When Maxim Gorky's mother died. Maxim Gorky - biography, photos, books, childhood, personal life of the writer

12.04.2019

Alexey Peshkov, better known as the writer Maxim Gorky, is a cult figure in Russian and Soviet literature. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize five times, was the most published Soviet author throughout the existence of the USSR and was considered on a par with Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin and the main creator of Russian literary art.

Alexey Peshkov - future Maxim Gorky | Pandia

He was born in the town of Kanavino, which at that time was located in the Nizhny Novgorod province, and is now one of the districts of Nizhny Novgorod. His father Maxim Peshkov was a carpenter, and in recent years life he managed a shipping company. Vasilievna’s mother died of consumption, so Alyosha Peshkova’s parents were replaced by her grandmother Akulina Ivanovna. From the age of 11, the boy was forced to start working: Maxim Gorky was a messenger at a store, a barman on a ship, an assistant to a baker and an icon painter. The biography of Maxim Gorky is reflected by him personally in the stories “Childhood”, “In People” and “My Universities”.

Photo of Gorky in his youth | Poetic portal

After an unsuccessful attempt to become a student at Kazan University and arrest due to connections with a Marxist circle, the future writer became a watchman on the railway. And at the age of 23, the young man set off to wander around the country and managed to reach the Caucasus on foot. It was during this journey that Maxim Gorky briefly wrote down his thoughts, which would later become the basis for his future works. By the way, the first stories of Maxim Gorky also began to be published around that time.

Alexey Peshkov, who took the pseudonym Gorky | Nostalgia

Having already become famous writer, Alexey Peshkov leaves for the United States, then moves to Italy. This did not happen at all because of problems with the authorities, as some sources sometimes present, but because of changes in family life. Although abroad, Gorky continues to write revolutionary books. He returned to Russia in 1913, settled in St. Petersburg and began working for various publishing houses.

It is curious that, despite all his Marxist views, Peshkov perceived the October Revolution rather skeptically. After the Civil War, Maxim Gorky, who had some disagreements with the new government, again went abroad, but in 1932 he finally returned home.

Writer

The first published story by Maxim Gorky was the famous “Makar Chudra,” which was published in 1892. And the two-volume “Essays and Stories” brought fame to the writer. Interestingly, the circulation of these volumes was almost three times higher than what was usually accepted in those years. Of the most popular works of that period it is worth noting the stories “Old Woman Izergil”, “ Former people", "Chelkash", "Twenty six and one", as well as the poem "Song of the Falcon". Another poem, “Song of the Petrel,” has become a textbook. Maxim Gorky devoted a lot of time to children's literature. He wrote a number of fairy tales, for example, “Sparrow”, “Samovar”, “Tales of Italy”, published the first special children’s magazine in the Soviet Union and organized holidays for children from poor families.

Legendary Soviet writer | Kyiv Jewish Community

Very important for understanding the writer’s work are Maxim Gorky’s plays “At the Lower Depths,” “The Bourgeois” and “Yegor Bulychov and Others,” in which he reveals the playwright’s talent and shows how he sees the life around him. Big cultural significance for Russian literature they have the stories “Childhood” and “In People”, social novels“Mother” and “The Artamonov Case”. Last job Gorky’s epic novel “The Life of Klim Samgin” is considered, which has a second title “Forty Years”. The writer worked on this manuscript for 11 years, but never managed to finish it.

Personal life

The personal life of Maxim Gorky was quite stormy. He married for the first and officially only time at the age of 28. The young man met his wife Ekaterina Volzhina at the Samara Newspaper publishing house, where the girl worked as a proofreader. A year after the wedding, a son, Maxim, appeared in the family, and soon a daughter, Ekaterina, named after her mother. The writer was also raised by his godson Zinovy Sverdlov, who later took the surname Peshkov.

With his first wife Ekaterina Volzhina | LiveJournal

But Gorky's love quickly disappeared. He began to feel burdened family life and their marriage to Ekaterina Volzhina turned into a parental union: they lived together solely because of the children. When little daughter Katya died unexpectedly, this tragic event became the impetus for the severance of family ties. However, Maxim Gorky and his wife remained friends until the end of their lives and maintained correspondence.

