Maxim Gorky and the October Revolution. Maksim Gorky. Life and work after the Great October Socialist Revolution

Essay content:

What do we call the beginning
Often this is the end.
We're coming to an end
Start all over.
Where there is an end, there is a beginning.
T. Eliot
The revolution can neither pity nor bury its dead,
I. Stalin
In the poem "The People and the Poet", Blok refers to the "artist", that is, apparently, to himself: "You have been given a dispassionate measure to measure everything that you see." I think that no reasoning, just like feeling, can be objective, "passionless", but I agree with this statement, because a person of art is really capable of conveying not only time and events, but also making us feel them, because he draws and inner world of people. Both Blok and Gorky were waiting for the revolution: Gorky as one of its active supporters. Blok is like a person who supports her, but feels that this is his “last sunset”, and the sunset is natural. The illusion of the "march of children to a new life" in the material world turned into blood without a temple. Blok at first tried to justify the "revolutionaries", looking at their deeds as retribution. Subsequently, he wrote in the “Note on the Twelve” that he “blindly surrendered to the elements.” But soon he felt that this element was not elevating, like love, creativity, but destroying. Providence is not a rare thing, and I found in Blok a description of the metamorphosis of the revolution back in 1904, this is the poem "Voice in the Clouds", although I do not think that Blok had in mind the revolution when he wrote about the sailors lured to the rocks by a "prophetic voice" . Gorky, the “petrel of the revolution,” wrote to his wife back in 1908 that the Bolshevik detachment assigned to him had killed 14 people and that he could not accept this. He was more uncompromising than Blok, probably because he really was a petrel: he actively helped the Bolsheviks and was much more specific, bloodless and optimistic. In life, she appeared before him as a revelry of senseless cruelty, murders, a revelry of "serious Russian stupidity", and the new government, its former associates - in 1917 Gorky did not confirm his membership in the RSDLP (b) - not only do not stop, but, on the contrary , maintain this bestial atmosphere. Gorky accused Lenin and the government of conducting "a ruthless experiment on the tortured body of Russia, on living people, an experiment doomed to failure in advance," and their decrees were nothing more than feuilletons. For him, socialism was not so much an economy as a concept of “social”, “cultural”, and he called for a move away “from the struggle of parties to cultural construction”. It was not just a call, but an action: the creation of the “Association of Positive Sciences”, etc. Gorky blamed tsarism in many respects, seeing his legacy in the ongoing atrocity, but at the same time noted that then “there was a conscience that has died now” , and he and Blok saw the “internal enemy”, as Gorky called “the attitude of a person to other people, to knowledge”, and for the poet this is the image of an “old lousy dog” (the worst thing is that he is hungry). You can get rid of it only through getting rid of yourself, or rather, changing yourself. But how difficult it is for a person living during the Twelve, when: “Freedom, freedom! Eh, eh without a cross! I think Blok also could not accept the revolution, because it "ripened anger", awakened not "youth and freedom", as he dreamed, but "black malice: holy malice." The poem "The Twelve" for me is a statement of what is happening and the rejection of sovereignty, lack of spirituality, justification of murder. At the same time, she is full of deep compassion for these people, especially Petka, who are ready for anything, who do not want anything, but also see nothing ... True creativity "attaches a person to higher harmony", and the image of Christ, which ends the poem and is unexpected for the poet himself , arose precisely from this harmony. It has many meanings and interpretations: an indication of the way of the cross of Russia, the primacy of the spiritual (“behind is a hungry dog, in front is Jesus Christ), but after I read “ Untimely Thoughts”, for me it also became the poet’s answer to the publicist: Gorky writes that the revolution needs “a fighter, a builder of a new life, and not a righteous man who would take upon himself the vile sins of everyday people.”
