Maxim Gorky Biography - Childhood, Life Achievements & Timeline Writers Maxim Gorky Biography Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, better known as Maxim Gorky, was a Russian author. This biography of Gorky provides detailed information about his childhood, life, works, achievements and timeline. Quick Facts Maksim Gorky, Aleksey Maximovich Peshkov, Maxim Gorki, Makszim Gorkij, Maxim Gorkij, Alexei Maximovich Peshkov Famous as Gorki Leninskiye, Moscow Oblast, Soviet Union Personality Type Maria Andreyeva, Yekaterina Peshkova, Moura Budberg children Maxim Peshkov, Yekaterina Peshkova, Zinovy Peshkov, Catherine Zhelyabuzhskiy, Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky By ru:ÐÐµÑÐ¼Ð°Ð½ ÐÐ¸ÑÐºÐ¸Ð½ [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, better known as Maxim Gorky, was a Russian author considered the father of Soviet revolutionary literature and founder of the doctrine of socialist realism.

After having a difficult childhood, he roamed across the Russian empire, frequently changing jobs for about fifteen years before he became a successful writer. The experiences he had during those fifteen years deeply influenced his writing. Initially, he wrote stories mainly based on the lives of tramps and social outcasts, and he became known for his naturalistic style of writing. One of his greatest works is âThe Mother,â which Lenin praised as âa very timely book.â Gorky was deeply associated with fellow Russian writers, Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy and later wrote memoirs on them. Gorky was not only a great writer but also an influential figure in the political thinking. He was active with the emerging Marxist social-democrat movement. Initially a Bolshevik supporter, he became a critic when Vladimir Lenin seized power. However, later Gorky served as a Soviet advocate and headed the Union of Soviet Writers. His life was marked with a number of politically forced and sometimes self-imposed exiles.

Childhood & Early Life Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov was born on March 28, 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia and became an orphan at the age of eleven. He was raised by his maternal grandmother who helped his development as a storyteller. He ran away from home at the age of twelve in 1880. After an attempt at suicide in December 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, frequently changing jobs. His jobs included, among many others, work as assistant in a shoemakerâs shop, as errand boy for an icon painter, and as a dishwasher on a Volga steamer, where the cook introduced him to readingâsoon to become his main passion in life. Career In the 1890s, he began writing. He adopted the pseudonym Maxim Gorky (choosing the name Gorky because it meant "bitter"). His first short story, âMakar Chudraâ was published in various journals in 1892, and it became very popular with readers.

Then, in 1895, âChelkash,â a short story about a thief and a peasant boy was published. In all his writings, Gorky wrote using all the experiences he had gained from living in poverty. He wrote with sympathy about the simple folks, the outcasts, the gypsies, the hobos and dreamers in the context of social decay in the Russian Empire. His perspective won him great acclaim around the country, and he was soon viewed as one of the leading writers. In 1898, a collection of Gorkyâs writings, âSketches and Storiesâ was published. He also produced full-length books and plays beginning with the novel âFoma Gordeyevâ in 1899. He became friends with Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy and later penned their memoirs. His play âThe Lower Depthsâ was praised by Chekhov and was successfully played in Europe and the United States in 1902. Gorky was a devoted Marxist and gave much of his writing income to the cause.

He followed the Bolshevik wing following a party split in 1903, though he was never an official party member. Gorky was imprisoned for his actions during the Russian Revolution of 1905. He went to live in Europe and America during 1906-13. In America he started his classic novel, âThe Motherâ, about a Russian Christian woman and her imprisoned son, who both joined revolutionaries under the illusion that revolution follows Christ's messages. Gorky eventually returned to Russia in 1913, and was living there when the Bolsheviks and Vladimir Lenin seized control of the country in 1917. Gorky objected to the undemocratic tactics that were used in this takeover and frequently wrote in his newspaper, âNew Lifeâ, about the violence and repression that Russia experienced under Lenin's rule. Gorky was silenced in 1918 when his newspaper was shut down. For his criticism of the Bolsheviks, Gorky was forced to leave Russia in 1921. For the next few years, he traveled through Europe before settling in Sorrento, Italy, in 1924.