With his second wife, actress Maria Andreeva | LiveJournal

After separating from his wife, Maxim Gorky, with the help of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, met the Moscow Art Theater actress Maria Andreeva, who became his de facto wife for the next 16 years. It was because of her work that the writer left for America and Italy. From her previous relationship, the actress had a daughter, Ekaterina, and a son, Andrei, who were raised by Maxim Peshkov-Gorky. But after the revolution, Andreeva became interested in party work and began to pay less attention to her family, so in 1919 this relationship came to an end.

With third wife Maria Budberg and writer H.G. Wells | LiveJournal

Gorky himself put an end to it, declaring that he was leaving for Maria Budberg, a former baroness and part-time his secretary. The writer lived with this woman for 13 years. The marriage, like the previous one, was unregistered. Last wife Maxima Gorky was 24 years younger than him, and all his acquaintances were aware that she was “having affairs” on the side. One of Gorky's wife's lovers was an English science fiction writer H.G. Wells, to whom she left immediately after the death of her actual spouse. There is a huge possibility that Maria Budberg, who had a reputation as an adventurer and clearly collaborated with the NKVD, could be double agent and also work for British intelligence.

Death

After his final return to his homeland in 1932, Maxim Gorky worked in newspaper and magazine publishing houses, created a series of books “History of Factories and Works”, “Poet’s Library”, “History civil war", organizes and conducts the First All-Union Congress Soviet writers. After unexpected death the writer wilted from his son's pneumonia. During his next visit to Maxim’s grave, he caught a bad cold. Gorky had a fever for three weeks, which led to his death on June 18, 1936. The body of the Soviet writer was cremated, and the ashes were placed in the Kremlin wall on Red Square. But first, Maxim Gorky’s brain was extracted and transferred to the Research Institute for further study.

In the last years of life | Electronic library

Later, the question was raised several times that the legendary writer and his son could have been poisoned. In this case there was people's commissar Genrikh Yagoda, who was the lover of Maxim Peshkov’s wife. They also suspected involvement and even. During the repressions and the consideration of the famous “Doctors’ Case,” three doctors were blamed, including the death of Maxim Gorky.

Books by Maxim Gorky

1899 - Foma Gordeev
1902 - At the bottom
1906 - Mother
1908 - The life of an unnecessary person
1914 - Childhood
1916 - In People
1923 - My universities
1925 - Artamonov case
1931 - Egor Bulychov and others
1936 - Life of Klim Samgin

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

Biography

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

Childhood

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

Youth

In 1884 he tried to enter Kazan University. I became acquainted with Marxist literature and propaganda work.
In 1888, he was arrested for connections with N. E. Fedoseev’s circle. He was under constant police surveillance. In October 1888 he became a watchman at the Dobrinka station in Gryaze-Tsaritsynskaya railway. Impressions from 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

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

1897 - “Former People”, “The Orlov Spouses”, “Malva”, “Konovalov”.
From October 1897 to mid-January 1898, he lived in the village of Kamenka (now the city of Kuvshinovo, Tver Region) in the apartment of his friend Nikolai Zakharovich Vasiliev, who worked at the Kamensk paper factory and led an illegal workers' Marxist circle. Subsequently, the life impressions of this period served the writer as material for the novel “The Life of Klim Samgin.”
1898 - The publishing house of Dorovatsky and A.P. Charushnikov published the first volume of Gorky's works. In those years, the circulation of the young author's first book rarely exceeded 1000 copies. A. I. Bogdanovich advised to release the first two volumes of “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 and Tolstoy.

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

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

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

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

1907 - delegate to the V Congress of the RSDLP.
1908 - play “The Last”, story “The Life of an Useless Person”.
1909 - the stories “The Town of Okurov”, “The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin”.
1913 - Gorky edits the Bolshevik newspapers Zvezda and Pravda, the art department of the Bolshevik magazine Prosveshchenie, 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.

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.

Return to the USSR

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

1934 - Gorky holds the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, giving the main report at it.
1934 - co-editor of the book “Stalin Canal”
In 1925-1936 he wrote the novel “The Life of Klim Samgin”, which remained unfinished.
On May 11, 1934, Gorky’s son, Maxim Peshkov, unexpectedly dies. M. Gorky died on June 18, 1936 in Gorki, having outlived his son by a little more than two years. After his death, he was cremated and his ashes were placed in an urn in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow. Before cremation, M. Gorky's brain was removed and taken to the Moscow Brain Institute for further study.

