirina, daughter of a wealthy merchant, owner of a dyeing establishment, who was a shop foreman and was more than once elected as a deputy of the Nizhny Novgorod Duma. Despite the fact that Gorky's parents got married against the wishes of the bride's father, the conflict between the families was soon successfully resolved. In the spring of 1871, M.S. Peshkov was appointed manager of the Kolchin Shipping Company office, and the young family moved from Nizhny Novgorod to Astrakhan. Soon the father died of cholera, and the mother and Alexei returned to Nizhny.

Gorky himself dates the date of his father’s death and mother’s return to the Kashirin family first to the summer of 1873, then to the autumn of 1871. The autobiographies also differ in information about Gorky’s life “in public.” For example, in one version he ran away from the shoe store where he worked as a “boy”, in another, repeated later in the story “In People” (1916), he was scalded with cabbage soup and his grandfather took him from the shoemaker, etc., etc. .…

In autobiographical works written by an already mature writer, in the period from 1912 to 1925, literary fiction is closely intertwined with childhood memories and early impressions of a still unformed personality. As if driven by long-standing childhood grievances, which he was unable to overcome throughout his life, Gorky sometimes deliberately exaggerates the colors, adds unnecessary drama, trying again and again to justify the once chosen pseudonym.

In his Autobiography of 1897, the almost thirty-year-old writer allows himself to express himself this way about his own mother:

Did he seriously believe that an adult woman could consider her little son to be the cause of the death of her loved one? Blame your child for your unhappy personal life?

In the story “Childhood” (1912-1913), Gorky fulfills the obvious social order of the Russian progressive public of the early twentieth century: he describes the misfortunes of the people in good literary language, not forgetting to add personal childhood grievances here.

It is worth remembering with what deliberate antipathy Alyosha Peshkov’s stepfather Maksimov is described on the pages of the story, who did not give the boy anything good, but did not do anything bad either. The mother's second marriage is clearly regarded by the hero of "Childhood" as a betrayal, and the writer himself spared neither causticity nor gloomy colors to describe his stepfather's relatives - impoverished nobles. On the pages of the works of her famous son, Varvara Vasilievna Peshkova-Maximova is denied even that bright, largely mythologized memory that was preserved for her early deceased father.

Gorky's grandfather, the respected shop foreman V.V. Kashirin, appears before the reader in the image of a kind of monster with which to frighten naughty children. Most likely, Vasily Vasilyevich had an explosive, despotic character and was not very pleasant to talk to, but he loved his grandson in his own way and sincerely cared about his upbringing and education. The grandfather himself taught six-year-old Alyosha first Church Slavonic literacy, then modern, civil literacy. In 1877, he sent his grandson to the Nizhny Novgorod Kunavinsky School, where he studied until 1879, receiving a certificate of commendation upon entering the third grade for “excellent success in science and good behavior compared to others.” That is, the future writer still completed two classes of college, and with honors. In one of his autobiographies, Gorky claims that he attended school for about five months, received only “twos”, and sincerely hated studies, books and any printed texts, even his passport.

What is this? Resentment towards your not so “hopeless” past? Voluntary self-deprecation or a way to assure the reader that “from the aspen tree oranges will be born”? The desire to present oneself as an absolute “nugget,” a self-made man, was inherent in many “proletarian” writers and poets. Even S.A. Yesenin, having received a decent education at a teacher’s school, worked as a proofreader in a Moscow printing house, attended classes at the Shanyavsky People’s University, but all his life, obeying political fashion, he tried to present himself as an illiterate “peasant” and a hillbilly...

The only bright spot against the background of the general “dark kingdom” of Gorky’s autobiographical stories is the relationship with his grandmother, Akulina Ivanovna. Obviously, this illiterate, but kind and honest woman was able to completely replace the mother who “betrayed” him in the boy’s mind. She gave her grandson all her love and participation, perhaps awakening in the soul of the future writer the desire to see the beauty behind the gray reality surrounding him.

Grandfather Kashirin soon went bankrupt: the division of the family enterprise with his sons and subsequent failures in business led him to complete poverty. Unable to survive the blow of fate, he fell ill with mental illness. Eleven-year-old Alyosha was forced to leave school and go “to the people,” that is, to learn some kind of craft.

From 1879 to 1884, he was a “boy” in a shoe shop, a student in a drawing and icon-painting workshop, and a dishwasher in the galleys of the Perm and Dobry steamships. Here an event took place that Alexey Maksimovich himself is inclined to consider “the starting point” on his path to Maxim Gorky: meeting a cook named Smury. This remarkable cook, despite his illiteracy, was obsessed with collecting books, mainly leather-bound. The range of his “leather” collection turned out to be very unique - from the Gothic novels of Anna Radcliffe and the poems of Nekrasov to literature in the Little Russian language. Thanks to this, according to the writer, “the strangest library in the world” (Autobiography, 1897), Alyosha Peshkov became addicted to reading and “read everything that came to hand”: Gogol, Nekrasov, Scott, Dumas, Flaubert, Balzac, Dickens, magazines “Sovremennik” and “Iskra”, popular print books and Freemasonic literature.