There, he continued to write and completed his autobiographical trilogy and published a new collection of stories. He returned to Russia in 1928. Joseph Stalin who took control of the Soviet Union after Leninâs death decided that it would be better to have Gorky return permanently so that he could keep an eye on his activities. Major Works Among his many writings, Gorkyâs play âThe Lower Depthsâ was praised by Chekhov and was successfully played in Europe and the United States in 1902. âTwenty-six Men and a Girlâ, âThe Song of the Stormy Petrelâ, âSummerfolkâ, and âChildren of the Sunâ are among the most well-known works of Gorky. Personal Life & Legacy Moura Budberg, who was initially hired by Gorky as his secretary in 1921, became his unofficial wife. On June 18, 1936, Gorky died at his villa in Gorki Leninskiye, outside of Moscow. He was 68.

Gorky had been unwell and undergoing medical treatment, but rumors circulated that Stalin had arranged for his death. Translate this page to Spanish, French, Hindi, Portuguese Pictures of Maxim Gorky Maxim Gorky and the Socialist Realism - yovisto Blogyovisto Blog You are here: Home › literature › Maxim Gorky and the Socialist Realism Maxim Gorky and the Socialist Realism 0 Harald Sack Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) On June 18, 1936, Russian writer Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, better known as Maxim Gorky passed away. He was the founder of the Socialist realism literary method and a political activist. He worked in many jobs during an impoverished and abusive childhood before finding fame and fortune as a writer. Initially a Bolshevik supporter, Gorky became a critic when Vladimir Lenin seized power. However, Gorky later served as a Soviet advocate and headed the Union of Soviet Writers. Gorky was born as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov in Nizhny Novgorod, and became an orphan at the age of eleven.

He was brought up by his grandparents and knew the Russian working-class background intimately, for his grandfather afforded him only a few months of formal schooling, sending him out into the world to earn his living at the age of eight. In 1880 at age twelve, Gorky ran away from home. After an attempt at suicide in 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing. As a journalist working for provincial newspapers, he began using the pseudonym “Gorky” (from горький; literally “bitter”) in 1892. The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky’s first book Essays and Stories in 1898 enjoyed a sensational success, and his career as a writer began. Gorky saw in literature less an aesthetic practice than a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people of the lowest birth and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships and humiliations, but also their inward spark of humanity.

In 1899 he published Twenty-Six Men and a Girl, describing the labour conditions in a bakery, which is often regarded as his best short story. Gorky’s reputation quickly soared and he began to be spoken of almost as an equal of Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov. By 1899, he was openly associating with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement, which helped make him a celebrity among both the intelligentsia and the growing numbers of “conscious” workers. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and was arrested many times. Gorky befriended many revolutionaries and became a personal friend of Vladimir Lenin after they met in 1902. In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary Academician of Literature, but Tsar Nicholas II ordered this annulled. In protest, Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Korolenko left the Academy. Gorky followed the Bolshevik wing following a party split in 1903, though he was never an official party member. His most influential writings in these years were a series of political plays, most famously The Lower Depths (1902).

Gorky was imprisoned for his actions during the Russian Revolution of 1905. He left Russia in 1906, visiting the United States with his mistress on behalf of the Bolsheviks who had sent him on a fund-raising trip, before moving to a villa on the Italian island of Capri, where he spent most of the next seven years. An amnesty granted for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty allowed Gorky to return to Russia in 1913, and he was living there when the Bolsheviks and Vladimir Lenin seized control of the country in 1917. Gorky objected to the undemocratic tactics that were used in this takeover and frequently wrote in his newspaper, New Life, about the violence and repression that Russia experienced under Lenin’s rule. Gorky was silenced in 1918 when the newspaper was shut down. For his criticism of the Bolsheviks and due to health reasons he left Russia again for Italy, where he wanted to cure his tuberculosis. Gorky spent most of the period from 1921 to 1928 living abroad, mostly in Sorrento, Italy, where he wrote several successful books.

In the decade ending in 1923 Gorky’s greatest masterpiece appeared, the autobiographical trilogy, which is one of the finest autobiographies in Russian. It describes Gorky’s childhood and early manhood and reveals him as an acute observer of detail, with a flair for describing his own family, his numerous employers, and a panorama of minor but memorable figures. [2] In 1932 Joseph Stalin, who had taken control of the Soviet Union after Lenin’s death, personally invited him to return for good, an offer he accepted. Not only was Gorky an acclaimed writer, but having him inside the country would also make it easier to keep an eye on his activities. With the increase of Stalinist repression and especially after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, Gorky was placed under unannounced house arrest in his house near Moscow. On June 18, 1936, Gorky died at age 68. At yovisto, you may be interested in a video on Anarchism by Noam Chomsky.

