The name of Maxim Gorky is probably familiar to any Russian person. In honor of this writer, cities and streets were named in Soviet times. The outstanding revolutionary prose writer came from the common people, self-taught, but the talent he possessed made him world famous. Such nuggets appear once in a hundred years. The life story of this man is very instructive, because it clearly shows what a person from the bottom can achieve without any outside support.
Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov (this was the real name of Maxim Gorky) was born in Nizhny Novgorod. This city was renamed in his honor, and only in the 90s of the last century it was returned to its former name.
The biography of the future writer began on March 28, 1868. The most important thing that he remembered from childhood, Alexei Maksimovich described in his work "Childhood". Alyosha's father, whom he hardly remembered, worked as a carpenter.
He died of cholera when the boy was very young. Alyosha's mother was then pregnant, she gave birth to another son, who died in infancy.
The Peshkov family lived at that time in Astrakhan, because the father had to work in the last years of his life in a steamship company. However, literary critics are arguing about who Maxim Gorky's father was.
Taking two children, the mother decided to return to her homeland, to Nizhny Novgorod. There her father, Vasily Kashirin, kept a dye workshop. Alexei spent his childhood in his house (now there is a museum). Alyosha's grandfather was a rather domineering person, had a stern character, often punished the boy for nothing, using rods. Once Alyosha was whipped so badly that he lay down in bed for a long time. After that, the grandfather repented and asked for forgiveness from the boy, treating him with a candy.
The autobiography described in the story "Childhood" says that the grandfather's house was always full of people. Numerous relatives lived in it, everyone was busy with business.
Important! Little Alyosha also had his own obedience, the boy helped dye the fabrics. But for poorly done work, grandfather severely punished.
Mom taught Alexei to read, then his grandfather taught his grandson the Church Slavonic language. Despite his harsh nature, Kashirin was a very religious person, often went to church. He forced Alyosha to go to church almost by force, but the child did not like this activity. Atheistic views that manifested themselves in Alyosha in childhood, he carried through his whole life. Therefore, his work was revolutionary, the writer Maxim Gorky in his works often said that "God is invented."
As a child, Alyosha attended a parish school, but then became seriously ill and left school. Then his mother married a second time and took her son to her new home in Kanavino. There the boy went to elementary school, but the relationship with the teacher and the priest did not work out.
One day, coming home, Alyosha saw a terrible picture: his stepfather was kicking his mother. Then the boy grabbed a knife to intercede. She reassured her son, who was about to kill his stepfather. After this incident, Alexei decided to return to his grandfather's house. By that time, the old man was completely ruined. Alexei attended a school for poor children for some time, but was expelled because the young man looked untidy, he smelled bad. Alyosha spent most of his time on the street, stealing to feed himself, finding clothes for himself in a landfill. Because the teenager got in touch with a bad company, where he received the nickname "Bashlyk".
Alexey Peshkov did not study anywhere else, never having received a secondary education. Despite this, he had a strong desire for self-education, independently reading and briefly memorizing the work of many philosophers, such as:
Important! All his life, Alexei Maksimovich Gorky wrote with spelling and grammatical errors, which were corrected by his wife, a proofreader by education.
When Alyosha was 11 years old, his mother died of consumption. Grandfather, finally impoverished, was forced to let go of his grandson in peace. The old man could not feed the young man and told him to go "to the people." Alexei was alone in this big world. The young man decided to go to Kazan to enter the university, but was refused.
Firstly, because that year the enrollment of applicants from the lower strata of society was limited, and secondly, because Alexei did not have a certificate of secondary education.
Then the young man went to work on the pier. It was then that a meeting took place in Gorky's life that influenced his further worldview and creativity. He met with a revolutionary group, which briefly explained what the essence of this progressive doctrine. Alexey began to attend revolutionary meetings, was engaged in propaganda. Then the young man got a job in a bakery, the owner of which sent income to support the revolutionary development in the city.
Alexey has always been a mentally unbalanced person. Upon learning of the death of his beloved grandmother, the young man fell into a severe depressive state. Once, near the monastery, Alexei tried to commit suicide by shooting a lung with a gun. The watchman, who witnessed this, called the police. The young man was taken urgently to the hospital and managed to save his life. However, in the hospital, Alexei made another attempt at suicide by swallowing poison from a medical vessel. The young man was again saved by washing his stomach. The psychiatrist established many mental disorders in Alexei.