However, according to Gorky himself, he began reading books much earlier. In his autobiography there is a mention that from the age of ten the future writer kept a diary in which he recorded impressions not only from life, but also from the books he read. Agree, it is difficult to imagine a teenager living a miserable life as a servant, merchant, dishwasher, but at the same time keeping diary entries, reading serious literature and dreaming of going to university.

Such fantasy “inconsistencies”, worthy of embodiment in Soviet cinema of the mid-1930s (“Shining Path”, “Jolly Fellows”, etc.), are constantly present on the pages of M. Gorky’s “autobiographical” works.

In 1912-1917, even before the Glavpolitprosvet and the People's Commissariat for Education, the revolutionary writer had already firmly taken the path that was later called “socialist realism.” He knew perfectly well what and how to display in his works in order to fit into the future reality.

In 1884, the “tramp” Alexey Peshkov actually went to Kazan with the intention of entering the university:

How fifteen-year-old Peshkov learned about the existence of the university, and why he decided that he could be accepted there, is also a mystery. Living in Kazan, he communicated not only with “former people” - tramps and prostitutes. In 1885, the baker’s assistant Peshkov began attending self-education circles (usually Marxist), student gatherings, and using the library of illegal books and proclamations at Derenkov’s bakery, who hired him. Soon a mentor appeared - one of the first Marxists in Russia, Nikolai Fedoseev...

And suddenly, having already found the “fateful” revolutionary vein, on December 12, 1887, Alexey Peshkov tries to commit suicide (shoots himself in the lung). Some biographers find the reason for this in his unrequited love for Derenkov’s sister Maria, others - in the beginning of repressions against student circles. These explanations seem formal, since they do not at all fit the psychophysical makeup of Alexei Peshkov. By nature he was a fighter, and all the obstacles along the way only refreshed his strength.

Some biographers of Gorky believe that the reason for his unsuccessful suicide could be an internal struggle in the soul of the young man. Under the influence of haphazardly read books and Marxist ideas, there was a reshaping of the consciousness of the future writer, ousting from him that boy who began life with a Church Slavonic literacy, and then the insanity of rationalistic materialism fell upon him...

This “demon” appeared, by the way, in Alexei’s farewell note:

To master his chosen path, Alexei Peshkov had to become a different person, and he became one. Here a fragment from Dostoevsky’s “Demons” involuntarily comes to mind: “... lately he has been noticed in the most impossible oddities. For example, he threw two of his master’s images out of his apartment and chopped one of them with an ax; in his own room he laid out on stands, in the form of three lecterns, the works of Vocht, Moleschott and Buchner and lit wax church candles in front of each lectern.”

For attempting suicide, the Kazan Spiritual Consistory excommunicated Peshkov from the Church for seven years.

In the summer of 1888, Alexei Peshkov began his famous four-year “walk around Rus'” in order to return from it as Maxim Gorky. Volga region, Don, Ukraine, Crimea, Caucasus, Kharkov, Kursk, Zadonsk (where he visited the Zadonsk Monastery), Voronezh, Poltava, Mirgorod, Kyiv, Nikolaev, Odessa, Bessarabia, Kerch, Taman, Kuban, Tiflis - this is an incomplete list of his travel routes .

During his wanderings, he worked as a loader, a railway watchman, a dishwasher, worked as a laborer in villages, mined salt, was beaten by men and was in the hospital, served in repair shops, and was arrested several times - for vagrancy and for revolutionary propaganda. “I water the bucket of enlightenment with benign ideas, and they bring certain results,” A. Peshkov wrote at that time to one of his addressees.

During these same years, Gorky experienced a passion for populism and Tolstoyism (in 1889 he visited Yasnaya Polyana with the intention of asking Leo Tolstoy for a plot of land for an “agricultural colony”, but their meeting did not take place); he became ill with Nietzsche’s teaching about the superman, which forever left him views with their own “pockmarks”.

Start

The first story, “Makar Chudra,” signed by a new name - Maxim Gorky, was published in 1892 in the Tiflis newspaper “Caucasus” and marked the end of his wanderings. Gorky returned to Nizhny Novgorod. He considered Vladimir Korolenko his literary godfather. Under his patronage, since 1893, the aspiring writer has been publishing essays in Volga newspapers, and a few years later he becomes a permanent employee of the Samara Newspaper. More than two hundred of his feuilletons signed by Yehudiel Chlamida were published here, as well as the stories “Song of the Falcon”, “On Rafts”, “Old Woman Izergil”, etc. At the editorial office of the Samara Newspaper, Gorky met the proofreader Ekaterina Pavlovna Volzhina. Having successfully overcome his mother’s resistance to the marriage of his noble daughter to the “Nizhny Novgorod guild,” in 1896 Alexey Maksimovich married her.

