Maxim Gorky

Maxim Gorky (born Alexey Maximovich Peshkov, commonly known simply as "Gorky"; 16 (28) March 1868, Nizhny Novgorod — 18 June 1936, Gorki-10, Moscow Region) — a Russian and Soviet writer, playwright, and journalist, the most famous native of Nizhny Novgorod. His childhood, his years "among the people," and his early literary career all unfolded here; here he wrote Foma Gordeyev, Meshchane, and The Song of the Stormy Petrel, and from 1932 to 1990 the city bore his name ^[1][2][9]. Three museums dedicated to the writer operate in the city — the Kashirin House, the apartment-museum, and the Literary Museum ^[3][4][5].

Childhood in the Kashirin House

Alexey Peshkov was born on 16 (28) March 1868 in the outbuilding of his grandfather Vasily Vasilyevich Kashirin's estate on Kovalikhinsky Street — so it is recorded in the parish register of the Varvarinsky Church. Kashirin, a Nizhny Novgorod craftsman and owner of a dyeing workshop, had built a street-facing house and a yard outbuilding on the property in the 1860s; in 1866 his daughter Varvara Vasilyevna moved here with her husband Maxim Savvatyevich Peshkov, a native of the Perm merchant class who worked as a cabinetmaker at the Kurbatov plant ^[2]. The estate has survived, and both the house and the outbuilding are listed as state-protected heritage sites ^[1][2].

In the spring of 1871 the family left for Astrakhan. There, three-year-old Alyosha fell ill with cholera and barely survived, while his father died of the same disease. The widow and her son returned to Nizhny Novgorod, but the Kovalikhinsky estate had already been sold, and they had to live in the grandfather's cramped house on Pochtovy (Uspensky) Descent ^[1][2]. Here, from August 1871 to the spring of 1872, the boy and his mother occupied the podklet — the lower "working" room; this is the "Kashirin House," the setting of the novella Childhood. According to the book, it was here that Alyosha dyed the edge of the holiday tablecloth, and where Tsyganok was crushed by the cross ^[1][3].

Grandfather Kashirin taught his grandson to read using church books, while grandmother Akulina Ivanovna introduced him to folk songs and fairy tales and, in effect, took the place of his mother. In Childhood, ^[6] Gorky wrote of her:

it was her selfless love for the world that enriched me, filling me with a firm strength for a hard life

"Go Out into the World"

In the spring of 1872, his grandfather divided his property among his sons and in the autumn bought a small three-windowed house on the outskirts of town, on Kanatная Street (now Korolenko Street, 42). Four years of childhood passed here: grandmother's fairy tales, a lodger known by the nickname "Good Thing," and his first attempts at schooling at the Ilyinsky school on Bolshaya Yamskaya, cut short by smallpox. His mother remarried; his grandfather, having given her a dowry, was ruined; and in 1876 the house was sold — Alyosha moved with his mother and stepfather to ^[2] Sormovo.

In 1877, nine-year-old Peshkov again lived with his grandfather, on Pirozhnikovskaya Street in Kunavino (now Alyoshi Peshkova Street; Komsomolskaya Pravda gives house no. 42, while the memorial plaques directory gives house no. 44), and enrolled in the Kunavino district primary school (now Kommunisticheskaya Street, 27). His first day stuck in his memory for the taunting he endured: his little coat had been recut from his grandmother's cardigan, and his yellow shirt earned him the nickname "ace of diamonds." Nonetheless, he completed second grade with a commendation sheet recognizing his "excellent attainments in learning and good conduct above his peers" ^[1][2].

And there school ended: in 1879 his mother died of consumption, and his grandfather said the words that have since become part of the canon: "Well, Aleksey, you're no medal to hang round my neck — there's no place for you here, so go out into the world…" ^[1][2]. The eleven-year-old orphan worked as a "boy" at L. M. Porkhunov's fashionable footwear shop and lived in the owner's house on Polevaya Street (now Gorky Street, 74), sleeping in the kitchen behind the stove. While heating some shchi, he knocked the pot over himself, scalded his hands, ended up in hospital, and never returned to Porkhunov's ^[1][2]. The house has survived and was handed over to the Alyosha Peshkov children's club ^[2].

In the autumn of 1880, his grandmother took her grandson to her nephew, a contractor and draughtsman named Vasily Sergeyev, at Gogin's tenement house on Zvezdinka Street (listed as house no. 5b in Komsomolskaya Pravda, and as house no. 11 in the memorial plaques directory). The boy was not taught draughtsmanship; he worked as a servant — washing floors and staircases, cleaning the samovar and copper cookware, chopping firewood, and accompanying the mistress of the house to the market. In front of the house lay a muddy ravine with a pond, and on the other side of Novo-Bazarnaya Square stood the convict companies. His only escape was books, lent to him by the neighboring women, including a lady portrayed in the story "In the World" under the name of Queen Margot ^[1][2].

In the summers, Alyosha would run away from the Sergeyevs to the Volga and worked as a dishwasher's mate on steamboats, including one called the Dobry; a cook on the steamboat kindled his love of reading ^[2][7]. In April 1883, Sergeyev took him on as a sort of foreman's assistant for renovations to the buildings of the Nizhny Novgorod Yarmarka, and in 1884 the sixteen-year-old Peshkov left for Kazan ^[1][2].

Kazan, wanderings, and the first story

In the summer of 1884, Peshkov came to Kazan hoping to enroll at the university, but was not admitted to the entrance examinations and had no money for tuition. He mixed with students, attended self-education circles and gatherings, and conducted propaganda work alongside the Narodnik M. Romas in the selo of Krasnovidovo, while earning his living through day labor — as an unskilled laborer, a docker, and a baker ^[1][7]. Hardship, poverty, and unrequited love led to a severe mental crisis: in December 1887 he attempted to shoot himself, but survived ^[7].