Further, the life of the writer Maxim Gorky was no less difficult, briefly we can say that various misfortunes befell him. At the age of 20, for the first time, Alexei was imprisoned for revolutionary activities. After that, the police conducted constant surveillance of the disadvantaged citizen. Then M. Gorky went to the Caspian Sea, where he worked as a fisherman.
Then he went to Borisoglebsk, where he became a weigher. There he first fell in love with a girl, the boss's daughter, and even asked for her hand. Having been refused, Alexey, however, remembered his first love all his life. Gorky tried to organize a Tolstoy movement among the peasants, for this he even went to meet Tolstoy himself, but the writer's wife did not let the poor young man see the living classics.
In the early 90s, Alexei met the writer Korolenko in Nizhny Novgorod. By that time, Peshkov was already writing his first works, he showed one of them to a famous writer. It is interesting that Korolenko criticized the work of the novice writer, but this could not in any way affect the firm desire to write.
Peshkov was then imprisoned again for his revolutionary activities. Coming out of prison, he decided to go wandering around Rus', visited different cities, in the Crimea, the Caucasus, and Ukraine. In Tiflis, he met a revolutionary who advised him to write down all his adventures. This is how the story "Makar Chudra" appeared, which was published in 1892 in the newspaper "Kavkaz".
Creativity Gorky
It was then that the writer took the pseudonym Maxim Gorky, hiding his real name. Then a few more stories appeared in the Nizhny Novgorod newspapers. By that time, Alex decided to settle in his homeland. All interesting facts from the life of Gorky were the basis of his works. He wrote down the most important thing that happened to him, and interesting and truthful stories were obtained.
Again, Korolenko became the mentor of the beginning writer. Gradually, Maxim Gorky gained popularity among readers. The talented and original author was talked about in literary circles. The writer met Tolstoy and.
In a short period of time, Gorky wrote the most talented works:
Interesting! Soon, Maxim Gorky was awarded the title of member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, but Emperor Nicholas II personally canceled this decision.
In 1906, Maxim Gorky decided to go abroad. He first settled in the United States. Then, for health reasons (he was diagnosed with tuberculosis), he moved to Italy. Here he wrote much in defense of the revolution. Then the writer briefly returned to Russia, but in 1921 he again went abroad due to conflicts with the authorities and an aggravated illness. He returned to Russia only ten years later.
In 1936, at the age of 68, the writer Maxim Gorky ended his earthly journey. In his death, some saw the poisoning of ill-wishers, although this version was not confirmed. The life of the writer was not easy, but filled with diverse adventures. On sites where biographies of various writers are published, you can see a table of chronological life events.
M. Gorky had a rather interesting appearance, which can be seen by looking at his photo. He was tall, expressive eyes, thin hands with long fingers, which he waved when talking. He enjoyed success with women, and, knowing this, he knew how to show his attractiveness in the photo.
Alexei Maksimovich had many admirers, many of those with whom he was close. For the first time Maxim Gorky married in 1896 Ekaterina Volgina. Two children were born from her: son Maxim and daughter Katya (she died at the age of five). In 1903, Gorky became friends with the actress Ekaterina Andreeva. Without filing a divorce from their first wife, they began to live as husband and wife. He spent many years with her abroad.
In 1920, the writer met Maria Budberg, Baroness, with whom he had an intimate relationship, they were together until 1933. There were rumors that she worked for British intelligence.
Gorky had two adopted children: Ekaterina and Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky, the latter became a famous Soviet director and cameraman.
The work of Alexei Maksimovich Gorky made an invaluable contribution to Russian and Soviet literature. It is peculiar, original, surprising in its beauty of the word and power, especially considering that the writer was illiterate and uneducated. Until now, his works are admired by descendants, they are studied in high school. The work of this outstanding writer is also known and revered abroad.
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(Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov) was born in March 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod in the family of a carpenter. He received his primary education at the Sloboda-Kunavinsky School, from which he graduated in 1878. From that time on, Gorky's working life began. In subsequent years, he changed many professions, traveled around and around half of Russia. In September 1892, when Gorky was living in Tiflis, his first story, Makar Chudra, was published in the Kavkaz newspaper. In the spring of 1895, Gorky, having moved to Samara, became an employee of the Samara Newspaper, in which he led the departments of the daily chronicle Essays and Sketches and Incidentally. In the same year, such well-known stories as "Old Woman Izergil", "Chelkash", "Once Upon a Fall", "The Case with the Clasps" and others appeared, and the famous "Song of the Falcon" was published in one of the issues of the Samara Newspaper. . Feuilletons, essays and stories by Gorky soon attracted attention. His name became known to readers, the strength and lightness of his pen were appreciated by fellow journalists.