The following year, despite worsening tuberculosis and worries with the birth of his son Maxim, Gorky released new novels and short stories, most of which would become textbooks: “Konovalov”, “Zazubrina”, “Fair in Goltva”, “The Orlov Spouses”, “Malva” , “Former People”, etc. Gorky’s first two-volume book “Essays and Stories” (1898), published in St. Petersburg, had unprecedented success both in Russia and abroad. The demand for it was so great that a re-edition was immediately required - released in 1899 in three volumes. Gorky sent his first book to A.P. Chekhov, whom I was in awe of. He responded with a more than generous compliment: “Undoubted talent, and a real, great talent at that.”

In the same year, the debutant came to St. Petersburg and caused a standing ovation from the capital: the enthusiastic public organized banquets and literary evenings in his honor. He was greeted by people from a variety of countries: the populist critic Nikolai Mikhailovsky, the decadents Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius, academician Andrei Nikolaevich Beketov (grandfather of Alexander Blok), Ilya Repin, who painted his portrait... “Essays and Stories” were perceived as the frontier of public self-determination , and Gorky immediately became one of the most influential and popular Russian writers. Of course, interest in him was also fueled by the legendary biography of Gorky the tramp, Gorky the nugget, Gorky the sufferer (by this time he had already been in prison several times for revolutionary activities and was under police supervision)...

"Lord of Thoughts"

“Essays and Stories”, as well as the writer’s four-volume “Stories”, which began to be published by the publishing house “Znanie”, produced a huge critical literature - from 1900 to 1904, 91 books were published about Gorky! Neither Turgenev, nor Leo Tolstoy, nor Dostoevsky had such fame during their lifetime. What is the reason?

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, against the background of decadence (decadence), as a reaction to it, two powerful magnetic ideas began to take root: the cult of a strong personality, inspired by Nietzsche, and the socialist reorganization of the world (Marx). These were the ideas of the era. And Gorky, who walked all over Russia, with the brilliant instinct of an animal, felt the rhythms of his time and the smells of new ideas in the air. Gorky’s artistic expression, going beyond the boundaries of art, “opened a new dialogue with reality” (Petr Palievsky). The innovative writer introduced into literature an offensive style unusual for Russian classics, designed to invade reality and radically change life. He also brought a new hero - “a talented spokesman for the protesting masses,” as the Iskra newspaper wrote. The heroic-romantic parables “Old Woman Izergil”, “Song of the Falcon”, “Song of the Petrel” (1901) became revolutionary appeals in the rising proletarian movement. Critics of the previous generation accused Gorky of apologizing for tramping and preaching Nietzsche's individualism. But they argued with the will of history itself, and therefore they lost this argument.

In 1900, Gorky joined the publishing partnership “Znanie” and for ten years he was its ideological leader, uniting around himself writers whom he considered “advanced.” At his instigation, books by Serafimovich, Leonid Andreev, Bunin, Skitalets, Garin-Mikhailovsky, Veresaev, Mamin-Sibiryak, Kuprin and others were published here. Social work did not slow down creativity at all: the magazine “Life” published the story “Twenty Six and One” ( 1899), novels “Foma Gordeev” (1899), “Three” (1900-1901).

On February 25, 1902, thirty-four-year-old Gorky was elected honorary academician in the category of fine literature, but the election was declared invalid. Suspecting the Academy of Sciences of collusion with the authorities, Korolenko and Chekhov renounced the title of honorary academicians as a sign of protest.

In 1902, “Knowledge” published Gorky’s first play “The Bourgeois” as a separate edition, which premiered that same year at the famous Moscow Art Theater (MAT), and six months later there was the triumphant premiere of the play “At the Depths.” The play “Summer Residents” (1904) was performed a few months later in the fashionable St. Petersburg theater of Vera Komissarzhevskaya. Subsequently, Gorky’s new plays were staged on the same stage: “Children of the Sun” (1905) and “Barbarians” (1906).

Gorky in the 1905 revolution

Intense creative work did not prevent the writer from becoming closer to the Bolsheviks and Iskra before the first Russian revolution. Gorky organized fundraisers for them and himself made generous donations to the party treasury. In this affection, apparently, one of the most beautiful actresses of the Moscow Art Theater, Maria Fedorovna Andreeva, a convinced Marxist, closely associated with the RSDLP, played an important role. In 1903 she became Gorky's common-law wife. She also brought the philanthropist Savva Morozov, her ardent admirer and admirer of M. Gorky’s talent, to the Bolsheviks. A wealthy Moscow industrialist who financed the Moscow Art Theater, he began to allocate significant sums to the revolutionary movement. In 1905, Savva Morozov shot himself in Nice due to a mental disorder. Nemirovich-Danchenko explained it this way: “Human nature cannot tolerate two equally strong opposing passions. A merchant... must be true to his element.". The image of Savva Morozov and his strange suicide were reflected on the pages of M. Gorky’s late novel “The Life of Klim Samgin.”