Death

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

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

Family and personal life

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

Environment

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

The biography of Maxim Gorky is set out in his works: “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities”, or rather, the beginning of his life. Maxim Gorky is the pseudonym of the outstanding Russian writer and playwright Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov. In his creative biography there was another pseudonym: Yehudiel Chlamida.

The nugget of talent has been awarded five times Nobel Prize according to literature. He is usually called a proletarian, revolutionary writer for his struggle against autocracy. The biography of Maxim Gorky was not easy. This will be discussed in this article.

Maxim Gorky was born in 1868. His biography began in Nizhny Novgorod. His maternal grandfather, Kashirin, was a demoted officer due to harsh treatment of his subordinates. After returning from exile, he became a tradesman and ran a dyeing workshop. His daughter married a carpenter and left with her husband for Astrakhan. There they had two children.

The eldest of them, Alyosha, fell ill with cholera at the age of four. Since the mother was pregnant with her second child, the father took care of the sick child and became infected from him. He soon died, and the boy recovered. Out of anxiety, the mother gave birth ahead of schedule. She decided to return to her parents' home with the children. On the way, her youngest child died.

They settled in her father's house in Nizhny Novgorod. Now there is a museum there - Kashirin’s house. The furnishings and furniture of those years have been preserved, even the rods with which the grandfather flogged Alyosha. He had a tough, hot-tempered character and could whip anyone in his anger, even his little grandson.

Maxim Gorky was educated at home. His mother taught him to read, and his grandfather taught him to read and write in church. Despite his temper, my grandfather was a very pious man. He often visited church and took his grandson there, usually against his will, by force. This is how a negative attitude towards religion arose in little Alyosha, as well as a spirit of resistance, which would later develop into a revolutionary trend in his works.

One day a boy took revenge on his grandfather by cutting up his favorite “Lives of the Saints” with scissors. For which, of course, he received it properly.

Maxim did not attend parish school for long. But due to illness he was forced to stop studying there. Maxim Gorky also studied at the Sloboda school for two years. That, perhaps, is all his education is. All his life he wrote with errors, which were then corrected by his wife, a proofreader by profession.

Alyosha’s mother remarried and moved in with her husband, taking her son with her. But his relationship with his stepfather did not work out. One day Alyosha saw him beating his mother. The boy attacked his stepfather and beat him. After that I had to run away to my grandfather, which was, of course, not the best option.

For a long time, Alyosha’s school of life was the street where he got the nickname “Bashlyk”. For some time he stole firewood to heat the house, food, and looked for rags in a landfill. After his classmates complained to the teacher that it was impossible to sit next to him because of the bad smell emanating from him, Maxim Gorky was offended and no longer came to school. He never received secondary education.

Youth years

Soon Alexei’s mother fell ill with Czech fever and died. Left orphaned, Alyosha was forced to earn his living. By that time my grandfather was completely broke. Gorky himself writes well about this time: “...my grandfather told me:

- Well, Lexey, you are not a medal, there is no place for you on my neck, but go join the people...

And I went among the people." This is how the story “Childhood” ends. The adult, independent period of the biography of Maxim Gorky begins. And he was only eleven years old then!

Alexey worked in different places: in a shop as a helper, as a cook, on a ship as a cook, in an icon-painting workshop as an apprentice.

When he was sixteen years old, he decided to try to enter Kazan University. But, to his great regret, he was refused. Firstly, low-income people were not accepted there, and secondly, he didn’t even have a certificate.

Then Alexey went to work at the pier. There he met revolutionary-minded youth, began to attend their circles, and read Marxist literature.

When the young man worked in a bakery, he met the populist Derenkov. He sent income from the sale of products to support the popular movement.

In 1987, Alexei’s grandmother and grandfather died. He loved his grandmother very much, who often protected him from his grandfather’s outbursts of anger and told him fairy tales. At her grave in Nizhny Novgorod, a monument was erected depicting her telling a fairy tale to her beloved grandson Alyosha.

The young man was very worried about her death. He developed depression, during which he attempted suicide. Alexei shot himself in the chest with a gun. But the watchman managed to call medical help. The unfortunate man was taken to the hospital, where he was urgently operated on. He lived, but the consequences of this wound would cause him lifelong lung disease.

Later, in the hospital, Alexey made another suicide attempt. He drank poison from a medical vessel. They managed to pump him out again, washing his stomach. Here psychiatrists had to examine the young man. Many mental disorders were found that were later rejected. For attempting suicide, Alexei was excommunicated from church communion for four years.