From the summer of 1888 to October 1892, Peshkov wandered "across Rus": he traversed the Volga Region, the Don steppes, and Ukraine as far as Southern Bessarabia, Crimea, and the Northern Caucasus, worked as a farmhand in villages, labored at fishing and salt works, washed dishes, and served as a railway watchman. In Tiflis he spent a year as a hammerman and office clerk in railway workshops ^[7]. In September 1892, the Tiflis newspaper Kavkaz published his first story, "Makar Chudra," under the pen name "M. Gorky" ^[7].

During those years he was captivated in turn by Narodism, Tolstoyism, and social-democratic ideas, and was arrested more than once: in 1888 — for his connection with the circle of N. E. Fedoseyev, after which he was placed under police surveillance ^[7].

Return to Nizhny: Lanin and Korolenko

In the spring of 1889, Peshkov returned to his home city, and that same year was arrested in Nizhny for the first time — on suspicion of ties with persons under political surveillance. Released from prison, he lived with acquaintances V. Clark and E. Alkina and served as a clerk to the barrister A. I. Lanin ^[1][2]. Around the same time, the young author brought his poem "Song of the Old Oak" to Vladimir Korolenko, who tore it to shreds ^[1]. Gorky recalled:

I decided to write no more — neither verse nor prose — and indeed throughout my time in Nizhny, nearly two years, I wrote nothing

Nizhegorodsky Listok and the All-Russian Exhibition

From 1891, Peshkov set off once more "across Rus'"; at the end of 1892 he lived in Lanin's house on Zhukovskaya Street (now Minin Street, 18a) and again worked for him as a clerk. By this time he was already the author of "Chelkash," "Grandfather Arkhip and Lyonka," and "Old Woman Izergil," and he received strong support from Korolenko ^[2]. Throughout 1895 Gorky worked at the Samarskaya Gazeta, where he became known as a feuilletonist under the pen name Yegudil Khlamida ^[2][7].

In May 1896, for the opening of the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition, he returned to Nizhny Novgorod: the Odesskie Novosti commissioned exhibition reviews from him, and the Nizhegorodsky Listok offered him a regular position ^[2]. The editorial office was located on the second floor of 24 Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street; Gorky came there almost every day — to the editorial office itself, to the flat of editor Grinevitsky, and to the basement printshop — and was on the staff from 1896 to 1901, and from 1901 onward influenced editorial policy ^[1][10].

On 2 September 1896, Gorky and his wife Yekaterina Pavlovna moved into a small two-room apartment in the single-story Guzeyeva house on what was then Voznesensky Lane (now Nizhegorodskaya Street, 12); he described this house in the story "How to Run a Household." Working for two newspapers at once worsened his tuberculosis, and in early January 1897 his friends — Lanin and the physician V. N. Zolotnitsky — secured assistance from the Literary Fund and sent the couple to Crimea ^[1][2]. The Guzeyeva house burned down during renovation in September 1988; a stone house of the same dimensions was built in its place, and the memorial plaque was lost ^[2].

Arrests, "Foma Gordeyev," and "Song of the Stormy Petrel"

In March 1898 the family rented an apartment in the Bolshakova house on Ilyinskaya Street. It was here that the first two-volume edition of "Sketches and Stories" appeared, making Gorky's name known throughout Russia, and work began on "Foma Gordeyev" ^[2][7]. In the night of 6–7 May 1898, gendarmes arrested the writer at the request of Tiflis: a photograph inscribed "To dear Fedya from Maksimych" had been found on an arrested worker, F. Ye. Afanasyev. Gorky was taken to Metekhi Prison, but the "evidence" proved so absurd that he was released within a fortnight ^[2].

From 4 November 1898 to March 1900, Gorky, his wife, and their son Maxim occupied the entire second floor of the Kurepin house on Polevaya Street (now Gorky Street, 82). In 1899 the journal Zhizn began publishing "Foma Gordeyev"; I. Bunin, V. Gilyarovsky, V. Posse, and V. Mirolyubov came to visit the writer, and whereas Korolenko had formerly been the center of Nizhny Novgorod's cultural life, that role was now passing to Gorky: he helped exiled students and collected teaching materials for primary schools ^[2].

From September 1900 to October 1901, the writer lived in the Lemke house on Kanatnaya Street (now Korolenko Street, 11). Here he wrote his first play, *Meshchane* (*Philistines*), and the "Song of the Stormy Petrel" rang out with its call "Let the storm break out more fiercely!" The house was visited by F. I. Shalyapin, V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, A. P. Chekhov, I. A. Bunin, N. G. Garin-Mikhaylovsky, L. N. Andreyev, and Skitalets; the artist M. V. Nesterov painted a portrait study of Gorky here. The writer provided financial support to the first Nizhny Novgorod committee of the RSDLP (I. P. Ladyzhnikov, V. A. Desnitsky, A. V. Yarovitsky), organized assistance for exiles, and arranged Christmas parties for the children of the urban poor ^[2].

On the night of April 17, 1901, gendarmes searched his home for a mimeograph he had purchased; the search yielded no evidence, but Gorky was sent to the Nizhny Novgorod Ostrog, where he remained until May 17 (30) ^[2]. He was accused of ties to the RSDLP and of printing revolutionary leaflets; the prescribed punishment was exile to Arzamas, but under public pressure the writer was first permitted to seek medical treatment in ^[1][2][7] Crimea.