Gorky took an active part in the events of January 8-9, 1905, which still have not found their own clear historical version. It is known that on the night of January 9, the writer, together with a group of intellectuals, visited the Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers S.Yu. Witte to prevent the impending bloodshed. The question arises: how did Gorky know that there would be bloodshed? The workers' march was initially planned as a peaceful demonstration. But martial law was introduced in the capital, at the same time G.A. himself was hiding in Gorky’s apartment. Gapon...

Together with a group of Bolsheviks, Maxim Gorky took part in the march of workers to the Winter Palace and witnessed the dispersal of the demonstration. On the same day, he wrote an appeal “To all Russian citizens and public opinion of European states.” The writer accused the ministers and Nicholas II “of the premeditated and senseless murder of many Russian citizens.” What could the unfortunate monarch oppose to the power of Gorky’s artistic words? Make excuses for your absence in the capital? Put the blame for the shooting on your uncle, the St. Petersburg Governor General? Largely thanks to Gorky, Nicholas II received his nickname the Bloody, the authority of the monarchy in the eyes of the people was undermined forever, and the “petrel of the revolution” acquired the status of a human rights activist and fighter for the people. Considering Gorky’s early awareness of the impending events, all this looks strange and resembles a carefully planned provocation...

On January 11, Gorky was arrested in Riga, taken to St. Petersburg and imprisoned in a separate cell in the Trubetskoy bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress as a state criminal. During a month spent in solitary confinement, he wrote the play “Children of the Sun”, conceived the novel “Mother” and the play “Enemies”. Gerhard Hauptmann, Anatole France, Auguste Rodin, Thomas Hardy and others immediately spoke out in defense of the captive Gorky. The European noise forced the government to release him and stop the case “under an amnesty.”

Returning to Moscow, Gorky began publishing his “Notes on Philistinism” (1905) in the Bolshevik newspaper Novaya Zhizn, in which he condemned “Dostoevshchina” and “Tolstoyism”, calling the preaching of non-resistance to evil and moral improvement philistine. During the December uprising of 1905, Gorky's Moscow apartment, guarded by the Caucasian squad, became the center where weapons for combat detachments were brought and all information was delivered.

First emigration

After the suppression of the Moscow uprising due to the threat of a new arrest in early 1906, Gorky and Andreeva emigrated to America, where they began collecting money for the Bolsheviks. Gorky protested against the provision of foreign loans to the tsarist government to fight the revolution, publishing an appeal “Do not give money to the Russian government.” The United States, which does not allow itself any liberalism when it comes to defending its statehood, launched a newspaper campaign against Gorky as a carrier of the “revolutionary infection.” The reason was his unofficial marriage with Andreeva. Not a single hotel agreed to accept Gorky and the people accompanying him. Thanks to a letter of recommendation from the Executive Committee of the RSDLP and a personal note from Lenin, he settled with private individuals.

During his tour of America, Gorky spoke at rallies, gave interviews, and met Mark Twain, Herbert Wells, and other famous figures with the help of whom public opinion about the tsarist government was created. He managed to collect only 10 thousand dollars for revolutionary needs, but a more serious result of his trip was the US refusal to provide Russia with a loan of half a billion dollars. There, Gorky wrote his journalistic works “My Interviews” and “In America” (which he called the country of the “yellow devil”), as well as the play “Enemies” and the novel “Mother” (1906). In the last two things (Soviet criticism long called them “artistic lessons of the first Russian revolution”) many Russian writers saw “the end of Gorky.”

“What kind of literature this is! - wrote Zinaida Gippius. “It wasn’t even the revolution, but the Russian Social Democratic Party that chewed up Gorky without a trace.” Alexander Blok rightly called “Mother” artistically weak, and “My Interviews” flat and uninteresting.

Six months later, Maxim Gorky left the United States and settled in Capri (Italy), where he lived until 1913. Gorky's Italian house became a refuge for many Russian political emigrants and a place of pilgrimage for his admirers. In 1909, a party school was organized in Capri for workers sent from Russia by party organizations. Gorky gave lectures here on the history of Russian literature. Lenin also came to visit Gorky, with whom the writer met at the 5th (London) Congress of the RSDLP and has been corresponding since then. At that time, Gorky was closer to Plekhanov and Lunacharsky, who presented Marxism as a new religion with the revelation of a “real god” - the proletarian collective. In this they differed from Lenin, for whom the word “God” in any interpretation caused rage.

In Capri, in addition to a huge number of journalistic works, Gorky wrote the stories “The Life of an Useless Person,” “Confession” (1908), “Summer” (1909), “The Town of Okurov,” “The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin” (1910), and the plays “The Last "(1908), "Meeting" (1910), "Cranks", "Vassa Zheleznova" (1910), the cycle of stories "Complaints", the autobiographical story "Childhood" (1912-1913), as well as stories that would later be included in the cycle “Across Rus'” (1923). In 1911, Gorky began working on the satire “Russian Fairy Tales” (finished in 1917), in which he exposed the Black Hundreds, chauvinism, and decadence.