In 1988, Alexey, together with other revolutionaries, left for Krasnovidovo to conduct revolutionary propaganda. He joins Fedoseev's circle, for which he is arrested. From that moment on, the police begin to follow him. At that time he was a farm laborer, worked as a watchman at the station, then moved to the Caspian Sea, where he began working among other fishermen.

In 1989, he wrote a petition in verse with the aim of transferring him to Borisoglebsk. Then he worked at the Krutaya station. Here Alexey first fell in love with the daughter of the station chief. His feeling was so strong that he decided to propose marriage. He, of course, was refused. But he remembered the girl all his life.

Alexey was fascinated by the ideas of Leo Tolstoy. He even went to see him in Yasnaya Polyana. But the writer’s wife ordered the walker to be driven away.

The beginning of a creative career

In 1989, Maxim Gorky met the writer Korolenko and took the risk of showing him his work. The beginning of his creative biography was very unsuccessful. The writer criticized his “Song of the Old Oak”. But the young man did not despair and continued to write.

This year Peshkov goes to prison for participating in revolutionary movement youth. Coming out of captivity, he decides to go on a journey through Mother Rus'. He visited the Volga region, Crimea, the Caucasus, Ukraine (where he was hospitalized). I traveled what is now called “hitchhiking” - on passing convoys, walked a lot, climbed into empty freight cars. The young romantic liked this free life. The opportunity to see the world and feel the happiness of freedom - all this is easily the basis of the works of a beginning writer.

Then the manuscript “Makara Chudra” was born. In Georgia, Peshkov met the revolutionary Kalyuzhny. He published this work in the newspaper. Then the pseudonym Maxim Gorky was born. Maxim - in honor of his father, and Gorky - because bitterness was constantly present in his biography.

His works began to be readily published in newspapers and magazines. Soon everyone was talking about the new talent. By that time he had already settled down and got married.

Splash of fame

In 1998, two volumes of the writer’s works were published. They brought him not only great glory, but also trouble. Gorky was arrested for revolutionary views and imprisoned in a castle in the capital of Georgia.

After his release, the writer settled in St. Petersburg. There they were created by him best works: “Song about the Petrel”, “At the Bottom”, “Philistines”, “Three” and others. In 1902 he was elected honorary academician Imperial Academy Sci. The emperor himself highly appreciated the writer’s work, despite his struggle with the autocracy. His sharp, direct language, courage, freedom, and the genius of thought present in his works could not leave anyone indifferent. The talent was obvious.

During that period, Gorky continued to take part in the revolutionary movement, attended circles, and distributed Marxist literature. As if the lessons of past arrests had no effect on him. Such courage simply infuriated the police.

Now famous writer already communicated freely with the idol of his youth, Leo Tolstoy. They talked for a long time in Yasnaya Polyana. He also met other writers: Kuprin, Bunin and others.

In 1902, Gorky and his family, which already had two children, moved to Nizhny Novgorod. He rents a spacious house in the city center. Now there is a museum there. This apartment was a haven for creative people of that time. Such famous people as Chekhov, Tolstoy, Stanislavsky, Andreev, Bunin, Repin and, of course, his friend Fyodor Chaliapin gathered there and communicated for a long time, exchanging new works. He played the piano and sang pieces of music.

Here he finished “At the Bottom”, wrote “Mother”, “Man”, “Summer Residents”. He was good not only in prose, but also in poetry. But some of them, for example “The Song of the Petrel,” are written, as you know, in blank verse. The revolutionary, proud spirit, the call to fight are present in almost all of his works.

Recent years

In 1904, Gorky joined the RSDLP, and the following year he met Lenin. The writer is arrested again and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. But soon, under public pressure, he was released. In 1906, Gorky was forced to leave the country and became a political emigrant.

He lived first in the USA. Then, due to a serious illness (tuberculosis) that tormented him for a long time, he settled in Italy. Everywhere he carried out revolutionary propaganda. Concerned authorities recommended that he settle on the island of Capri, where he lived for about seven years.

On the roof of the editorial office of the Izvestia newspaper

Many Russian writers and revolutionaries visited him here. Once a week, a seminar for aspiring writers was even held in his villa.

Here Gorky wrote his Tales of Italy. In 12, he went to Paris, where he talked with Lenin.