References and Further Reading: [2] Maxim Gorky at Britannica online Related Articles in the Blog: Reminiscences of Maxim Gorky | Harvard Gazette © 2016 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Reminiscences of Maxim Gorky Scholar explores the particular genius of Russian writer May 15, 2008 Email Twitter Facebook Staff photo Rose Lincoln/Harvard News Office Donald Fanger says that Gorky’s genius was as a memoirist, a writer of vivid sketches about the many literary and nonliterary figures he had known in his peripatetic life. In 1895, Russian journalist Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, a onetime shoemaker’s apprentice who had quit school at 10, adopted a new name: Maxim Gorky. After that, literary fame came fast and furious for this self-taught, fresh-voiced grandson of a Volga boatman. Gorky — the name means “bitter” — could tell a story, remember everything he read or heard, and had the energy of 10 men.

“Gorky learned literature on the run,” wrote Russian critic Boris Eikhenbaum, “and entered it with a boldness instilled by nature itself.” Behind him too was an attractive crazy quilt of professions — ragman, baker, stevedore, housepainter, gardener, fisherman, cook’s assistant on a ship, revolutionary activist. It was all grist for the romance that Gorky, 27, was to write into his stories and plays — and into a vision of his own proletarian origins. “He invented a name, and the name began to live a life of its own,” said Donald Fanger, Harvard’s Harry Levin Professor of Literature Emeritus. He’s the author of a new book on Gorky that he hopes will refocus attention on a literary figure largely forgotten outside Russia — whose fame 100 years ago was enough to land his image on cigarette packs and postcards and make him a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature. Fanger is a longtime scholar of prominent 19th and 20th century novelists, personalities who still have literary resonance today.

Interest in Gorky came to him late in his scholarly life, said Fanger, who finds that Gorky’s true genius does not reside in the stories, novels, and plays that drew praise in his lifetime. “By and large, he’s not the artist that Tolstoy was, or Chekhov was, or Gogol was, or Dostoevsky was, or Turgenev was,” said Fanger. Gorky’s genius, he said, was as a memoirist, a writer of vivid sketches about the many literary and nonliterary figures he had known in his peripatetic life. Chief among these glittering polished fragments are his “Reminiscences of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy,” an artful montage of scenes and conversations on the great man’s favorite subjects — “God, the peasant, and woman.” It captures the author of “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina” as no other literary portrait had done, said Fanger. It was published in 1919, almost a decade after Tolstoy’s death, and translated into English two years later.

Critic Alfred Kazin called it “surely among the most beautiful things ever written by one human being on the character of another.” Fanger’s “Gorky’s Tolstoy and Other Reminiscences” (Yale University Press, 2008) offers a new translation of the Tolstoy memoir, which has been out of print for three decades, and adds a rich historical and literary framework for the reader. Tolstoy’s death in 1910 was “a blow to the heart” for Gorky, who pictured him “lying in his coffin like a smooth stone at the bottom of a brook. …” “I remember his eyes — they saw through everything — and the movements of his fingers, which always seemed to be sculpting something from the air,” wrote the grieving Gorky, a master of physical detail and a lifelong student of faces, accents, and mannerisms. The book eventually grew to be more than just a revival of the Tolstoy memoir, said Fanger, who agreed to an interview in his sunny, book-lined study at Widener Library. He translated and added four related memoirs by Gorky, including one about Chekhov.

“Chekhov lived his whole life expending the capital of his soul,” wrote Gorky of his bashful and modest friend, who died in 1904. “He was always himself, inwardly free.” As Fanger’s conception of the book continued to evolve, he added and translated samples from Gorky’s “Fragments From My Diary” (1924) — “polished fragments,” Fanger wrote, that “constitute a new and hybrid literary genre — fragmentary, momentary, immediate in their effect.” The definitive modern exploration of Gorky remains to be undertaken, said Fanger, now that long-suppressed documents are being published in Russia and formerly taboo aspects of his personal and public life are at last open to investigation. “I have the ghostly outline of a much larger view of Gorky, which sees him as a figure absolutely unique in his time, and yet supremely representative of it,” said Fanger. “He hasn’t been written about much in English. Even as a scholarly subject, he is way behind most Russian writers.” To round out his book, Fanger selected and translated sketches of Gorky himself, written by four of his literary contemporaries.