Return to Russia

In 1913, in connection with the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov, a political amnesty was declared. Gorky returned to Russia. Having settled in St. Petersburg, he began extensive publishing activities, which relegated artistic creativity to the background. He publishes the “Collection of Proletarian Writers” (1914), organizes the publishing house “Parus”, publishes the magazine “Chronicle”, which from the very beginning of the First World War took an anti-militarist position and opposed the “world massacre” - here Gorky agreed with the Bolsheviks. The magazine's list of employees included writers of various directions: Bunin, Trenev, Prishvin, Lunacharsky, Eikhenbaum, Mayakovsky, Yesenin, Babel, etc. At the same time, the second part of his autobiographical prose “In People” (1916) was written.

1917 and second emigration

In 1917, Gorky's views sharply diverged from those of the Bolsheviks. He considered the October Revolution a political adventure and published a series of essays about the events of 1917-1918 in the newspaper Novaya Zhizn, where he painted terrible pictures of the savagery of morals in Petrograd, engulfed in the Red Terror. In 1918, the essays were published as a separate publication, Untimely Thoughts. Notes on revolution and culture". The newspaper “New Life” was immediately closed by the authorities as counter-revolutionary. Gorky himself was not touched: the fame of the “petrel of the revolution” and personal acquaintance with Lenin allowed him, as they say, to open the door to the offices of all high-ranking comrades. In August 1918, Gorky organized the publishing house "World Literature", which in the most hungry years fed many Russian writers with translations and editorial work. On Gorky’s initiative, a Commission was created to improve the living conditions of scientists.

As Vladislav Khodasevich testifies, during these difficult times there was a crush in Gorky’s apartment from morning to night:

Only once did the memoirist see how Gorky refused the request of the clown Delvari, who asked the writer to become the godfather of his child. This contradicted the carefully created image of the “petrel of the revolution,” and Gorky did not intend to spoil his biography.

Against the backdrop of the growing Red Terror, the writer’s skepticism about the possibility of “building socialism and communism” in Russia deepened. His authority among the political bosses began to decline, especially after a quarrel with the all-powerful commissar of the Northern capital G.E. Zinoviev. Gorky’s dramatic satire “The Hard Worker of Slovotekov” was directed against him, staged at the Petrograd Theater of Folk Comedy in 1920 and immediately banned by the prototype of the protagonist.

On October 16, 1921, Maxim Gorky left Russia. At first he lived in Germany and Czechoslovakia, and in 1924 he settled in a villa in Sorrento (Italy). His position was ambiguous: on the one hand, he rather sharply criticized the Soviet government for violating freedom of speech and prohibitions on dissent, and on the other, he opposed the absolute majority of Russian political emigration with his commitment to the idea of ​​socialism.

At this time, the “Russian Mata-Hari”, Maria Ignatievna Benkendorf (later Baroness Budberg), became the sovereign mistress of the Gorky house. According to Khodasevich, it was Maria Ignatievna who persuaded Gorky to reconcile with Soviet Russia. Not surprising: she, as it turned out, was an agent of the INO OGPU.

Gorky with his son

Under Gorky, his son Maxim lived with his family; someone was sure to visit - Russian emigrants and Soviet leaders, eminent foreigners and admirers of talent, petitioners and aspiring writers, fugitives from Soviet Russia and simply wanderers. Judging by many memoirs, Gorky never refused financial assistance to anyone. Only large circulations of Russian publications could provide Gorky with sufficient funds to maintain his home and family. In emigration, even such figures as Denikin and Wrangel could not count on large circulations. The “proletarian” writer could not afford to quarrel with the Soviets.

During the period of his second emigration, Gorky's leading genre became artistic memoirs. He completed the third part of his autobiography “My Universities”, memories of V.G. Korolenko, L.N. Tolstoy, L.N. Andreev, A.P. Chekhov, N.G. Garine-Mikhailovsky and others. In 1925, Gorky finished the novel “The Artamonov Case” and began work on the grandiose epic “The Life of Klim Samgin” - about the Russian intelligentsia during a turning point in Russian history. Despite the fact that this work remained unfinished, many critics consider it central to the writer’s work.

In 1928, Maxim Gorky returned to his homeland. He was greeted with great honor. At the state level, his tour of the Soviet country was organized: the South of Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus, the Volga region, new construction projects, the Solovetsky camps... All this made a great impression on Gorky, which was reflected in his book “Across the Union of Soviets” (1929) In Moscow to the writer allocated the famous Ryabushinsky mansion for housing, dachas in Crimea and near Moscow (Gorki) for recreation, and a special carriage for trips to Italy and Crimea. Numerous renamings of streets and cities began (Nizhny Novgorod was named Gorky), and on December 1, 1933, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Maxim Gorky’s literary activity, the first Literary Institute in Russia named after him was opened. On the initiative of the writer, the magazines “Our Achievements” and “Literary Studies” were organized, the famous “Poet’s Library” series was created, the Writers’ Union was formed, etc.