Christ is the Righteous and the Sacrifice, who is needed most of all by all people, not only by the “bloom of the working class and the democratic intelligentsia”, when everything is collapsing, when nothing is visible and everyone goes berserk from it. Both writers were always amazed by the combination of cruelty and mercy among the people, as if in a kaleidoscope every minute changing places. Immediately after The Twelve, Blok writes The Scythians, as if a historical explanation of such a character, such a fate. This is an appeal to the "old world", in my opinion, not only European, but also Russian, so that through the "evil", "Scythian" they see goodness and love in the people and support them, so that they extinguish the hatred in the souls of the "twelve". Gorky, on the other hand, believed that the merit of the Bolsheviks and the revolution was that they "shaken Asian inertia and Eastern passivism" and thanks to this, "Russia will not perish now," and cruelty can soon "inspire disgust and fatigue, which means death for her." The writer's prognosis, unfortunately, did not come true: appetite comes with eating.
Now we are learning history in a new way, and there are fewer people who absolutely support the revolution. Increasingly, the name "Great October Socialist Revolution" is being replaced by the "October Revolution". Everything that has happened to us in seventy-three years was brilliantly predicted by Bakunin back in the middle of the last century and told to Marx himself. But what can you do, “because of the illusion a person loses his freedom”, he also loses the freedom to listen to criticism.
Christ warned of false prophets who would come "in sheep's clothing, but they are ravenous wolves" and "you will know them by their fruits." We see the fruits, and we ourselves, probably, are partly the fruits.
It seems to me that the most strong feeling generated by the 1917 revolution is fear. Now this revolution seems to be the prologue of the end of the world, but once Bartholomew’s Night, the fall of Rome, the invasion of the Horde seemed to be such an end ... It’s terrible that nothing could stop the “bloody rain”, it doesn’t stop now, we really “go in circles”.
It seems to me that great theorists should beware of power, as they often use abstract concepts: masses, classes, and the like, and this distances them from life. The awakening thirst for practice pushes them to experiment, and life is chaotic, they try to introduce rationalism into it, but living people understand it in a living way, and more often in an animal way. And what was right in scientific papers, in fact, turns into a tragedy. And the rejection of an idea in which so much effort has been invested is like death.
People striving for power always forget the example of Macbeth and Claudius, they forget that blood carries power in itself. The Bolsheviks chose a new way to cover up the crime: to legitimize it. good intention- to stop the world war - turned into fratricide, justified by the "class struggle". But even the Greek tragedians said that it is difficult to calm the "thirst for blood" when "revenge reigns in the heart", and "woe to those who support it."
The shake-up of the soul in the revolution grew into an attempt to seize it. The enormity, the “greatness” of what is happening, politics were opposed to the personal. Personality was relegated to the background (unlike Christianity and other religions) by words addressed to the young and asserting that morality is something "beneficial to this or that class", zoological division into classes in itself - all this broke or smoothed out the internal a barrier called conscience, God, after which "everything, therefore, is possible." What happens in the soul cannot be changed by the mind. The shock, the loss of a person, at first tearing and restless, and then passive, continued for a long time, but he was not treated, but the disease was driven deeper.
I see the revolution as yet another loss. I do not argue that not everyone lived well in Russia (it cannot be in general that absolutely everyone would be happy), they were hungry, humiliated, but, despite this, in Russia there was a special spiritual subtlety. She, that one, will no longer be, she left with the Turbins, Zhivago ... Spiritual subtlety will be reborn, I believe, but it will already be different.
Believers accepted the revolution as God's punishment. We should, I think, accept it the same way: it will save us from curses. Cursing your past, no matter how terrible it may be, can only be a bad person. We have already had such experience and have seen its fruits. We must do what we did not do then: sympathize with the past. Even those "through whom sins come." It's very difficult, but if you think about it, were they happy? What did they remember?