The one by critic and literary historian Vladislav Khodasevich, Fanger noted, “is as brilliant and as personally revealing as Gorky’s own memoir of Tolstoy is — wonderful reading.” Another is Eikhenbaum’s shrewd analysis of Gorky’s uniqueness as a Russian writer, written on the eve of Gorky’s return to the Soviet Union in 1928. Gorky was more than a writer. He was, in his time, a political and social activist, and he became something approaching a national institution. Visitors and petitioners formed a crush in any house Gorky occupied, particularly in the few years following the Revolution when jobs and food were scarce. Gorky, a longtime friend of Lenin’s, “saved an enormous number of artists and intellectuals from starvation in those years — over two thousand in Petrograd alone,” said Fanger. In a city without electricity, streetcars, or food, he saw to the distribution of food, clothing, medicines, and fuel. Lenin and Gorky used each other for their own purposes; the same was true of Stalin and Gorky, but with less success for the writer.

When he moved permanently back to Russia at the beginning of the 1930s, he was given a mansion in Moscow, two dachas, and — it is rumored — a bottomless expense account. He was also celebrated relentlessly. His native city of Nizhnii Novgorod was renamed “Gorky” in his honor, along with “scores of schools and factories,” writes Fanger in the book’s introduction. Gorky’s name was also added to the Moscow Art Theatre, the Academy of Sciences Institute of World Literature, and Moscow’s main thoroughfare. But fame came at a price. In his last years, Gorky complained of virtual “house arrest” by Stalin, who had by 1935 gotten everything he wanted from the great writer. It is still not clear how much Gorky understood his own situation, or the situation of his country, at that point. “He had an enormous gift for believing what he wanted to believe,” said Fanger, “and for not seeing what he didn’t want to see.” He tended to spoil his fiction by framing it in a didactic way, but the memoirs are different, said Fanger.

They avoid Gorky’s lifelong devotion to “the ‘truth’ that he believed could and should exist, the inspiriting ‘truth’ that makes you want to go and change the world.” Gorky’s memoirs also tell us a great deal about the memoirist himself, said Fanger. “This amazing invented thing that goes by the name of Maxim Gorky may turn out to be his greatest, and most lasting, creation.” Things to do in Moscow - Urban Adventures Things to do in: Moscow Comments: Leave a comment The beauty of Moscow For many people, Moscow is a city shrouded in mystery. Those who have never been to Russia often have a specific image in their minds of what Russia is like — thanks to the barrage of images in the media that often cast the city in a depressing light. The media often focuses on the sanctions that have devastated the country’s economy, and how that has affected the living situation of people all over Russia. Stalinist-style Skyscrapers What the media fails to depict is how art and culture in Moscow stops for no one — life continues on despite the challenges that people face. Just like the New Yorks and Londons of the world, Moscow is bustling with activity.

Young people gather to try out the city’s newest restaurants, hit up one of the city’s many clubs, or attend an exhibit at an art gallery or museum. The city is also home to a never-ending list of themed cafés and restaurants that are sure to please even the pickiest of eaters. Aside from shopping districts that rival fashion hubs like Paris and Milan, Moscow is also home to some of the most beautiful architecture in the world, intricately detailed and extravagant. Moscow is sure to grasp the attention of all the architecture aficionados out there. Perhaps the most famous Moscow landmark, the Kremlin in Red Square Beyond visiting the Kremlin and Red Square, there is a mile-long list of places to check out in the city. Check out our top five recommendations: Be charmed by the Patriarch Ponds If you’re a big fan of Russian literature, you’ve probably read several novels by Russian authors like Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Boris Pasternak, and Leo Tolstoy. You’ll probably also recognise the Patriarch Ponds or “Patriarshiye Ponds” as one of the settings in Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece, The Master and Margarita.

It is here where the devil appears with a squad of interesting characters that terrorise the city’s elite. If you’re not much of a reader and have no idea what I’m talking about, you’ll still find the Patriarch Ponds enchanting. Aside from being famous from a literary standpoint, the area surrounding the ponds has grown into an upscale residential neighbourhood, and is a great place to relax, grab a coffee, and enjoy some solitude in the middle of a busy city. Grab a coffee at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Gorky Park This neighbourhood is located in the heart of Moscow, close to Tverskaya Street (previously known as Gorky Street), and is close to the Kremlin and Red Square. Address: 7 Bol. Patriarshiy Pereulok, Bldg. 1, Moscow, 123001. Take a tour around the House on the Embankment The House on the Embankment is an apartment complex at the Bersenevskaya Embankment of the Moscow River. Built in 1931, this significant landmark in Russian history was intended as a home for the Soviet elite.