In 13, Gorky returned to Russia. He settled in St. Petersburg for five years. Relatives and acquaintances found refuge in his spacious house. One day a woman named Maria Budberg brought him papers to sign and fainted from hunger. Gorky fed her and left her in his house. She would later become his mistress.

With writer Romain Rolland

Gorky, who led an active revolutionary activity, oddly enough, reacted negatively to the October coup in the country. He was struck by the cruelty of the revolution and interceded for the arrested whites. After the assassination attempt on Lenin, Gorky sent him a sympathetic telegram.

In 21, Gorky left his homeland again. According to one version, the reason for this was deteriorating health, according to another, disagreement with politics in the country.

In 1928, the writer was invited to the USSR. He traveled around the country for five weeks, then returned back to Italy. And in 1933 he returned to his homeland, where he lived until his death.

In the last years of his life, he created the book “The Life of Klim Samgin,” which is striking in its philosophy of life.

In 1934, Gorky held the First Congress of the USSR Writers' Union.

In recent years he lived in Crimea. In 1936, Gorky visited his sick grandchildren in Moscow. Apparently he got infected from them or caught a cold on the way. But his health condition deteriorated sharply. The writer fell ill, it was clear that he would not recover.

Stalin visited the dying Gorky. The writer died on June 18. At the autopsy it turned out that his lungs were in terrible condition.

The writer's coffin was carried by Molotov and Stalin. Both of Gorky's wives followed the coffin. The city of Nizhny Novgorod, where the writer was born, bore his name from 1932 until 1990.

Personal life

Gorky always had an enviable male power, according to surviving information, despite his chronic illness.

The writer's first unofficial marriage was with midwife Olga Kamenskaya. Her mother, also a midwife, delivered Peshkov’s mother. It seemed interesting to him that his mother-in-law helped bring him into the world. But they did not live long with Olga. Gorky left her after she fell asleep while the author was reading “The Old Woman Izergil.”

In 1996, Alexey married Ekaterina Volzhina. She was the only official wife of the writer. They had two children: Ekaterina and Maxim. Katya died soon after. The son died two years before Gorky.

In 1903, he became friends with actress Maria Andreeva, who left her husband and two children for his sake. He lived with her until his death. Moreover, there was never a divorce from Gorky’s first wife.

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- “MAXIM GORKY” (ANT 20), domestic 8-engine propaganda aircraft. Built in a single copy in 1934; at the time the largest aircraft in the world. Chief designer A. N. Tupolev (see TUPOLEV Andrey Nikolaevich). Wingspan 63 m... Encyclopedic Dictionary

MAXIM GORKY- Russian writer, founder of the concept of socialist realism in literature. Maxim Gorky pseudonym. Real name Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov. Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov was born in 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod*. At the age of nine... ... Linguistic and regional dictionary

"MAXIM GORKY"- 1) ANT 20, Sov. propaganda aircraft designed by A.N. Tupolev. Built in 1934 in 1 copy, at that time the largest aircraft in the world. "M. G." all-metal monoplane with 8 engines of 662 kW (approx. 900 hp), fixed landing gear. Dl. 32.5 m,… … Military encyclopedic dictionary

Maxim Gorky- 393697, Tambov, Zherdevsky ...

Maxim Gorky (2)- 453032, Bashkortostan Republic, Arkhangelsk ... Settlements and indexes of Russia

"Maxim Gorky" Encyclopedia "Aviation"

"Maxim Gorky"- “Maxim Gorky” Soviet eight-engine propaganda aircraft designed by A. I. Tupolev (see article Tu) ... Encyclopedia "Aviation"

Books

Maxim Gorky. Small collected works, Maxim Gorky. Maxim Gorky is one of the key figures of Soviet literature, the founder of the method of socialist realism. He went from being a novice author romantic works to the writer with...
Maxim Gorky. A book about Russian people, Maxim Gorky. Perhaps only Gorky managed to reflect in his work the history, life and culture of Russia in the first third of the twentieth century on a truly epic scale. This applies not only to his prose and...

On March 28, 2008, on the day of the 140th anniversary of the birth of Maxim Gorky, the Gorky Readings will be held at the Institute named after him, dedicated to the place writer in modern world. Literary scholars not only from Russia, but also from France, Poland, Italy, Ukraine and the USA take part in the “Gorky Readings 2008”.

