Maxim Gorky in the main editorial office of the Complete Academic Collected Works of A.S. Pushkin
Authors:   A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Shugan Olga V. 
Published: September 2024

The publishing of the Complete Academic Collected Works of A.S. Pushkin is one of the dramatic pages of Russian Pushkin studies. It is known that the editorial board of this publication was headed by Maxim Gorky, who was also the director of the Institute of Russian Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences. With the active participation of Gorky, who was the chairman of the AllUnion Pushkin Committee, a plan was developed and approved - to the 100th anniversary of Pushkin's death - to publish his works, including the Complete Academic Collected Works. Gorky's contacts with the USSR Academy of Sciences on the issue of editing the Complete Collected Works of A.S. Pushkin were not easy. Several appeals of Academician Vyacheslav Volgin, an indispensable secretary of the Academy of Sciences, to Gorky with a request to enter the editorial committee of the publication of the Complete Academic Collected Works of A.S. Pushkin were rejected by Gorky. It can be assumed that, until September 1935, Gorky was present in the main editorial office of the academic publication only nominally. The situation in the Institute of Russian Literature after the murder of Sergei Kirov and the arrest of Lev Kamenev, who headed the Pushkin House, was very nervous; scholars were afraid of new arrests. On March 24, 1935, Gorky was appointed director of the Pushkin House and Julian Oksman his deputy and editor-in-chief of the sector of classics. To normalize the work of the Institute, Gorky proposed the plan for its restructuring, which would allow overcoming the crisis and continuing work on the Complete Collected Works of A.S. Pushkin (by 1937 it was planned to publish six volumes). The turning point in Gorky's relationship with the Pushkin House came on September 9, 1935, when in Gorki near Moscow Gorky met with Vasily Desnitsky, Julian Oksman, and Petr Chagin. At this meeting, Gorky finally agreed to join the main editorial board of the Complete Collected Works of A.S. Pushkin. It was after this meeting that Gorky became actively involved in the work on the publication. In order to perform more efficiently, he proposed to introduce special broad editorial council, which, according to his plan, was to include well-known writers representing the multinational literature of the USSR. During Gorky's life, only the seventh volume of the Collected Works containing Pushkin's dramas was published. After Gorky's death, Oksman was arrested, the editorial office of the Complete Academic Collected Works of A.S. Pushkin was transferred to Moscow, and Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, the director of the Literary Museum, was appointed its head. In 1937-1949, the Complete Academic Collected Works of A.S. Pushkin at the Academy of Sciences were published not in the form that was intended, commentaries were reduced to a minimum, and two volumes were not released at all. Administrative intervention, anniversary “races”, and arbitrariness of the Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences led to such a result. The author declares no conflicts of interests.