It was designed in a manner that would allow residents to have access to a variety of amenities, so they wouldn’t need to leave the building. The building’s original residents worked in a variety of different industries — some were scientists, others were Soviet Party workers, and others were war heroes, Bolsheviks, and even Comintern workers. Visit the museum, which is a replica of a typical apartment in 1930s Moscow. Address: Ul. Serafimovicha, 2, Moscow, 119072. Spend a day at the Krylatskoye Rowing Canal The Krylatskoye Rowing Canal is a sports venue built in 1973 for the European Rowing Championships, and then was used for the rowing and canoeing competitions during the 1980 Summer Olympics. Visit the park surrounding the venue and go for a jog, bike ride, or simply walk around and take in the spectacular view. It’s a wonderful place to spend time doing different leisure activities, to take photos, or to relax and appreciate the atmosphere. Address: Additional information Monday to Fridays from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm. Ul.

Krylatskaya, 2. +8 (499) 149 39 39. Take a trip back to the Soviet Era If you ever wondered what food was like in Soviet Russia, worry not comrade, Cheburechnaya USSR has got your back! Immerse yourself in the Soviet era at this restaurant that serves up chebureks (a crescent shaped deep-fried turnover that comes with a variety of fillings), pelmeni (dumplings), Soviet soda or Leninade (a soda based on lemonade), and other dishes Soviet-style. The restaurant has over 20 offerings on their menu, including vegetarian options. Located in downtown Moscow, Cheburechnaya USSR is affordable, easy to reach, and will take you back in time to an era many tourists are often curious about. Address: Open daily from 8 am to 11 pm. Bolshaya Bronnaya, 27/4, Moscow 123104. +7 (495) 694 54 76.

Pay a visit to Grand Master Gorky The Ryabushinsky Mansion (or Gorky’s House) is a museum dedicated to the life and art of the famous Russian writer Alexey Maximovich Peshkov, better known as Maxim Gorky. Visit the museum and get to know more about the writer, his masterpieces, and his life. The Gorky Park entrance The mansion was built Art-Nouveau style for the Russian millionaire Ryabushinksy at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1932, the Soviet government gave the home to the Peshkov family. The museum kept a unique collection of books that belonged to Gorky, and most of the decorations and interior of the house are original. Address: Open Wednesdays to Sundays from 11 am to 5:30 pm. Malaya Nikitskaya ul., 6/2, стр. 5, Moscow, 121069. +7 (495) 690 05 35. If you’re interested in learning more about Russian culture and the city of Moscow, check out our tours below!

8oth anniverary of the death of Soviet writer Maxim Gorky. | Rtuc's Blog Maxim Gorky 2016 marks the 8oth anniversary of the death of Soviet writer Maxim Gorky. Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в or Пе́шков; 28 March 1868 – 18 June 1936), known as Maxim Gorky was a Soviet writer and political activist. Gorky was active with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin. Born as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov on 28 March 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod, Gorky became an orphan at the age of eleven. He was brought up by his grandmother.In December 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing. As a journalist working for provincial newspapers, he wrote under the pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида (Jehudiel Khlamida).

He began using the pseudonym “Gorky” (from горький; literally “bitter”) in 1892, while working in Tiflis for the newspaper Кавказ (The Caucasus). The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky’s first book, Essays and Stories in 1898, enjoyed a sensational success, and his career as a writer began. Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice (though he worked hard on style and form) than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalisation, but also their inward spark of humanity. Political and literary development Gorky’s reputation grew as a unique literary voice from the bottom strata of society and as a fervent advocate of Russia’s social, political, and cultural transformation. By 1899, he was openly associating with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement, which helped make him a celebrity among both the intelligentsia and the growing numbers of “conscious” workers.

At the heart of all his work was a belief in the inherent worth and potential of the human person. In his writing, he counterposed individuals, aware of their natural dignity, and inspired by energy and will, with people who succumb to the degrading conditions of life around them. Both his writings and his letters reveal a “restless man” (a frequent self-description) struggling to resolve contradictory feelings of faith and scepticism, love of life and disgust at the vulgarity and pettiness of the human world. In 1916, Gorky said that the teachings of the ancient Jewish sage Hillel the Elder deeply influenced his life: “In my early youth I read…the words of…Hillel, if I remember rightly: ‘If thou art not for thyself, who will be for thee? But if thou art for thyself alone, wherefore art thou’? The inner meaning of these words impressed me with its profound wisdom…The thought ate its way deep into my soul, and I say now with conviction: Hillel’s wisdom served as a strong staff on my road, which was neither even nor easy.