On November 6, 1901, the Nizhny Novgorod intelligentsia and students organized a farewell for him — a subscription dinner, permitted by the authorities, at the Permyakov restaurant in the Blinovsky Passage on Rozhdestvenskaya Street. Gorky himself wrote to K. Pyatnitsky that those seeing him off intended to do so "rather demonstratively." The following day, townspeople bid the writer farewell at the ^[1][2] Moscow Railway Station and marched in a demonstration through the city. Lenin also took note:

In Nizhny, a small but successful demonstration on November 7 was occasioned by the farewell to Maxim Gorky

The "Stolby" Tearoom and the Last Nizhny Novgorod Apartment

On November 7, 1901, the Nizhegorodsky Listok published Gorky's article "For the Golden Company": on Millionnaya Street, an establishment was opening that represented "an interesting example of sensible, necessary assistance to the hungry and homeless." The writer personally organized everything — the people, the money, the premises. In a columned building at what is now 11 Kozhevennaya Street, the homeless could sit in warmth, get a serving of tea for two kopecks and a pound of bread, read books from a small library, and on holidays listen to concerts; Gorky's friends, the doctors N. I. Dolgopolov and V. P. Zolotnitsky, set up a free outpatient clinic. The establishment was nicknamed "Stolby" ("The Columns"); it opened on November 21, 1901, while Gorky was in Crimea, but until he left the city in 1904 he kept watch over its operations. He later wrote about "Stolby" in his essay "N. A. Bugrov" — about the merchant Nikolai Bugrov ^[2].

In the autumn of 1902, when his Arzamas exile ended, the family rented a ten-room apartment on the second floor of a large building belonging to Baron N. F. Kirshbaum on Martynovsky Street (now Semashko Street, 19) and lived there until 1904 ^[1][2][17]. According to the memoirs of V. Desnitsky, the apartment was "a kind of club": visitors included F. I. Shalyapin, the pianist A. B. Goldenweiser, the writers E. N. Chirikov and L. N. Andreyev, the director L. A. Sulerzhitsky, the actors M. A. Tikhomirov and M. S. Narokov, and the young Zinoviy and Yakov Sverdlov ^[2]. Here the work on the play The Lower Depths was completed, the poem "Man" was written, the play Summerfolk was conceived, and the first sketches for the novel Mother were made; together with a group of friends, Gorky founded a People's Theatre in the city ^[2][4].

Nizhny Novgorod in Gorky's Books

The landscapes of old Nizhny are described in detail in Gorky's autobiographical novellas, and the city's residents more than once served as prototypes for his characters ^[1]. The most contested Nizhny Novgorod subject is the play The Lower Depths. According to one version, the prototype for its flophouse was the Bugrov lodging house on Rozhdestvenskaya Street, built in 1880–1885 to a design by F. N. Falin, and among its residents was a down-and-out nobleman named Bukhhолts — the future Baron ^[10]. According to another version, in Gorky's play people sing and the action takes place during the day, which would have been impossible in the exemplary Bugrov establishment: drunks were turned away, smoking and singing were forbidden, and the house was closed for cleaning during the day. The action of the play takes place in the tenements of Millionka — the quarter at the start of Rozhdestvenskaya Street, where, according to the 1897 census, more than fifteen hundred people slept in 105 apartments ^[11]. The same view is held by local historian Aleksandr Serikov, author of the walking tour "The Tramp's Millionnaya" ^[12].

Fame, Revolution, and Emigration

By the end of the 1890s, Gorky had become one of the most widely read writers in Russia: between 1900 and 1904, ninety-one books were published about him, and performances of his plays at the Moscow Art Theatre were accompanied by anti-government demonstrations from the audience ^[7]. He became acquainted with L. N. Tolstoy, A. P. Chekhov, I. A. Bunin, A. I. Kuprin, and L. N. Andreyev ^[7]. In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary academician, but at the insistence of Nicholas II the election was declared invalid, and Chekhov and Korolenko resigned their academic titles in protest ^[7].

In the autumn of 1905, Gorky joined the RSDLP and took part in the Revolution of 1905–1907; he was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress for a proclamation issued after the shootings of January 9, then released under public pressure. In 1906 he traveled to America, raising money for the Bolsheviks and writing the novel Mother; he then settled in Italy, on the island of Capri, due to tuberculosis, living there until 1913 and taking part in organizing a party school for Russian workers ^[7]. Between 1907 and 1909 he supported A. A. Bogdanov and A. V. Lunacharsky (the "Vperyodists" and "God-builders") in their philosophical disputes with Lenin ^[7].

After the February Revolution, Gorky began editing the newspaper Novaya Zhizn from 18 April 1917, around which a distinctive "Novaya Zhizn" current of internationalist Social Democrats coalesced. The writer greeted the October coup with sharp criticism: in his series "Untimely Thoughts" he called it an adventure, predicted "lakes of blood," and defended freedom of the press, including the bourgeois press. On 16 July 1918 the newspaper was shut down, and after the assassination attempt on Lenin, Gorky drew close to the Bolsheviks once more ^[7]. During the years of the Civil War he founded the Vsemirnaya Literatura publishing house, headed a commission for improving scientists' living conditions, and saved many scholars, writers, and artists from starvation ^[7].

In the summer of 1921, Gorky secured the creation of the All-Russian Committee for Aid to the Hungry, which lasted one month, and issued an appeal titled "Honest People" to Europe and America; Patriarch Tikhon joined him in addressing the world, and their appeals, published on 23 July in The New York Times, helped enlist the American Relief Administration (ARA) in assisting the famine victims ^[16].

