Maxim Gorky

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Lore & Background

Gorky became an orphan at the age of eleven and 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, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing. He started using the pseudonym 'Gorky' (from горький; literally 'bitter') in 1892, when his first short story, 'Makar Chudra', was published by the newspaper Kavkaz in Tiflis. The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky's first book Очерки и рассказы (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 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 inner spark of humanity. By 1899, he was openly associating with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement. 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. During World War I, Gorky supported pacifism and internationalism and anti-war protests. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union, being critical both of Tsarism and of the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War and the 1920s, condemning the latter for political repressions. In 1928 he returned to the USSR on Joseph Stalin's personal invitation and lived there from 1932 until his death in June 1936. After his return he was officially declared the 'founder of Socialist Realism'. Despite this, Gorky's relations with the Soviet regime were rather difficult: while being Stalin's public supporter, he maintained friendships with Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin, the leaders of the anti-Stalin opposition executed after Gorky's death; he also hoped to ease the Soviet cultural policies and made some efforts to defend the writers who disobeyed them, which resulted in him spending his last days under unannounced house arrest.

Reader's Guide

Gorky's most famous works are his early short stories written in the 1890s marked by romanticism and Nietzscheanism (such as 'Chelkash', 'Old Izergil', and 'Twenty-six Men and a Girl'), the play The Lower Depths (1902), his fictional autobiographical trilogy, My Childhood, In the World, My Universities (1913–1923), and the novel Mother (1906). Gorky regarded the latter as one of his biggest failures, and it received broad criticism in literary circles and from later scholars, yet it remains one of his best-known books. However, there have been warmer appraisals of some of his lesser-known post-revolutionary works such as the novels The Artamonov Business (1925), said by some to be Gorky's finest novel, and The Life of Klim Samgin (1925–1936), which was Gorky's most ambitious project; the latter, although unfinished, is considered by some as Gorky's masterpiece and has been viewed by some critics as a modernist work. Unlike his pre-revolutionary writings (known for their 'anti-psychologism') Gorky's later works differ, with an ambivalent portrayal of the Russian Revolution and interest in human psychology. Gorky's reputation grew as a unique literary voice from the bottom stratum of society and as a fervent advocate of Russia's social, political, and cultural transformation. 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. 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 their 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.'

Did You Know?

• Gorky was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• He attempted suicide in December 1887 before travelling on foot across the Russian Empire for five years.
• His pseudonym 'Gorky' literally means 'bitter' in Russian, reflecting his anger about life and determination to speak the bitter truth.
• In 1902, Tsar Nicholas II annulled Gorky's election as honorary Academician of Literature, prompting Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Korolenko to leave the academy in protest.
• Gorky spent his last days under unannounced house arrest after trying to defend writers who disobeyed Soviet cultural policies.