I believe that Jewish wisdom is more all-human and universal than any other; and this not only because of its immemorial age…but because of the powerful humaneness that saturates it, because of its high estimate of man.” He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and was arrested many times. Gorky befriended many revolutionaries and became a personal friend of Vladimir Lenin after they met in 1902. He exposed governmental control of the press (see Matvei Golovinski affair). In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary Academician of Literature, but Tsar Nicholas II ordered this annulled. In protest, Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Korolenko left the Academy. From 1900 to 1905, Gorky’s writings became more optimistic. He became more involved in the opposition movement, for which he was again briefly imprisoned in 1901. In 1904, having severed his relationship with the Moscow Art Theatre in the wake of conflict with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Gorky returned to Nizhny Novgorod to establish a theatre of his own.

As a financially successful author, editor, and playwright, Gorky gave financial support to the Russian Social Democratic Labour Part (RSDLP), as well as supporting liberal appeals to the government for civil rights and social reform. The brutal shooting of workers marching to the Tsar with a petition for reform on 9 January 1905 (known as the “Bloody Sunday”), which set in motion the Revolution of 1905, seems to have pushed Gorky more decisively toward radical solutions. In 1906, the Bolsheviks sent him on a fund-raising trip to the United States with Ivan Norodny. When visiting the Adirondack Mountains, Gorky wrote Мать (Mat’, The Mother), his notable novel of revolutionary conversion and struggle. From 1906 to 1913, Gorky lived on the island of Capri, partly for health reasons and partly to escape the increasingly repressive atmosphere in Russia. He continued to support the work of the Bolsheviks.

An amnesty granted for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty allowed Gorky to return to Russia in 1913, where he continued his social criticism, mentored other writers from the common people, and wrote a series of important cultural memoirs, including the first part of his autobiography. On returning to Russia, he wrote that his main impression was that “everyone is so crushed and devoid of God’s image.” The only solution, he repeatedly declared, was”culture”. During World War I, his apartment in Petrograd was turned into a Bolshevik staff room, and his politics remained close to the Bolsheviks throughout the revolutionary period of 1917. Maxim Gorky received the Ryabushinsky Mansion, designed in 1900 by Fyodor Schechtel for the Ryabushinsky family. The mansion today houses a museum about Gorky. One of the central Moscow streets, Tverskaya, was renamed in his honour, as was the city of his birth. The largest fixed-wing aircraft in the world in the mid-1930s, the Tupolev ANT-20 was named Maxim Gorky in his honour.

On 11 October 1931 Gorky read his fairy tale “A Girl and Death” to his visitors Joseph Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov and Vyacheslav Molotov, an event that was later depicted by Viktor Govorov in his painting. On that same day Stalin left his autograph on the last page of this work by Gorky: “Эта штука сильнее чем “Фауст” Гёте (любовь побеждает смерть)” [“This piece is stronger than Goethe’s Faust (love defeats death)]”. The sudden death of Gorky’s son Maxim Peshkov in May 1934 was followed by the death of Maxim Gorky himself in June 1936.Stalin and Molotov were among those who carried Gorky’s coffin during the funeral. During the Bukharin trial in 1938 (one of the three Moscow Trials), one of the charges was that Gorky was killed by Yagoda’s NKVD agents.

Gorky was a great Soviet writer who emerged from the common people, a loyal friend of the Bolsheviks, and the founder of the increasingly canonical “socialist realism”. The Gorky Trilogy is a series of three feature films: The Childhood of Maxim Gorky, My Apprenticeship, and My Universities, directed by Mark Donskoy, filmed in the Soviet Union, released 1938–1940. The trilogy was adapted from Gorky’s autobiography. The German dramatist Bertolt Brecht based his epic play, The Mother (1932) on Gorky’s novel of the same name. Gorky’s novel was also adapted for an opera by Valery Zhelobinsky in 1938. In 1912, the Italian composer Giacomo Orefice based his opera, Radda, on the character of Radda from Makar Chudra. Our Father is the title given to Gorky’s, The Last Ones in its English translation by William Stancil. The play made its New York debut in 1975 at the Manhattan Theater Club, directed by Keith Fowler.