In October 1921, owing to a worsening of his tuberculosis and at Lenin's insistence, Gorky went abroad for treatment: he lived in Germany and Czechoslovakia, and from April 1924 in Sorrento, Italy ^[7]. There he completed the trilogy My Universities, wrote the "Stories of 1922–1924," Notes from a Diary, and the novel The Artamonov Business (1925), and maintained ties with young Soviet writers — L. M. Leonov, Vs. V. Ivanov, A. A. Fadeyev, and I. E. Babel ^[7]. From 1925 until the end of his life he worked on the epic The Life of Klim Samgin (originally titled Forty Years), conceived as a chronicle of a pivotal era in the history of the Russian intelligentsia — a work he never finished ^[7].

In May 1928, Gorky returned to the USSR for the first time since his emigration and spent the entire summer traveling the country: Kursk, Kharkov, Dneprostroi, Zaporizhzhia, Crimea, Rostov-on-Don, Baku, Tiflis, Kojori, Yerevan, Vladikavkaz, Stalingrad, Samara, Kazan, and his native Nizhny Novgorod. His impressions were recorded in the essays "Through the Soviet Union" (1929) ^[7]. From then on he returned every year, except 1931, and in 1933 settled permanently in Moscow ^[7].

At Gorky's initiative, the journals Our Achievements (1929–1936) and Literary Studies (1930–1941) were published, along with the series "History of Factories and Plants" (around 250 books in 1931–1933), "History of the Civil War," and "The Poets' Library." He was the driving force behind the creation of the Union of Soviet Writers and presided over its First Congress in August 1934; at his initiative the Literary Institute was founded, later named after him ^[7].

Gorky died on 18 June 1936 at Gorki, outside Moscow, and was buried at the Kremlin Wall ^[7]. His death, like that of his son Maxim in May 1934, immediately gave rise to rumors. At the trial of the "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites," G. G. Yagoda, secretary P. P. Kryuchkov, and several Kremlin physicians were accused of the writer's murder, and the theory of "killer doctors" became official; it was later abandoned, still during the Soviet era, and the circumstances of Gorky's death remain a subject of controversy to this day ^[7].

Journalism of 1929–1934 and the Controversies Surrounding It

The later years of Gorky's public life represent the most contested chapter of his biography. A harsh verdict is delivered by the editors of The Black Book of Names That Have No Place on the Map of Russia (ed. S. V. Volkov, 2004): even from abroad, they write, the writer lent his authority to death sentences handed down on absurd charges, and upon returning home he joined in the hunt for supposed "enemies" and "spies" ^[7]. Between 1929 and 1931 he regularly published articles in Pravda that were collected under the title Let Us Stand Guard!; the most famous of these — "If the Enemy Does Not Surrender, He Must Be Destroyed" (1930) — gave the Soviet policy of those years something of a motto ^[7].

The editors draw attention to the language of these articles: people in them are called flies, tapeworms, parasites, degenerates, and in the article "To the Humanists" it is stated that the workers' and peasants' power "crushes its enemies like lice" ^[7][8]. Gorky praised "the proletarian humanism of Marx–Lenin–Stalin" (in the article "Proletarian Humanism"), expressed admiration for "how simple and accessible the wise Comrade Stalin is" (in his "Letter to the Delegates of the All-Union Congress of Collective-Farm Shock Workers"), and in his "Open Letter to A. S. Serafimovich" (1934) wrote of "peasant force" as a force that was "socially unhealthy" — in years when peasants declared kulaks were being shot or deported to the North ^[7]. The Swiss Slavicist Georges Nivat put it this way:

Gorky does not merely sing in the chorus of accusers — he composes the music for that chorus

The Trials, the Solovki, and the White Sea Canal

In support of the OGPU-fabricated "Industrial Party Affair," Gorky wrote the play Somov and Others (1930): in it, saboteur engineers maliciously obstruct production, and in the final scene OGPU agents arrest not only them but also a former singing teacher who had been "poisoning" the youth with talk of the soul and old music. In his articles "To the Workers and Peasants" and "To the Humanists," the writer endorsed the charges against Professor Ryazanov and his "accomplices" — forty-eight people who were shot for "organizing a Food Famine" ^[7][8].

He did not approve of all the repressions: the arrests of old Bolsheviks troubled him, and in 1932 he expressed bewilderment to OGPU chief G. Yagoda over the arrest of L. Kamenev ^[7]. Gorky's correspondence shows that he was aware of the famine of 1932–1933, yet he made no public statements about it, and historians have been reluctant to address the subject ^[16].

In 1929 Gorky visited the Solovetsky camp. There is a story, known through memoirs and retellings, that one of the juvenile prisoners, seeing in the writer a potential advocate, risked telling him about the monstrous conditions in the camp; Gorky was moved to tears, yet left an enthusiastic entry in the camp's guestbook, and the boy was shot shortly afterward. This story is known only through secondhand accounts ^[7].

In 1934 a collection titled "The White Sea–Baltic Canal Named After Stalin" was published under Gorky's editorship. The camp is portrayed therein as a beacon of progress and "reforging," even though no fewer than 100,000 prisoners perished during the canal's construction. Speaking before the construction workers on August 25, 1933, Gorky discoursed on "how the OGPU re-educates people." A. I. Solzhenitsyn, in "The Gulag Archipelago," wrote that in this book Gorky was the first in Russian literature to glorify slave labor ^[7].