The turning point in Gorky's fate was 1898, when two volumes of his works were published as a separate publication. The stories and essays that had previously been published in various provincial newspapers and magazines were collected together for the first time and became available to the general reader. The publication was a huge success and sold out instantly. In 1899, a new edition in three volumes went out in exactly the same way. The following year, Gorky's collected works began to be published. In 1899, his first story "Foma Gordeev" appeared, which was also met with extraordinary enthusiasm. It was a real boom. In a matter of years, Gorky turned from an unknown writer into a living classic, into a star of the first magnitude in the sky of Russian literature. In Germany, six publishing companies at once undertook to translate and publish his works. In 1901, the novel "Three" and " Song of the Petrel". The latter was immediately banned by censors, but this did not in the least prevent its distribution. According to contemporaries, "Petrel" was reprinted in every city on a hectograph, on typewriters, rewritten by hand, read at evenings among young people and in workers' circles. Many people knew her by heart. But truly world fame came to Gorky after he turned to theater. His first play, Petty Bourgeois (1901), staged in 1902 by the Art Theatre, was later performed in many cities. In December 1902, the premiere of the new play “ At the bottom", which had an absolutely fantastic, incredible success with the audience. The staging of it by the Moscow Art Theater caused an avalanche of enthusiastic responses. In 1903, the procession of the play began on the stages of theaters in Europe. With triumphant success, she walked in England, Italy, Austria, Holland, Norway, Bulgaria and Japan. Warmly welcomed "At the bottom" in Germany. Only the Reinhardt Theater in Berlin, with a full house, played it more than 500 times!
The secret of the exceptional success of the young Gorky was explained primarily by his special attitude. Like all great writers, he posed and solved the "damned" questions of his age, but he did it in his own way, not like others. The main difference was not so much in the content as in the emotional coloring of his writings. Gorky came to literature at the moment when the crisis of the old critical realism became apparent and the themes and plots of the great literature of the 19th century began to outlive themselves. The tragic note, which was always present in the works of the famous Russian classics and gave their work a special - mournful, suffering flavor, no longer aroused the former upsurge in society, but only caused pessimism. The Russian (and not only Russian) reader is fed up with the image of the Suffering Man, the Humiliated Man, the Man Who Should be Pity, passing from the pages of one work to another. There was an urgent need for a new positive hero, and Gorky was the first to respond to it - he brought it to the pages of his stories, novels and plays Fighter Man, A person who can overcome the evil of the world. His cheerful, hopeful voice sounded loud and confident in the stale atmosphere of Russian timelessness and boredom, the general tone of which was determined by works like Chekhov's Chamber No. 6 or Saltykov-Shchedrin's Gentlemen Golovlevs. It is not surprising that the heroic pathos of such things as "Old Woman Izergil" or "Song of the Petrel" was like a breath of fresh air for contemporaries.
In the old dispute about Man and his place in the world, Gorky acted as an ardent romantic. No one in Russian literature before him created such a passionate and sublime hymn to the glory of Man. For in the Gorky Universe there is no God at all, it is all occupied by Man, who has grown to cosmic scales. Man, according to Gorky, is the Absolute Spirit, which should be worshiped, into which they leave and from which all manifestations of being originate. ("Man - that's the truth! - exclaims one of his heroes. - ... This is huge! In this - all beginnings and ends ... Everything is in a person, everything is for a person! There is only a person, everything else is his business Hands and his brain! A man! This is magnificent! It sounds ... proud!") However, in depicting in his early creations a “breaking out” Man, a Man breaking with the petty-bourgeois environment, Gorky was not yet fully aware of the ultimate goal of this self-affirmation. Intensely reflecting on the meaning of life, he at first paid tribute to the teachings of Nietzsche with his glorification of the "strong personality", but Nietzscheism could not seriously satisfy him. From the glorification of Man, Gorky came to the idea of Mankind. By this, he understood not just an ideal, well-organized society that unites all the people of the Earth on the way to new achievements; Mankind was presented to him as a single transpersonal being, as a "collective mind", a new Deity, in which the abilities of many individual people would be integrated. It was a dream of a distant future, which had to be started today. Gorky found its most complete embodiment in socialist theories.