Maxim Gorky (real name - Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov) was born on March 28, 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod in the family of a cabinetmaker. His parents died early, and the writer spent his childhood in the house of his grandfather Vasily Kashirin. The grandfather taught the boy to read from church books, the grandmother Akulina Ivanovna introduced her grandson to folk songs and fairy tales, but most importantly, she replaced the mother, “saturating,” in Gorky’s own words, “with strong strength for a difficult life” (“Childhood”).

In the summer of 1884, sixteen-year-old Alexey Peshkov went to Kazan in the hope of entering the university. However, due to lack of funds, he limited himself to active communication with students, visiting self-education circles, and gatherings. At this time, he earned his living by day labor: he was a laborer, a loader, and a baker. Unsettled life and personal troubles led Gorky to a mental crisis, which ended with a suicide attempt (December 1887).

From the summer of 1888 to October 1892, Gorky traveled “throughout Rus'.” For four years, he traveled all over Southern Russia - from Astrakhan to Moscow, and visited Southern Bessarabia, Crimea and the Caucasus. He worked as a farm laborer in villages, worked in the fishing and salt fields, was a dishwasher, served as a railway guard and as a repair shop worker.

During these years, Gorky made many acquaintances among the creative intelligentsia, experienced a passion for populism, Tolstoyism and social democratic teachings, and wrote poetry and prose. In September 1892, the newspaper "Caucasus" (Tiflis) published his story "Makar Chudra", signed with the pseudonym "M. Gorky".

Until 1909, Gorky was closest in his views to the Bolsheviks. In 1909, thanks to his sympathy for the Vperyodists and God-builders, he broke up with Lenin. After February revolution founded, together with a number of left-wing Social Democratic publicists and writers, an internationalist newspaper " New life", which became the unifying center of a peculiar movement in the Social Democratic Party, called the "Novozhiznsky" movement.

New Life and Gorky himself greeted the October Revolution with pessimism, predicting its imminent failure. In the first weeks and months after the revolution, the writer published a series of articles under the general title " Untimely thoughts", in which he sharply criticized the course taken by Lenin, emphasized the prematureness of the revolution and its devastating consequences. Gorky spoke out in defense of the bourgeois press, finding that it was precisely the peculiarities of the transition period that required free competition between various political parties. However, already in 1919 he became an ardent supporter of Soviet power.

However, the Bolsheviks themselves did not consider him close in spirit, and from 1921 to 1928 Gorky lived in exile, where he went after Lenin’s extremely persistent advice. Gorky settled in Sorrento (Italy), but did not break ties with the young Soviet literature(L.M. Leonov, V.V. Ivanov, A.A. Fadeev, I.E. Babel). He wrote the series “Stories of 1922-1924”, “Notes from the Diary”, and the novel “The Artamonov Case”.

Since 1925, Gorky began work on the historical epic “The Life of Klim Samgin” (the original title of the novel was “Forty Years”), which, according to the writer’s plan, was to become a chronicle of a turning point in the history of Russia and the Russian intelligentsia. He continued to work on the novel until his death, but never managed to finish it.

In May 1928, Gorky returned to the USSR and traveled around the country all summer (Kursk, Kharkov, Dneprostroy, Zaporozhye, Crimea, Rostov-on-Don, Baku, Tiflis, Kojori, Yerevan, Vladikavkaz, Stalingrad, Samara, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod) . His impressions of these trips were collected in the book “Around the Union of Soviets” (1929).

In 1933, Gorky moved to Moscow. On his initiative, the magazines “Our Achievements” (1929-1936) and “ Literary studies"(1930-1941), publication "History of factories and factories", which published about 250 books in 1931-1933 of various nature, the publication "History of the Civil War", a literary and artistic almanac was published, and the "Poet's Library" series was established.

Gorky played a key role in the formation of the Union of Soviet Writers, being the organizer and chairman of the I All-Union Congress Soviet writers (1934). On Gorky's initiative, the Literary Institute was founded, later named after him.

Maxim Gorky died on June 18, 1936. His death was shrouded in rumors. Even during the Stalinist repressions, the official version became official that the great proletarian writer was allegedly “healed to death” by killer doctors. Subsequently, back in Soviet years, this version was consigned to oblivion. Now the circumstances and causes of the death of Gorky (and his son Maxim in May 1934) remain the subject of debate.

The material was prepared based on information from open sources