The "Black Book of Names" delivers a harsh verdict: regardless of whether Gorky's talent is considered first-rate or a media fabrication, and regardless of whether one believes in his sincerity or in the account of poison administered on orders from the Kremlin, he, in the compilers' view, contributed to the organized murder of millions of innocent people. This assessment is the position of the book's authors; Soviet and many modern biographies credit the writer with saving the intelligentsia during the Civil War years and with aiding the famine victims of 1921 ^[7][16].

The article "To the Humanists" (1930)

The article "To the Humanists" was first published simultaneously in the newspapers Pravda and Izvestiya TsIK SSSR i VTsIK on December 11, 1930 (No. 340), and was later included in the first and second editions of Gorky's book "Publicistic Articles." It is reproduced below from the text prepared by the author for the second edition and collated with the manuscript and the author-authorized typescript from the A. M. Gorky Archive ^[8]. The occasion was an invitation from the "International Union of Democratic Writers" to contribute to its journal: the union's presidium included Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann, who had signed a protest by the German "League for the Protection of Human Rights" against the execution of forty-eight "organizers of the food famine" ^[8].

The "International Union of Democratic Writers," in the person of its general secretary, Mr. Lucien Kinet, honored me with an invitation to contribute to the union's literary organ. The union's aim is "the rapprochement of democratic writers"; its presidium includes Romain Rolland and Upton Sinclair — men whom I hold in the highest regard. But alongside them in the presidium is Professor Albert Einstein, and on the committee, Mr. Heinrich Mann. These two, together with many other humanists, recently signed the protest of the German "League for the Protection of Human Rights" against the execution of forty-eight criminals — the organizers of the food famine in the Union of Soviets.

I am entirely convinced that among the rights of man there is no right to commit a crime, least of all a crime against the laboring people. The indescribable vileness of the acts of the forty-eight is well known to me; I know that what they did was something far more criminal and sordid than what was done by the owners of the Chicago slaughterhouses and described by E. Sinclair in his book "The Jungle."

The organizers of the food famine, having aroused the righteous wrath of the laboring people against whom they had hatched their vile conspiracy, were executed at the unanimous demand of the workers. I consider this execution entirely lawful. It is the judgment of a people who, living and working under harsh conditions, denying themselves everything and sparing none of their strength, are courageously and successfully striving to build a workers' state free of predators and parasites — and also free of those whose humanism, in essence, serves as a cover for predation and parasitism.

It is clear that my assessment of the execution of the forty-eight diverges sharply from that of the "League for the Protection of Human Rights." And since Messrs. A. Einstein and H. Mann concur with the League's assessment, it goes without saying that any "rapprochement" between them and myself is impossible, and I therefore decline to contribute to the organ of the "International Union of Democratic Writers."

Over the past three years I have received several more invitations to participate in the organs of democratic "humanists." To these invitations I did not reply — I shall try to make amends for my discourtesy. I address my reply to R. Rolland, E. Sinclair, B. Shaw, and H. G. Wells, whose names are mentioned in Mr. Lucien Kinet's letter and whose opinion is not a matter of indifference to me — it is to them, I believe, that I owe an explanation of my attitude toward those intellectuals who have made humanism their profession.

After the Ninth of January, 1905, the humanist gentlemen of Europe, outraged by the mass murder of workers in the streets of St. Petersburg, bestowed upon Nikolai Romanov the title of "the Bloody" — a title he had fully earned even before that crime. Yet they did not protest against the French bankers who, by supplying the bloody tsar with money, helped him to destroy several thousand more of the most valuable Russian people on the gallows, in penal servitude, and in prison. There was ample time for protest: the tsar's terror lasted three years. In 1910, together with Wilhelm Ostwald, Richard Dehmel, F. van Eeden, and Upton Sinclair, I took part in organizing an international body of intellectuals; this organization likewise set itself the aim of "rapprochement" among the humanists of Europe. In 1914, Wilhelm Ostwald and Richard Dehmel were among the first to sign the bloodthirsty manifesto against England.

That same year, a considerable number of Russian writers and scholars — humanists, every one of them! — composed and published something disgustingly shrill against the Germans, but not against the very fact of war. This was done by precisely those intellectuals who now, living in Berlin and Paris, slander the worker-peasant authority of the Union of Soviets in a talentless and foolish manner, poison the minds of European humanists with filthy lies, preach the idea of intervention in the Union — that is, try to instill the necessity of a new world war. This time, they — who protested so ardently against "German atrocities" — would like to see German and every other kind of "atrocity" visited upon the country that was their fatherland, upon the people whom they called "their own."

I find it necessary to say that I never signed any protests against German or any other wartime atrocities. I know that war is unrelieved savagery, and that in war people who have done each other no wrong destroy one another, having been forcibly placed in a state of self-defense. I know that wars are organized by capitalists in order to entrench a system that makes the daily atrocities of "peacetime" routine, in order to enrich themselves personally — not in the interests of the nation; the nation is its laboring people, and their economic interests are international. I know that capitalism is a contagious disease of peoples. I deny the right to exist of a system that makes inevitable the necessity of wars among capitalists — wars that are fought by the strength of the laboring people and that destroy them. Against war — that astonishingly vile and senseless business — the defenders of human rights do not protest. The Soviet proposal for complete and universal disarmament, put forward by Comrade Maxim Litvinov before the League of Nations, was not supported by the humanists.

In 1918, the French, the British, and the Americans, having crushed Germany, organized a predatory raid upon a Russia exhausted by war — a raid aimed at reducing Russia to a colony and plundering her, just as they plunder Germany. The humanists took no notice of this fact, which was returning "cultured" Europe to the age of the adventures of Cortés and Pizarro.