The last years of Maxim Gorky's life, as well as the death of his son and the death of the writer himself, are covered with all sorts of rumors, guesses and legends. Today, when many documents were opened, it became known that after returning to his homeland, Gorky was under the strict tutelage of the GPU, headed by G.G. Berry. Secretary of Gorky P.P. Kryuchkov, who was connected with the authorities, managed all his publishing and financial affairs, trying to isolate the writer from the Soviet and world community, since Gorky did not like everything in his “new life.” In May 1934, his beloved son Maxim died under mysterious circumstances.

A.M. Gorky and G.G. Berry

In his memoirs, Khodasevich recalls that back in 1924, through Ekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova, Maxim was invited to return to Russia by Felix Dzerzhinsky, offering a job in his department, Gorky did not allow this, uttering a phrase similar to the prophetic: “When they start a squabble there, they will finish him off.” along with others - but I feel sorry for this fool.”

The same V. Khodasevich also expressed his version of Maxim’s murder: he considered the reason for this to be Yagoda’s love for Maxim’s beautiful wife (rumors about their relationship circulated among the Russian emigration after Maxim’s death). Gorky’s son, who loved to drink, seemed to have been deliberately left drunk in the forest by his drinking companions, GPU officers. The night was cold, and Maxim died of a severe cold. This death completely undermined the strength of his sick father.

Alexei Maksimovich Gorky died on July 18, 1936, at the age of 68, from a long-standing lung disease, but was soon declared a victim of the “Trotskyist-Bukharin conspiracy.” A high-profile lawsuit was opened against the doctors who treated the writer... Much later, his last “love”, GPU-NKVD agent Maria Ignatievna Budberg, was accused of poisoning the elderly Gorky. Why might the NKVD need to poison an already half-dead writer? No one has answered this question clearly.

In conclusion, I would like to add that some researchers of Gorky’s work believe that the “negative” Luke from the play “At the Lower Depths” - the “evil old man” with his comforting lies - is the subconscious “I” of Gorky himself. Alexey Maksimovich, like most writers of that difficult era, loved to indulge in elevating deceptions in life. It is no coincidence that Luka is so passionately defended by the “positive” tramp Satin: “I understand the old man... yes! He lied... but it was out of pity for you, damn you!”

Yes, the “most realistic writer” and “petrel of the revolution” lied more than once, rewriting and altering the facts of his own biography for political purposes. The writer and publicist Gorky lied even more, overestimating and “distorting” in a new way indisputable facts from the history of the great country. Was it a lie dictated by pity for humanity? Rather, it is the same elevating self-deception that allows the artist to create great masterpieces from ordinary dirt...

Elena Shirokova

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Material from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia

Maxim Gorky is the literary pseudonym of Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov; the incorrect use of the writer’s real name in combination with the pseudonym - Alexey Maksimovich Gorky, (March 16 (28), 1868, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Empire - June 18, 1936, Gorki, Moscow region, USSR is also well-established ) - Russian writer, prose writer, playwright. One of the most significant and famous Russian writers and thinkers in the world. At the turn of the 19th and 20th 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.

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. 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, Gorky 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” in a store, as a buffet cook on a ship, 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 “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.

Literary and social activities

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”.
1896 - Gorky writes a response to the first cinematic session in Nizhny Novgorod:

And suddenly something clicks, everything disappears, and a railway train appears on the screen. He rushes like an arrow straight towards you - watch out! It seems that he is about to rush into the darkness in which you are sitting, and turn you into a torn bag of skin, full of crumpled meat and crushed bones, and destroy, turn into rubble and dust this hall and this building where there is so much wine , women, music and vice.

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 “Essays and Stories” by M. Gorky, 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.

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.

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 annulled by the government, since the newly elected academician was “under police surveillance.” In this regard, Chekhov and Korolenko refused membership in the Academy

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 in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Famous artists G. Hauptmann, A. France, O. Rodin, T. Hardy, J. Meredith, Italian writers G. Deledda, M. Rapisardi, E. de Amicis, composer G. Puccini, philosopher B. spoke in defense of Gorky. 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 Maria Andreeva travel through Europe to America. Abroad, the writer 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 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 the 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.

Emigration

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.
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.”
1929 - Gorky visits the Solovetsky special purpose camp and writes a laudatory review of its regime. A fragment of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s work “The Gulag Archipelago” is dedicated to this fact.

Return to the USSR

(From November 1935 to June 1936)

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 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”, “The Poet’s Library”, “The History of a Young Man of the 19th Century”, the magazine “Literary Studies”, he writes 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.

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.

The mysterious death of Maxim Gorky

“Here medicine is innocent...” This is exactly what doctors Levin and Pletnev initially said, who treated the writer in the last months of his life and were later brought in as defendants in the trial of the “right-wing Trotskyist bloc.” Soon, however, they “admitted” deliberately incorrect treatment...
and even “showed” that their accomplices were nurses who gave the patient up to 40 injections of camphor per day. But as it was in reality, there is no consensus.
Historian L. Fleischlan directly writes: “The fact of Gorky’s murder can be considered immutably established.” V. Khodasevich, on the contrary, believes in the natural cause of the death of the proletarian writer.