Enemies by Gorky was performed in London, 1984 with a multi-national cast in a co-production between Internationalist Theatre and director Ann Elizabeth Pennington, designed by Paul Brown. The BBC Russian language service gave the production glowing reviews. SA Greek actress Angelique Rockas and Bulgarian Madlena Nedeva played the parts of Tatiana, and Kleopatra respectively. Like this: Lunacharsky | Simon Ings Simon Ings “He succeeds in getting you to care about what happens to these people and then he beats the living shit out of them” Search I’m writing some biographical sketches of Soviet scientists and academicians Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Bogdanov, philosopher (1873–1928) The moment he stepped off the boat, Lenin went on the offensive: “I know, Aleksey Maximovich, you’re always wanting to reconcile me with those Machists. I told you in my letter it’s pointless, so don’t even try.” For months, the writer and political activist Aleksey Maximovich Peshkov – better known as Maxim Gorky – had been trying to bring the twin stars of the Bolshevik movement back together.

Aleksandr Bogdanov was already staying with Gorky at his residence on the mediterranean island of Capri, once the favourite resort of Roman emperors. Valdimir Lenin had a standing invitation tovisit. The men had once been the closest of friends. Bogdanov had helped Lenin through his split with Trotsky, and the consequent crisis in the party, and between 1906 and 1907, while hiding out in Finland, Bogdanov, Lenin and his family had lived practically out of each others’ pockets. But as the forces of reaction dismantled the gains of the 1905 uprising, Bogdanov and Lenin had grown further and further apart. Lenin still held out hope that the Bolshevik cause might be furthered within the Duma – the constitutional parliament established in 1905. Bogdanov thought this was a waste of time. His radical politics had been acquired during his first Tsarist exile, while delivering lectures to factory workers; he wanted the Bolsheviks to align themselves much more strongly with the old underground workers’ organisations.

The disagreement between Lenin and Bogdanov was a crucial one for the Party, and the men’s more or less equal standing only made things worse. Bogdanov – likeable, gentle, and a little bit full of himself – was also a loose cannon, preaching revolution for its own sake, as man’s only significant form of self-assertion. And he was extraordinarily good at getting hold of money. The Bolsheviks’ sometimes terroristic “expropriations” of funds from political opponents, and from the districts that harboured them, were Bogdanov’s idea. Bogdanov held the party’s purse-strings; since 1907, Lenin had found it harder and harder to fund his own projects. Immediate and violent action might have drawn the two men together under the banner of a common cause – but there was no action to be had. With the decision to work within the Duma, 1905’s exciting world of barricades and mutinies had to be given up, and Bogdanov bitterly resented the fact. The Bolsheviks seemed to be getting further and further away from any real action. In typical Chekhovian style, their factional arguments grew ever more rarefied.

One contemporary memoirist wrote: “When Ilyich began to quarrel with Bogdanov on the issue of empiriomonism, we threw up our hands and decided Lenin had gone slightly out of his mind.” Bogdanov, the son of a rural teacher, was an urbane thinker. He had read his Kant. He followed the theories of Ernst Mach and Richard Avenarius. He admired Marx, but he did not believe that Marx should have the last word on every topic. Above all, he understood that the sciences of mind lagged painfully far behind the physical sciences. So it was important to be as honest as possible about where one’s information about the world was coming from. The Austrian physicist Ernst Mach had pointed out that, real as the world may be, we can never apprehend it directly: our knowledge of it comes through our senses. Bogdanov’s “Machism” was an attempt to apply that honest admission consistently across all bodies of knowledge— Bogdanov knew far more than was good for him: that afternoon in May 1908, as he vainly tried to explain his position, he stumbled over his words. “Drop it,” Lenin snapped.

Perhaps it was Gorky who suggested a friendly chess game to clear the air. At any rate, he is there in the photograph, looking on as Lenin, seated on a balcony with his back to the Tyrrhenian Sea, steadily loses control of the game, and himself. It astonished Gorky how angry and childish he became. Lenin believed in Marx. He believed in the natural sciences. He believed that some things had been discovered once and for all. He was no philosopher, and he imagined that Bogdanov was a dangerous relativist. Bogdanov believed in nothing and so, whether he knew it or not, he was siding with the priests and the mystics. “Somebody or other – Juarez, I think – said, ‘It is better to speak the truth than be a minister.’ Or a Machist, I would add.” Aleksandr Bogdanov had always revered Lenin, but the differences between the men were becoming unbridgeable. Bogdanov was the more intellectually adept of the two, but he lacked Lenin’s appetite for political infighting. Bogdanov was a novelist: his science fantasy Red Star was being published that year, and he hankered for more writing time.