The "defenders of human rights" did not hear French General Franchet d'Espèrey urging his soldiers in Odessa:

"The Russians are barbarians and scoundrels! Show them no ceremony — shoot them, from the lowliest peasant to the highest representative."

But these astonishing howls of a savage were heard by those Russian humanists who stood alongside him then and who are now ready to assist any idiot capable, at the bidding of his capitalists, of slaughtering and shooting the laboring people of the Union of Soviets.

Humanists are a very strange breed, are they not? They are not in the least outraged by events in India, China, Africa, and Palestine; they are not outraged at home either, remaining indifferent to the growth of the zoological instincts of nationalism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia, indifferent to the dramas and tragedies that play out almost daily in the old, blood-soaked edifices of bourgeois states. They do not attempt to protest the dark little dealings of Monsieur Raymond Poincaré — a little man who nearly ruined France and who now zealously designs new slaughterhouses for workers and peasants. It reflects poorly on the reason and health of bourgeois states that their destinies are managed by men as insignificant as Poincaré and his like.

Yes, in the modern world there is a great deal of work for humanists. One might point out to the head of the Catholic Church that preaching a crusade in the twentieth century is, at best, the humor of a misanthrope — that is, a hater of mankind — and that such preaching has absolutely nothing in common with the "interests of culture" that humanists are so fond of invoking. One might ask the father of the Christian church whether he truly likes the position in which he and the church he leads found themselves in 1914–1918, when Christians were slaughtering one another by the hundreds of thousands. Yet across the entire world, humanists and defenders of "human rights" are, for some reason, interested in only one point on the map — the one occupied by the Union of Socialist Soviets.

It is highly remarkable that these literate people find it possible and convenient to believe the trite little fable that the Union of Soviets is a one-man dictatorship, when it is evident that what actually holds power there is the concentrated energy of a many-million mass of workers and peasants — an energy organized by the genius of Vladimir Lenin and by the force of reason of his pupils and friends. The aim of this dictatorship is to cultivate throughout the entire population of the Union of Soviets an awareness of their right to create new forms and conditions of cultural life, to build a socialist society of equals. This aim was not set by the "arbitrary will of fanatics and barbarians," as is claimed by people whose hatred compels them to feign ignorance and stupidity — this aim was set by the will of history, and it irrefutably demonstrates that individualism as the foundation of cultural development has exhausted itself and outlived its age.

Is violence used upon human beings for the sake of developing their consciousness? I say — yes! There has never been a moment when it was not used in pursuit of that end. Culture is reason-organized violence against the zoological instincts of people. In the schools of Europe, children are flogged precisely in order to make obedient servants of family and society out of them — keepers of "cultural traditions" just like their parents. I warmly recommend to the educators of Europe that they flog children for displaying the instinct of ownership, and likewise instill in children an awareness of their right to flog their parents for their passion for accumulating money through robbery — a robbery legalized by those same parents.

Among the mass of workers of the Union of Soviets there are active traitors, turncoats, and spies in the service of the former "masters of the country" — masters who would like to restore their proprietary rights — and it is entirely natural that the worker-peasant authority should crush its enemies like lice. These former masters and former people are supported by the capitalists of Europe, its parasites, who support them in the hope of satisfying their morbid and insane thirst for profit. The workers and peasants of the Union of Soviets are successfully building their state under conditions of zoological hatred directed at them by the bourgeoisie of the entire world — a class already degenerated, its energy spent, incapable of creating culture, now acting solely by the force of inertia.

What does this class of degenerates want? It wants to sit on someone else's back just a little while longer, to live a little longer off someone else's labor. Just a little. It does not itself count on a prolonged existence. One of its obedient servants, Gustav Hervé, luring German capitalists into "rapprochement" with the French, frankly blurted out in the newspaper La Victoire the modest intentions of his masters. He wrote:

Germany would sever its ties with Moscow and, serving together with Poland as a barrier against Russian Bolshevism, would take part in all economic measures in the interests of defending civilization from communist barbarism. The collapse of Bolshevism in Russia and the restoration of a capitalist regime there — and this must be remembered — means 20, 30, 40, and 50 years of assured work for American and European industry.

As you can see, the capitalists want truly very little: no fewer than twenty and no more than fifty years of their customarily tranquil, well-fed, colorless, licentious, and irresponsible existence. And in order to secure this "life of prosperity and ease" for themselves, they are once again preparing to send into battle millions of their own workers and peasants and their colonial slaves — against a country with a population of 150 million and an army in which every soldier knows full well what he will be fighting for. In all its history, the bourgeoisie has never expressed its inhumanity in such an openly cynical and vile form!

But what is the matter? Why is it that over the past two years the bourgeoisie of Europe has been baring its inhuman essence with particular indecency and cynicism? A perfectly clear answer to this question is given by former Conservative Member of Parliament Arthur Hopkinson in the English journal Empire Review. He writes "with disarming candor":

What I particularly wish to impress upon the reader is that it is foolish to pretend that the Five-Year Plan has failed. It is a fact that in many areas the plan has already been exceeded. I am doing my utmost to warn the reader against the mistake that may be bred by the assumption that the Five-Year Plan will fail, because in reality it is already achieving such sweeping success as to make it a threat to the entire civilized world.

Hopkinson paints with horror the prospect of the USSR becoming a state independent of world capitalism. He froths at the mouth calling for war against the USSR. He concludes his article with the following resolute warning:

The hammer and sickle may come to mean for Europe what the crescent once meant in the past. It may well be true that "those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword."

But the history of the next fifty years will show that those who did not take up the sword will perish a far more shameful death.