Gorky's fascination with the revolution logically followed both from his convictions and from his relations with the Russian authorities, which could not remain good. Gorky's works revolutionized society more than any incendiary proclamations. Therefore, it is not surprising that he had many misunderstandings with the police. The events of Bloody Sunday, which took place before the eyes of the writer, prompted him to write an angry appeal "To all Russian citizens and the public opinion of European states." “We declare,” it said, “that such an order should no longer be tolerated, and we invite all citizens of Russia to an immediate and stubborn struggle against the autocracy.” On January 11, 1905, Gorky was arrested, and the next day he was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. But the news of the writer's arrest caused such a storm of protests in Russia and abroad that it was impossible to ignore them. A month later, Gorky was released on a large bail. In the autumn of the same year, he joined the RSDLP, which he remained until 1917.
After the suppression of the December armed uprising, to which Gorky openly sympathized, he had to emigrate from Russia. On the instructions of the Central Committee of the party, he went to America to collect money through agitation for the Bolshevik cash desk. In the USA he completed Enemies, the most revolutionary of his plays. It was here that the novel "Mother" was mainly written, conceived by Gorky as a kind of gospel of socialism. (This novel, which has the central idea of the resurrection from the darkness of the human soul, is filled with Christian symbolism: in the course of action, the analogy between the revolutionaries and the apostles of primitive Christianity is repeatedly played out; Pavel Vlasov’s friends merge in his mother’s dreams into the image of the collective Christ, and the son is in the center, himself Pavel is associated with Christ, and Nilovna is associated with the Mother of God, who sacrifices her son to save the world.The central episode of the novel - the May Day demonstration in the eyes of one of the characters turns into "a procession in the name of the New God, the God of light and truth, the God of reason and good" "The path of Paul, as you know, ends with the sacrifice of the cross. All these points were deeply thought out by Gorky. He was sure that the element of faith is very important in introducing the people to socialist ideas (in the articles of 1906 "On the Jews" and "On the Bund" he wrote directly that socialism is a "religion of the masses"). One of the important points in Gorky's worldview was that God is created by people, coming washes, is constructed by them to fill the emptiness of the heart. Thus, the old gods, as has repeatedly happened in world history, can die and give way to new ones if the people believe in them. The motif of God-seeking was repeated by Gorky in the story "Confession" written in 1908. Her hero, disillusioned with the official religion, painfully searches for God and finds him merging with the working people, who thus turns out to be the true "collective God".
From America, Gorky went to Italy and settled on the island of Capri. During the years of emigration, he wrote "Summer" (1909), "The Town of Okurov" (1909), "The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin" (1910), the play "Vassa Zheleznova", "Tales of Italy" (1911), "The Master" (1913) , the autobiographical story "Childhood" (1913).
At the end of December 1913, taking advantage of the general amnesty announced on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanovs, Gorky returned to Russia and settled in St. Petersburg. In 1914, he founded his own magazine "Chronicle" and publishing house "Sail". Here, in 1916, his autobiographical story "In People" and a series of essays "Across Rus'" were published.
Gorky accepted the February Revolution of 1917 with all his heart, but his attitude to further events, and especially to the October Revolution, was very ambiguous. In general, after the 1905 revolution, Gorky's worldview underwent an evolution and became more skeptical. Despite the fact that his faith in Man and faith in socialism remained unchanged, he had doubts about the fact that the modern Russian worker and modern Russian peasant are able to perceive bright socialist ideas as they should. As early as 1905, he was struck by the roar of the awakened popular element, breaking out through all social prohibitions and threatening to sink the miserable islands of material culture. Later, several articles appeared that determined Gorky's attitude towards the Russian people. A great impression on his contemporaries was made by his article "Two Souls", which appeared in the "Chronicles" at the end of 1915. Paying tribute to the wealth of the soul of the Russian people, Gorky nevertheless treated its historical possibilities with great skepticism. The Russian people, he wrote, are dreamy, lazy, their powerless soul can flare up beautifully and brightly, but it does not burn for long and quickly fades away. Therefore, the Russian nation definitely needs an “external lever” capable of moving it off the ground. Once he played the role of "lever". Now the time has come for new achievements, and the role of "lever" in them must be played by the intelligentsia, primarily revolutionary, but also scientific, technical and creative. It should bring Western culture to the people and instill in them an activity that will kill the “lazy Asian” in their soul. Culture and science were, according to Gorky, just that force (and the intelligentsia - the bearer of this force) that “will allow us to overcome the abomination of life and tirelessly, stubbornly strive for justice, for the beauty of life, for freedom”.