On the night when Maxim Gorky was dying, a terrible thunderstorm broke out at the state-owned dacha in Gorki-10.

The autopsy of the body was carried out right here, in the bedroom, on the table. The doctors were in a hurry. “When he died,” recalled Gorky’s secretary Pyotr Kryuchkov, “the doctors’ attitude towards him changed. For them he became just a corpse...

He was treated horribly. The orderly began to change his clothes and turned him from side to side, like a log. The autopsy began... Then they began to wash the insides. They sewed up the cut somehow with simple twine. The brain was put in a bucket..."

Kryuchkov personally carried this bucket, intended for the Brain Institute, into the car.

In Kryuchkov’s memoirs there is a strange entry: “Alexei Maksimovich died on the 8th.”

The writer’s widow Ekaterina Peshkova recalls: “June 8, 6 pm. Alexey Maksimovich’s condition deteriorated so much that the doctors, having lost hope, warned us that a near end was inevitable... Alexey Maksimovich is in a chair with his eyes closed, with his head bowed, leaning on something on one hand, then on the other, pressed to the temple and resting his elbow on the arm of the chair.

The pulse was barely noticeable, uneven, breathing became weaker, the face and ears and limbs of the hands turned blue. After a while, when we entered, hiccups began, restless movements of his hands, with which he seemed to be moving something away or taking something off..."

And suddenly the mise-en-scene changes... New faces appear. They waited in the living room. Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov enter the resurrected Gorky with a cheerful gait. They had already been informed that Gorky was dying. They came to say goodbye. Behind the scenes is the head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda. He arrived before Stalin. The leader didn't like it.

“Why is this guy hanging out here? So that he wouldn’t be here.”

Stalin behaves like a master in the house. He scared Genrikh and intimidated Kryuchkov. "Why so many people? Who is responsible for this? Do you know what we can do to you?"

The “owner” has arrived... The leading party is his! All relatives and friends become only corps de ballet.

When Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov entered the bedroom, Gorky came to his senses so much that they started talking about literature. Gorky began to praise women writers, mentioned Karavaeva - and how many of them, how many more will appear, and everyone must be supported... Stalin playfully besieged Gorky: “We’ll talk about the matter when you get better.
If you are planning to get sick, get better soon. Or maybe there’s wine in the house, we’d like to drink a glass to your health.”

They brought wine... Everyone drank... As they left, at the door, Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov waved their hands. When they came out, Gorky allegedly said: “What good guys! How much strength they have...”

But how much can you trust these memories of Peshkova? In 1964, when asked by American journalist Isaac Levin about Gorky’s death, she answered: “Don’t ask me about that! I won’t be able to sleep for three days...”

The second time Stalin and his comrades came to the mortally ill Gorky on June 10 at two o’clock in the morning. But why? Gorky was sleeping. No matter how afraid the doctors were, Stalin was not allowed in. Stalin's third visit took place on June 12. Gorky did not sleep. The doctors gave us ten minutes to talk. What were they talking about? About Bolotnikov's peasant uprising... We moved on to the situation of the French peasantry.

It turns out that on June 8, the main concern of the Secretary General and Gorky, who returned from the other world, was writers, and on the 12th, French peasants became the main concern. All this is somehow very strange.

The leader’s visits seemed to magically revive Gorky. It was as if he did not dare to die without Stalin’s permission. This is incredible, but Budberg will say this directly:
“He essentially died on the 8th, and if not for Stalin’s visit, he would hardly have returned to life.”

Stalin was not a member of the Gorky family. This means that the attempted night invasion was out of necessity. And on the 8th, and the 10th, and the 12th, Stalin needed either a frank conversation with Gorky, or a steely confidence that such a frank conversation would not take place with someone else. For example, with Louis Aragon traveling from France. What would Gorky say, what statement could he make?

After Gorky’s death, Kryuchkov was accused of having “killed” Gorky’s son Maxim Peshkov with doctors Levin and Pletnev, on Yagoda’s instructions, using “sabotage methods of treatment.” But why?

If we follow the testimony of other defendants, the political calculations were made by the “customers” - Bukharin, Rykov and Zinoviev. In this way, they allegedly wanted to speed up the death of Gorky himself, fulfilling the task of their “leader” Trotsky. Nevertheless, even at this trial there was no talk of the direct murder of Gorky. This version would be too incredible, because the patient was surrounded by 17 (!) doctors.

One of the first to speak about the poisoning of Gorky was the emigrant revolutionary B.I. Nikolaevsky. Allegedly, Gorky was presented with a bonbonniere containing poisoned sweets. But the candy version doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Gorky did not like sweets, but he loved to treat them to guests, orderlies and, finally, his beloved granddaughters. Thus, it was possible to poison anyone around Gorky with sweets, except himself. Only an idiot could plan such a murder. Neither Stalin nor Yagoda were idiots.