This former man is cleverer than Gustav Hervé. He says nothing about the "barbarism of communism," for he evidently understands that communism and barbarism are incompatible. He does not shriek, as other idiots do, about the "death of culture" being destroyed by communism. His wolfish howl is born of fear that the Union of Soviets is becoming a state independent of world capitalism.

That, gentlemen humanists, is what fills property owners with dread — and therein lies the reason for their hatred of the Union of Soviets, for the slander against the workers' and peasants' power, its way of life, its people, whose astonishing energy is inaugurating an era of new and already universal renaissance.

Gentlemen humanists! Allow me to pose a naive question:

Why do you not protest against a state order that permits an insignificant in number and morally corrupted minority to dispose of the lives of the majority — to poison it with their vices, to keep it in conditions of poverty and ignorance, to send millions of people to battlefields for mutual destruction, to squander vast quantities of metal and other treasures of the earth on armaments — treasures that belong to the working people and ought to secure their future?

Does it not seem to you that this senseless order stands as an obstacle to the growth of genuine, universal culture, of which you platonically dream?

City of Gorky, 1932–1990

In 1932, the USSR marked the 40th anniversary of Gorky's literary career: the writer received the Order of Lenin and received congratulations from Stalin and the Party leadership ^[9]. Formally, the initiative to rename his hometown came "from below": in late August, at a ceremonial gathering in the Kanavino Palace of Culture, it was put forward by Sormovo worker Ovsyannikov and backed by port loader Karnadsky and GAZ worker Baruzdin. The decision was swiftly formalized as a Party resolution, and on 7 October 1932 the Presidium of the USSR Central Executive Committee confirmed the new name — Gorky ^[9]. Around the same time, the writer's name was given to the automobile plant (GAZ), the Moscow Art Theatre, and Moscow's Tverskaya Street ^[7][9].

Gorky himself was uncomfortable with such attention ^[9][14]:

I am too old to be modest, but of course I understand that my merits are overrated

Today, for the first time, I wrote "Gorky" on an envelope instead of N. Novgorod. It feels very awkward and unpleasant

Restoration of the Name

The authors of the 1987 open letter recalled that Gorky had repeatedly expressed disapproval of the city being given his pen name, which "suited his personal literary fate but was wholly unsuitable as a city name" ^[9]. He joked about it himself: "If I had kept my first pen name, Yegudil Khlamida, I wonder how that would have sounded?" ^[14]

The first public proposal to restore the city's historical name came in the late 1950s, on the wave of de-Stalinization: the initiative was put forward by Kirill Maslov, Party Committee Secretary at Gorky University, and the regional leadership approved it. However, A. T. Tvardovsky, V. P. Katayev, K. I. Chukovsky, and other writers considered this an affront to Gorky's memory and wrote to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. According to historian Fyodor Selyoznyov, Khrushchev did not dare to argue with the "engineers of human souls," and the city remained Gorky ^[9].

In the late 1980s, a movement led by Academician D. S. Likhachyov campaigned for the restoration of historical place names. On 4 October 1987, Gorkovskaya Pravda published an open letter from native Nizhny Novgorod residents — Academicians B. A. Korolyov and A. V. Gaponov-Grekhov, writer V. A. Shamshurin, and artist I. M. Ashkenazi — who called the renaming "an act of historical justice" ^[9]. The city council initially voted against: the city executive committee estimated the costs at 50–60 million rubles, though specialists calculated that 500,000 would have sufficed ^[9].

Mayor Omari Sharadze put the question to public debate. In March 1990, during elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, residents were also asked about the renaming, and the majority voted in favor; on 10 May 1990 the city council passed the resolution, in August the regional council endorsed it — noting that restoring the name "in no way diminishes the memory of the great proletarian writer" — and on 22 October 1990 the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR formally approved the renaming of Gorky to Nizhny Novgorod ^[9].

One Georgian took the city's historical name away. So another Georgian must restore historical justice

Museums

All three of Nizhny Novgorod's museums dedicated to the writer are part of the association known as the "State Order of Honor Museum of A. M. Gorky" — Gorky State Museum ^[17].

The Literary Museum opened on the occasion of the writer's 60th birthday, on 22 May 1928, at the initiative of Nizhny Novgorod residents who had known Gorky well. It initially occupied three rooms in the regional library, and in 1934 moved to the merchant mansion of V. M. Burmistrova at 26 Minin Street ^[5]. In 1934, the newspaper Gorkovskiy Rabochiy raised the question of creating a domestic-life museum in the Kashirin house; restoration work began in 1936 to a design by architect D. P. Silvanov, with the living rooms, barn, and dyeing workshop all restored, and on 1 January 1938 the childhood museum opened as a branch of the Literary Museum ^[2][3]. The exhibition features authentic everyday objects from the 19th century, including items that belonged to the Kashirin-Peshkov family ^[3].

The apartment-museum on Semashko Street opened on 15 September 1971. After 1917, the apartment was converted into a dormitory; in 1932 a commemorative plaque marking the 40th anniversary of Gorky's literary career was installed on the building, and the interiors were later restored based on the recollections of Ye. P. Peshkova, who also donated the original furnishings to the museum. The core of the exhibition consists of approximately 1,500 authentic exhibits: the furnishings of the study, the writing desk, the library from Gorky's Nizhny Novgorod period, and part of his art collection ^[1][4]. Present at the opening were the writer's granddaughters Marfa and Darya Peshkovy ^[2]. Visitors can listen to recordings of Gorky's voice with its distinctive Volga okane accent ^[10].