Gorky developed this theme in 1917-1918. in his newspaper "New Life", in which he published about 80 articles, later combined into two books "Revolution and Culture" and "Untimely Thoughts". The essence of his views was that the revolution (reasonable transformation of society) should be fundamentally different from the "Russian rebellion" (which senselessly destroys it). Gorky was convinced that the country was not now ready for a constructive socialist revolution, that first the people "must be incinerated and cleansed of the slavery nurtured in them by the slow fire of culture."
When the Provisional Government was nevertheless overthrown, Gorky sharply opposed the Bolsheviks. In the first months after the October Revolution, when an unbridled crowd smashed the palace cellars, when raids and robberies were committed, Gorky wrote with anger about the rampant anarchy, about the destruction of culture, about the cruelty of terror. During these difficult months, his relationship with him escalated to the extreme. The bloody horrors of the Civil War that followed made a depressing impression on Gorky and freed him from his last illusions about the Russian peasant. In the book "On the Russian Peasantry" (1922), published in Berlin, Gorky included many bitter, but sober and valuable observations on the negative aspects of the Russian character. Looking the truth in the eye, he wrote: "I explain the cruelty of the forms of the revolution solely by the cruelty of the Russian people." But of all the social strata of Russian society, he considered the peasantry to be the most guilty of it. It was in the peasantry that the writer saw the source of all the historical troubles of Russia.
Meanwhile, overwork and a bad climate caused an exacerbation of tuberculosis in Gorky. In the summer of 1921 he was forced to leave again for Capri. The following years were filled with hard work for him. Gorky writes the final part of the autobiographical trilogy "My Universities" (1923), the novel "The Artamonov Case" (1925), several stories and the first two volumes of the epic "The Life of Klim Samgin" (1927-1928) - a picture of intellectual and social life that is striking in its scope Russia in the last decades before the revolution of 1917
In May 1928 Gorky returned to the Soviet Union. The country amazed him. At one of the meetings, he admitted: "It seems to me that I have not been in Russia for not six years, but at least twenty." He greedily sought to get to know this unfamiliar country and immediately began to travel around the Soviet Union. The result of these travels was a series of essays "On the Union of Soviets."
Gorky's efficiency during these years was amazing. In addition to multilateral editorial and public work, he devotes a lot of time to journalism (over the last eight years of his life he published about 300 articles) and writes new works of art. In 1930, Gorky conceived a dramatic trilogy about the revolution of 1917. He managed to finish only two plays: Yegor Bulychev and Others (1932), Dostigaev and Others (1933). Also left unfinished was the fourth volume of Samghin (the third came out in 1931), on which Gorky had been working in recent years. This novel is important in that Gorky says goodbye to his illusions in relation to the Russian intelligentsia. Samghin's life catastrophe is the catastrophe of the entire Russian intelligentsia, which at a turning point in Russian history was not ready to become the head of the people and become the organizing force of the nation. In a more general, philosophical sense, this meant the defeat of Reason before the dark element of the Masses. A just socialist society, alas, did not develop (and could not develop - Gorky was now sure of this) by itself from the old Russian society, just as the Russian Empire could not be born from the old Muscovy. For the triumph of the ideals of socialism, violence had to be used. Therefore, a new Peter was needed.
One must think that the consciousness of these truths reconciled Gorky with socialist reality in many respects. It is known that he did not really like - with much more sympathy he treated Bukharin and Kamenev. However, his relationship with the Secretary General remained smooth until his death and was not overshadowed by any major quarrel. Moreover, Gorky put his enormous authority at the service of the Stalinist regime. In 1929, together with some other writers, he traveled around the Stalinist camps, and visited the most terrible of them in Solovki. The result of this trip was a book that for the first time in the history of Russian literature glorified forced labor. Gorky welcomed collectivization without hesitation and wrote to Stalin in 1930: «... the socialist revolution assumes a truly socialist character. This is an almost geological upheaval, and it is greater, immeasurably greater and deeper than all that has been done by the Party. The system of life that has existed for millennia is being destroyed, the system that created a man with an extremely ugly peculiarity and capable of terrifying with his animal conservatism, his instinct of ownership».