There is no evidence of the murder of Gorky and his son Maxim. Meanwhile, tyrants also have the right to the presumption of innocence. Stalin committed enough crimes to pin one more on him - unproven.

The reality is this: on June 18, 1936, the great Russian writer Maxim Gorky died. His body, contrary to the will to bury him next to his son in the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent, was cremated by order of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and the urn with the ashes was placed in the Kremlin wall.

Softmixer.com›2011/06/blog-post_18.html

The purpose of this article is to find out the true reason for the passing of the Russian writer ALEXEY MAKSIMOVITCH PESHKOV by his FULL NAME code.

Watch "Logicology - about the fate of man" in advance.

Let's look at the FULL NAME code tables. \If there is a shift in numbers and letters on your screen, adjust the image scale\.

16 22 47 58 73 76 77 89 95 106 124 130 140 153 154 165 183 193 206 221 224 234 258
P E S H K O V A L E K S E Y M A K S I M O V I C H
258 242 236 211 200 185 182 181 169 163 152 134 128 118 105 104 93 75 65 52 37 34 24

1 13 19 30 48 54 64 77 78 89 107 117 130 145 148 158 182 198 204 229 240 255 258
A L E K S E Y M A K S I M O V I C H P E S H K O V
258 257 245 239 228 210 204 194 181 180 169 151 141 128 113 110 100 76 60 54 29 18 3

PESHKOV ALEXEY MAKSIMOVICH = 258.

89 = (pulmonary) HYPOK(sia)
___________________________
180 = (hypo)CSIA PULMONARY

107 = (pulmonary) HYPOXIS(ies)
___________________________
169 = (hypo)SIA PULMONARY

117 = (pulmonary) HYPOXY(s)
___________________________
151 = (hypox)PULMONARY

193 = PULMONARY HYPOXY(s)
____________________________
75 = (n)NEUMONI(s)

PE(restal) (dy)SH(at) + KO(nchina) + V(osp)ALE(nie) (lay down)K(theirs) + (i)S(move) (l)E(talny)Y + ( y)M(irritation) + (pulmonary)A(i) + (hypo)CSI(i) + (pneumatic)MO(niya) + B(inflammation) (pulmonary)I(x) + (con)Ch(ina)

258 = PE,SH, + KO, + V,ALE,K, + ,S,E,Y + ,M, + ,A,KSI, + ,MO, + V,I, + ,CH,.

3 18 36 42 55 69 70 75 98 99 118 133 139 149 180 194 226
V O S E M N A D C A T O E I J U N Y
226 223 208 190 184 171 157 156 151 128 127 108 93 87 77 46 32

"Deep" decryption offers the following option, in which all columns match:

BOS (burning) (pulmonary) E + (pneumatic) M (o) N (iya) + (stop) A (ser) DCA + TO (xic) (poisoning) E (mild) I (x) + (dying) Yu (shiy) + (sko)N(chals)I

226 = BOS,E + ,M,N, + ,A,DCA + TO,E,I, + ,Yu, + ,N,Ya.

77 = (i)YUNYA

194 = EIGHTEENTH JUNE(s)

77 = HIT(s...)
_______________________________
194 = DAMAGE TO TOXIN(s)

194 - 77 = 117 = (pulmonary) HYPOXY(s); (affected) by TOXINS; (reflection) OF THE LUNGS.

Reference:

Pneumonia and heart: complications, symptoms...
provospalenie.ru›legkix/i-serdce.html
Pneumonia and the heart are interconnected. The acute course of pneumonia automatically has a negative impact on...

Toxic pulmonary edema - causes, symptoms...
KrasotaiMedicina.ru›diseases/zabolevanija_…
Toxic pulmonary edema is an acute inhalation injury to the lungs caused by inhalation of chemicals that have pulmonary toxicity. The clinical picture unfolds in stages; shortness of breath, cough, frothy sputum, chest pain...

Code for the number of full YEARS OF LIFE: 177-SIXTY + 84-EIGHT = 261.

25 31 49 68 97 102 108 126 158 177 180 195 213 219 232 261
SIXTY EIGHT
261 236 230 212 193 164 159 153 135 103 84 81 66 48 42 29

"Deep" decryption offers the following option, in which all columns match:

(died)Sh(y) + (stopped)E(but) S(heart) + (death)TH + D(hyani)E (interrupted)SY + T(oxic) (reflection)V(letion) + O(stasis ) CE(rdtsa) + (c)M(ert)b

261 = ,Ш, + ,Е, С, + ,Ть + Д,Э,СЯ + Т,В, + О, СО, + ,М,л.

Look at the column in the lower table of the FULL NAME code:

89 = DEATH
____________________________
180 = SIXTY V(eight)

89 = DEATH
______________________________
180 = EIGHTEENTH JU(nya)

89 = (pulmonary) HYPOK(sia)
___________________________
180 = (hypo)CSIA PULMONARY

180 - 89 = 91 = DYING.