Monuments, plaques, theatre

The most famous monument is the Monument to Maxim Gorky on Gorky Square. A competition was announced in 1939; the winning design was by Vera Mukhina, who had known the writer personally. She depicted Gorky as a young man, as he was during his Nizhny Novgorod years. The monument stands about 14 metres tall: a seven-metre pedestal in the shape of a rock and a figure of 7.7 metres. It was originally intended to stand on the Otkos, which explains the clothing billowing in the wind. Work was halted by the war; after the war the square was redesigned and a garden laid out, and the monument was unveiled on 2 November 1952 ^[1][14]. It is listed among cultural heritage sites ^[1].

In 1972, another monument appeared on the Fedorovsky Embankment: the writer sits on a rock, leaning on a cane, gazing at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga ^[1]. The first memorial plaques on houses associated with Gorky were installed in 1938; the plaque at his birthplace on Kovalikhinsky Street was put up in 1998 (sculptor P. I. Gusev, artist V. F. Shikanov), while a bronze plaque with figures of tramps at the site of the "Stolby" teahouse, unveiled in 1992, has since been lost ^[2].

The Nizhny Novgorod Drama Theatre (Dramteatr) on Bolshaya Pokrovskaya was named after Maxim Gorky in 1943 (some sources give 1944 or 1948). It is the only theatre in the country to have staged all of Gorky's plays; in 1968 its production of "The Lower Depths" was awarded the RSFSR State Prize named after K. S. Stanislavsky ^[15]. Gorky attended the ceremonial opening of the current building on 14 May 1896 — a performance of the opera "A Life for the Tsar" featuring the young Chaliapin ^[15].

The writer's name is borne by a street, a square, and the Gorkovskaya metro station in Nizhny Novgorod, as well as streets in towns across the Region; the Gorky Reservoir, a railway station, and a highway remain as reminders of the sixty years of the "City of Gorky" ^[1][7][14]. Graffiti depicting the writer can also be found on the city's streets ^[1].

Gorky's name on the map

The writer's name spread across the entire country, and not always without irony ^[7]:

• Nearly every Soviet city had its own Gorky Square or Gorky Street, which residents jokingly called "So-and-So Street"; in Moscow, Tverskaya Street held that role for many years ^[7].
• Nizhny Novgorod was called Gorky for nearly sixty years; the reservoir that flooded the Volga floodplain, a railway station, and a highway still bear that name as a reminder ^[7].
• The memory of Gorky is preserved in the names of a district center in Omsk Region (the former selo of Ikonnikovo) and a suburb of Tsaritsyn (Volgograd) ^[7].
• Gorky's name is carried by a metro station in St. Petersburg, the Central Park of Culture and Leisure in Moscow, ships, and countless other landmarks across Russia ^[7].

See also

• City of Gorky
• Monument to Maxim Gorky
• Gorky State Museum
• Nizhny Novgorod Gorky Drama Theatre
• Nizhny Novgorod Yarmarka
• Termal — tradition links this establishment to the steamboat "Dobry", on which Alyosha Peshkov "worked as a boy"
• Food shortage

Sources

1. KP — Nizhny Novgorod — Komsomolskaya Pravda — Gorky-related sites in the city: where the writer was born, lived, and worked — In Gorky's footsteps: Where Maxim Gorky was born, lived, and created in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
2. opentextnn.ru — Otkryty Tekst — B. S. Izvekov, A. V. Kessel, "Memorial Plaques of Nizhny Novgorod": Gorky addresses in chronological order — GORKY A.M. (1868–1936) (archive)
3. culture.ru — Kultura.RF — Museum of A. M. Gorky's Childhood "Kashirin's Little House" (archive)
4. culture.ru — Kultura.RF — A. M. Gorky Memorial Museum-Apartment on Semashko Street
5. culture.ru — Kultura.RF — A. M. Gorky Literary Museum on Minin Street (archive)
6. ilibrary.ru — Alexey Komarov's Internet Library — M. Gorky, "Childhood", Chapter I (from the Complete Works, vol. 15, 1972) — M. Gorky. Childhood. I (archive)
7. web.archive.org — Khronos (archive)
8. gorkiy.lit-info.ru — Maxim Gorky: journalism — the article "To the Humanists" with notes on its first publication — Maxim Gorky: To the Humanists (archive)
9. Kommersant (Volga Region) — the history of Nizhny Novgorod's renaming to Gorky and back — One City, Two Names (archive)
10. nnews.nnov.ru — Gorky-related sites in the city: the flophouse, Nizhegorodsky Listok newspaper, the house from "The Life of Klim Samgin" (archive)
11. arzamas.academy — transcript of an episode about the Bugrov flophouse and Millionka — The Bugrov Flophouse (archive)
12. Vremya N — the "Bosyatskaya Millionnaya" walking tour following the locations from the play "The Lower Depths" — Gorky's "Millionka": a tour in the footsteps of Nizhny Novgorod's flophouses (archive)
13. booksite.ru — Great Soviet Encyclopedia — article on P. A. Zalomov, the prototype for Pavel Vlasov
14. nnstories.tilda.ws — facts about the creation of the Gorky monument on Gorky Square — 15 Facts About the Creation of the Monument to Gorky — the Proletarian Writer
15. ngodb.rf — Nizhny Novgorod State Regional Children's Library named after T. A. Mavrina — a guide to Nizhny Novgorod theatres: the M. Gorky Drama Theatre (archive)
16. rummuseum.ru — Khronos Library — A. M. Gorky and the famines of 1921–1922 and 1932–1933 — "Alexey Maximovich! If only you could see all this horror!" (A. M. Gorky and the famine of 1932–1933) (archive)
17. museumgorkogo.ru — State Museum of A. M. Gorky — official website of the museum association