In 1931, under the impression of the process of the "Industrial Party", Gorky wrote the play "Somov and Others", in which he brings out pest engineers.
However, it must be remembered that in the last years of his life Gorky was seriously ill and he did not know much of what was going on in the country. Beginning in 1935, under the pretext of illness, inconvenient people were not allowed to see Gorky, their letters were not handed over to him, newspapers were printed especially for him, in which the most odious materials were absent. Gorky was weary of this guardianship and said that "he was besieged", but he could no longer do anything. He died on June 18, 1936.
Alexei Peshkov, better known as the writer Maxim Gorky, is a cult figure for Russian and Soviet literature. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize, 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 now is one of the districts of Nizhny Novgorod. His father, Maxim Peshkov, was a carpenter, and in the last years of his life he ran a steamship office. Mother Vasilievna died of consumption, so Alyosha Peshkov'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 the store, a barmaid on a steamer, an assistant 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 an arrest due to connection with a Marxist circle, the future writer became a watchman on the railway. And at the age of 23, the young man sets off to wander around the country and managed to get on foot to the Caucasus. It was during this journey that Maxim Gorky briefly wrote down his thoughts, which would later be the basis for his future works. By the way, the first stories of Maxim Gorky also began to be published around that time.
Alexei Peshkov, pseudonym Gorky | Nostalgia Having already become a famous writer, Alexei Peshkov leaves for the United States, then moves to Italy. This happened not 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, for all his Marxist views, Peshkov took 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.
The first of the published stories by Maxim Gorky was the famous "Makar Chudra", which was published in 1892. And the fame of the writer was brought by the two-volume Essays and Stories. It is interesting that the circulation of these volumes was almost three times higher than 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" became 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 The plays “At the Bottom”, “Petty Bourgeois” and “Egor Bulychov and Others” by Maxim Gorky are very important for understanding the work of the writer, in which he reveals the talent of the playwright and shows how he sees the life around him. The stories “Childhood” and “In People”, the social novels “Mother” and “The Artamonov Case” are of great cultural importance for Russian literature. The last work of Gorky is the epic novel "The Life of Klim Samgin", which has the second name "Forty Years". The writer worked on this manuscript for 11 years, but did not have time to finish it.
The personal life of Maxim Gorky was quite stormy. For the first and officially the only time he married at the age of 28. The young man met his wife Ekaterina Volzhina at the Samarskaya Gazeta publishing house, where the girl worked as a proofreader. A year after the wedding, the son Maxim appeared in the family, and soon the daughter Ekaterina, named after her mother. Also in the upbringing of the writer was his godson Zinovy Sverdlov, who later took the name Peshkov.
With his first wife Ekaterina Volzhina | Livejournal But Gorky's love quickly disappeared. He began to be weary of family life and their marriage with Ekaterina Volzhina turned into a parental union: they lived together solely because of the children. When little daughter Katya died unexpectedly, this tragic event was the impetus for breaking 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 parting with his wife, Maxim Gorky, with the help of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, met the actress of the Moscow Art Theater 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 a 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, began to pay less attention to the family, so in 1919 this relationship also came to an end.
With third wife Maria Budberg and writer HG Wells | Livejournal Gorky himself put an end to it, declaring that he was leaving for Maria Budberg, the former baroness and concurrently his secretary. The writer lived with this woman for 13 years. The marriage, like the previous one, was unregistered. The last wife of Maxim Gorky was 24 years younger than him, and all the acquaintances were aware that she was "twisting novels" on the side. One of the lovers of Gorky's wife was the English science fiction writer Herbert Wells, to whom she left immediately after the death of her actual husband. There is a huge possibility that Maria Budberg, who had a reputation as an adventurer and clearly collaborated with the NKVD, could be a double agent and also work for British intelligence.
After the final return to his homeland in 1932, Maxim Gorky worked in the publishing houses of newspapers and magazines, created a series of books "The History of Factories and Plants", "The Poet's Library", "The History of the Civil War", organized and held the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. After the unexpected death of his son from pneumonia, the writer wilted. During the next visit to the grave of Maxim, he caught a bad cold. For three weeks Gorky had a fever that 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, the brain of Maxim Gorky was removed and transferred to the Research Institute for further study.