Bogdanov and the others went out for a walk, and Lenin unburdened himself to his hostess, Gorky’s common-law wife, Maria Andreyeva. Of Bogdanov and his set, Lenin said, more in sorrow than in anger, “They are intelligent, talented people. They have done a great deal for the Party, they could do ten times more, but they won’t go with us! They can’t. Scores and hundreds like them are broken and crippled by this criminal system.” With hindsight, it’s clear enough that Bogdanov’s philosophy foreshadows the greatest achievements of Soviet science in the first half of the twentieth century. Marxism’s greatest intellectual challenge was to to make room for human experience, while at the same time doing away with God. It wasn’t enough to be crudely materialist, because Mind wasn’t a thing. You couldn’t point to it the way you could point to a chair or a table. And you couldn’t make mind a special case, either, because that led straight to mysticism. Mind, therefore, had to be an “emergent property” – something that arose, not from matter itself, but from the way matter was organised.

Bogdanov’s breakthrough was to realise that this is true of everything. Everything is as it is because it is arranged in a certain way. If you understand how something is organised, then you understand its essence. If you can describe things in terms of their organisation, then you really can talk about human minds and even whole societies in the same breath as chairs and tables, since all these things are simply more or less complex arrangements of matter. Bogdanov envisaged a science which would embrace the biological and social worlds in the way that mathematics had described classical mechanics. In the West, we call this science “systems theory”: our entire digital culture is built upon it. It has been said that Russian philosophy has a Messianic streak a mile wide, and Bogdanov’s writings certainly lend credence to the claim. Bogdanov attempted to apply what was essentially a scientist’s philosophy over the whole of human experience. He believed that the world’s “biological-organisational” tendencies could and should be mastered to control human society on an economic, political, psychic, and even sexual level. Bogdanov’s schemes were at once grander and vaguer than Marxism itself. They were – or seemed to be – wildly impractical.

No wonder, then, that come the October Revolution, and the Bolshevik takeover of the State, Lenin was prepared to tolerate his old friend’s “infantile” social experiments. Following his visit to Capri, Vladimir Lenin had split from Bogdanov and his followers. He had attacked Bogdanov’s work in print and in person, and had him expelled from the party. Bogdanov had responded by walking away with the Bolsheviks’ monies, and using them to set up an experimental revolutionary school on Capri with his brother-in-law, Anatoly Lunacharsky. The experiment had faltered. By 1917, Bogdanov’s ambition to manufacture and manage a truly proliterian culture must have seemed a harmless dream – harmless enough that Lenin appointed Bogdanov’s co-experimenter Lunacharsky Commissar of Education, charged with the development of Soviet culture as well as its learning. Lunacharsky, in turn, made room for his brother-in-law’s ‘Proletkult’ experiment: an attempt to bootstrap an entire proliterian culture out of little more than a heap of good intentions. Incredibly, it succeeded.

At its height, Bogdanov’s cultural movement boasted 400,000 members, published twenty journals, and had won the public allegiance of virtually every significant artist, musician and writer in Russia. Experimental art, music and theatre flourished. The Tula Proletkult music section had a symphony orchestra, a brass band, an orchestra for folk instruments, and special classes in solo and operatic singing. Even tiny arctic Archangel, perched on the coast of the White Sea, boasted a choir. Lunacharsky greeted Proletkult’s meteoric rise with bemusement; Lenin’s reaction was one of barely-disguised horror. He insisted Lunacharsky’s Commissariat take over the running of the Proletkult: the Commissariat itself was closed down soon after. Now that the Bolsheviks were in power, Bogdanov’s anarchic inclinations could no longer be indulged. Like many an intellectual who followed him into semi-obscurity, Bogdanov responded by devoting his time to his writings, and to science.

In 1924, he began to investigate scientifically a folk idea about blood that had cropped up once or twice in his science fiction: the idea that transfusions might rejuvinate the body. His studies were perfectly serious: in 1925-1926, he founded the Institute for Haemotology and Blood Transfusions, which was later named after him. But here too, and critically, Bogdanov’s ambition got the better of him: on 7 April 1928 he died following a transfusion of infected blood. Find A Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records and Online Memorials Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) Author. Born the son of John Lockwood Kipling, a teacher at the Jeejeebhoy School of Art, and Alice Macdonald Kipling in Bombay, India. His care was entrusted to his ayah who taught him Hidustani in the nursery. At six he was taken to England by his parents and for five years was left at a foster ho... Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) Author.

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Question: By what name is the writer Alfred Maximovitch Peshkov better known?
Answer: Maxim Gorky