In the last years of life | E-library Later, the question was raised several times that the legendary writer and his son could have been poisoned. People's Commissar Heinrich Yagoda, who was the lover of Maxim Peshkov's wife, was involved in this case. They also suspected involvement and even. During the repressions and consideration of the famous "doctors' case", three doctors were blamed, among other things, for the death of Maxim Gorky.
Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov was born in 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod. After the death of his father, Maxim Savvateevich Peshkov, a cabinetmaker, his mother, Varvara Vasilievna, with three-year-old Alyosha, returned to the house of her father Vasily Vasilyevich Kashirin, the owner of a dyeing workshop. Since 1876, Alexei Peshkov studied first at the Ilyinsky School, then at the Nizhny Novgorod Sloboda Kunavinsky Primary School, but "he did not finish the course in it due to poverty."
When his mother died, Alyosha was 11 years old. Left an orphan, he lived in his grandfather's house in an atmosphere of “mutual enmity of everyone with everyone; she poisoned adults, and even children took an active part in it ”(“ Childhood ”), Alyosha was loved only by grandmother Akulina Ivanovna, who replaced his mother. She managed to develop in him an interest in folk songs and fairy tales.
The ruined grandfather gave his grandson to serve in a shoe store. Then Alexey worked as a servant, a "boy" in an icon shop, an apprentice in an icon-painting workshop, a foreman at a construction site, and an extra in a theater at the Nizhny Novgorod Fair. He worked constantly and at the same time read a lot. Alexey read especially a lot while working on the Dobry steamship - cook Potap Andreev gave him books. Later, Gorky would write: “More and more expanding the limits of the world before me, the books told me how great and beautiful a person is in striving for the best, how much he did on earth and what incredible suffering it cost him.”
In 1884, Alexei Peshkov left for Kazan, dreaming of entering Kazan University. But the dream was not destined to come true - instead of studying, I had to work. The future writer lived in a friend's family, sometimes among tramps in a rooming house, worked as a laborer and loader on the pier, then got a job as a baker's assistant in A. S. Derenkov's bakery, which was called "a place of suspicious gatherings of student youth" in gendarme documents. Alexey Maksimovich during this period was especially actively engaged in self-education, got acquainted with Marxist teachings, studied the works of G.V. Plekhanov. In 1888, in search of work, he wandered around Russia. A year later, returning to Nizhny Novgorod, he met V.G. Korolenko. He brought the famous writer his first work - "The Song of the Old Oak" - and received support. At the same time, Alexey Maksimovich met Olga Yulyevna Kamenskaya, who soon became his wife.
In 1891-1892 he made a new journey through Rus'. The experience of wandering was reflected in his early romantic works and the later cycle of stories "Across Rus'".
There are many lyrical "digressions" in the cycle "Across Rus'". They express the author's attitude to the world, combine pictorial and subjective-evaluative plans, the socio-historical and generalized philosophical image of life prevails. "Passing" - this is how Gorky called the autobiographical hero "Across Rus'". The writer borrowed this word from V.G. Korolenko ("... passing - your word from the story" The river plays ... "" - he wrote to Korolenko). “I deliberately say “passing” and not “passer-by”, it seems to me that the passer-by leaves no traces for himself, while the passing one is to some extent an active person and not only receiving impressions of being, but also consciously creating something definite.
Gorky tried to truthfully capture life in its most difficult manifestations (“On Salt”, “Conclusion”, “Twenty-six and One”, “Spouses of the Orlovs”, etc.), however, he also noticed the light that is in it.
In 1892, the first story of the writer "Makar Chudra", signed by the pseudonym M. Gorky, was published in the Tiflis newspaper "Kavkaz".
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Name: Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov
Aliases: Maxim Gorky, Yehudiel Chlamyda
Birthday: March 16, 1868
Place of Birth: Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Empire
Date of death: June 18, 1936
A place of death: Gorki, Moscow region, RSFSR, USSR
Maxim Gorky was born in Nizhny Novgorod in 1868. In fact, the writer's name was Alexei, but his father was Maxim, and the writer's surname was Peshkov. My father worked as a simple carpenter, so the family could not be called wealthy. At the age of 7, he went to school, but after a couple of months he had to quit his studies due to smallpox. As a result, the boy received a home education, and he also independently studied all subjects.
Gorky had a rather difficult childhood. His parents died too early and the boy lived with his grandfather 
, who had a very difficult character. Already at the age of 11, the future writer went to earn his own bread, moonlighting either in a bakery or in a dining room on a steamer.
In 1884, Gorky ended up in Kazan and tried to get an education, but this attempt failed, and he had to work hard again to earn money for his livelihood. At the age of 19, Gorky even tries to commit suicide due to poverty and fatigue.
Here he is fond of Marxism, trying to agitate. In 1888 he was arrested for the first time. He gets a job at an iron job, where the authorities keep a close eye on him.
In 1889, Gorky returned to Nizhny Novgorod, got a job with the lawyer Lanin as a clerk. It was during this period that he wrote "The Song of the Old Oak" and turned to Korolenko to appreciate the work.
In 1891, Gorky set off to travel around the country. In Tiflis, his story "Makar Chudra" is published for the first time.
In 1892, Gorky again went to Nizhny Novgorod and returned to the service of the lawyer Lanin. Here it is already published in many editions of Samara and Kazan. In 1895 he moved to Samara. At this time, he actively writes and his works are constantly printed. The two-volume Essays and Stories, published in 1898, is in great demand and is very actively discussed and criticized. In the period from 1900 to 1901 he met Tolstoy and Chekhov.
In 1901, Gorky created his first plays, The Philistines and At the Bottom. They were very popular, and "Petty Bourgeois" was even staged in Vienna and Berlin. The writer became known already at the international level. Since that moment, his works have been translated into different languages of the world, and he and his works have become the object of close attention of foreign critics.
Gorky became a participant in the revolution in 1905, and since 1906 he has been leaving his country in connection with political events. He has been living on the Italian island of Capri for a long time. Here he writes the novel "Mother". This work influenced the emergence of a new trend in literature as socialist realism.
In 1913, Maxim Gorky was finally able to return to his homeland. During this period, he is actively working on his autobiography. He also works as an editor for two newspapers. Then he gathered proletarian writers around him and published a collection of their works.
The period of the revolution in 1917 was ambiguous for Gorky. As a result, he joins the ranks of the Bolsheviks, despite doubts and torments. However, he does not support some of their views and actions. In particular, regarding the intelligentsia. Thanks to Gorky, most of the intelligentsia in those days escaped starvation and painful death. 
In 1921 Gorky left his country. There is a version that he does this because Lenin was too worried about the health of the great writer, whose tuberculosis worsened. However, Gorky's contradictions with the authorities could also be the reason. He lived in Prague, Berlin and Sorrento.
When Gorky was 60 years old, Stalin himself invited him to the USSR. The writer was given a warm welcome. He traveled around the country, where he spoke at meetings and rallies. He is honored in every possible way, taken to the Communist Academy.
In 1932, Gorky returned to the USSR for good. He leads a very active literary activity, organizes the All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, publishes a large number of newspapers.
In 1936, terrible news swept across the country: Maxim Gorky had left this world. The writer caught a cold when he visited his son's grave. However, there is an opinion that both the son and the father were poisoned because of political views, but this has never been proven.
Your attention is a documentary film, a biography of Maxim Gorky.
1899
Foma Gordeev
1900-1901
Three
1906
Mother (second edition - 1907)
1925
The Artamonov case
1925-1936
Life of Klim Samgin
1908
The life of an unwanted person
1908
Confession
1909
Okurov town
Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin
1913-1914
Childhood
1915-1916
In people
1923
My universities
1892
girl and death
1892
Makar Chudra
1895
Chelkash
Old Isergil
1897
former people
Spouses Orlovs
Mallow
Konovalov
1898
Essays and stories (collection)
1899
Song of the Falcon (poem in prose)
twenty six and one
1901
Song about the petrel (poem in prose)
1903
Man (poem in prose)
1913
Tales of Italy
1912-1917
In Rus' (a cycle of stories)
1924
Stories 1922-1924
1924
Notes from the diary (a cycle of stories)
1901
Philistines
1902
At the bottom
1904
summer residents
1905
Children of the Sun
Barbarians
1906
Enemies
1910
Vassa Zheleznova (revised in December 1935)
1915
Old man
1930-1931
Somov and others
1932
Egor Bulychov and others
1933
Dostigaev and others
1906
My interviews
In America" (pamphlets)
1917-1918
series of articles "Untimely Thoughts" in the newspaper "New Life"
1922
About the Russian peasantry