M. Bitter - chronicler Russians revolutions.

Maxim Gorky has never been a professional politician. At one time he was a member of the Bolshevik Party. He supported her financially. However, he was a great artist of the word and an experienced journalist.

As a writer, by 1917 he had done hard way from romanticism to critical realism and then to socialist realism. There is no other such writer in the 20th century who, on behalf of the proletariat, introduced so many new ideas both into world fiction and into the theory of literary criticism, aesthetics, and social philosophy.

That is why simple workers so passionately love their protector and teacher. That is why M. Gorky is so hated by bourgeois hacks and chatterboxes, who pretend to be "thinkers" and "outstanding" public figures.

M. Gorky was a brilliant chronicler - Nestor - of his era. A rich imagination and a huge talent from God gave birth to those vivid images that readers once saw in his stories and stories, in fairy tales and legends, forever remained in their memory. He painted the great revolutionary era in large strokes and described it in such detail that even the most talented professional journalists could not rise to.

It will be about his journalism of 1917 - about his articles published in the newspaper "New Life", published by him and his colleagues, and then collected in the book "Untimely Thoughts". This SPECIAL BOOK of the writer. It will be discussed further.

In articles, he expressed his dissatisfaction with the behavior of the masses, the actions of Lenin and Russian officials on the eve, during and after two revolutions - February and October. He described events as he saw and, as it seemed to him, understood. However, not always a person can correctly assess the situation. Even such a brilliant mind as M. Gorky.

After three years of imperialist war, soldiers armed with rifles returned to hungry Russia from the front after the cowardly abdication of the tsar from the throne. Millions of shell-shocked and wounded. Weakened by the long absence of male workers, the village. A little later, tsarist officials who fled abroad, who did not want to work for the victorious proletariat, as well as nobles, aristocracy, bourgeois, merchants, and intelligentsia.

Murders without trial or investigation, robberies, banditry, theft, rudeness after February 1917. The decline in morals, violence, and the humiliation of women spilled onto the streets of cities. The decline of culture, the export of works of art abroad - all this taken together could not help but stun the cultural and educated person accustomed to order and discipline in in public places. Such drastic changes in the country could not but horrify Gorky.

He shifted all the blame for these horrors on Kerensky, Lenin and the Bolsheviks. As if there was no Provisional Government!? There were no defeats of the tsarist army on the fronts of the First World War!? There were no desertions and executions of officers and soldier riots!?

He wrote in those articles:

"Imagining themselves Napoleons from socialism, the Leninists tear and rush, completing the destruction of Russia - the Russian people will pay for this with lakes of blood."

“Lenin himself, of course, is a man of exceptional strength; for twenty-five years he stood in the forefront of the fighters for the triumph of socialism, he is one of the largest and brightest figures in international social democracy; a talented man, he has all the qualities of a “leader”, as well as and the lack of morality necessary for this role and a purely lordly, ruthless attitude towards the life of the masses.

Lenin is the “leader” and is a Russian gentleman, not alien to some of the spiritual properties of this class that has gone into oblivion, and therefore he considers himself entitled to do a cruel experiment with the Russian people, doomed to failure in advance.

And there are many such words about the leader of the world proletariat in those articles of his.

The Pravda newspaper then wrote about this series of articles: "Gorky spoke in the language of the enemies of the working class."

M. Gorky objected: “This is not true. Addressing the most conscious representatives of the working class, I say: Fanatics and frivolous dreamers, having aroused hopes in the working masses that are not feasible under the given historical conditions, are leading the Russian proletariat to defeat and death, and the defeat of the proletariat will provoke a long and gloomy reaction in Russia.” (From Gorky's book. "Untimely Thoughts").

When I first read this book by M. Gorky in 1988, I did not believe that our Burevestnik could write such a rude scolding of both the revolution and Lenin.

In 1922, Gorky went to Italy for treatment: an exacerbation of tuberculosis began again. Returning a few years later to Soviet Russia, he looked at the country and the people with different eyes. He traveled half the country, rejoicing at the tremendous work done by the Bolshevik Party and personally by Stalin. In the four remaining years of his life, he managed to establish socialist order in the Russian-speaking and Russian fiction, gather all the writers at the first congress and develop a theoretical method of socialist realism. This congress is yet to be discussed.

Many years Soviet power"Untimely Thoughts" was not published. In the lectures on Gorky at the philological faculty, these "Thoughts" were not told to us. And in vain!....

As soon as supreme power in culture under Gorbachev, future shvydkoizers were captured, they urgently began to publish anti Soviet literature. Such is their "intellectual" and "cultural" level. Well, what can you do with them: Born to crawl - can't fly!

Today, numerous Russian-speaking officials are engaged in this important "work". All anti-communist, Russophobic and anti-Soviet actions have recently been planned and implemented by Medynsky and his team. Thick-cheeked Bykov was assigned the role of the main slanderer of Soviet literature, Soviet writers, including M. Gorky ....

Needless to say, the years of the revolution and the Civil War were difficult. Each of the 14 imperialist states sent tens of thousands of their troops to divide Russia into 14 pieces.

How Gorky treated the White Guard and the interventionists, I will tell you a little later.

However, today I would like to remind you of the counter-revolutionary events of 1991-1993, of the deeds of President Yeltsin, the puppet of the West. What would M. Gorky say if he saw the execution with his own eyes Soviet officers and the soldiers of the Supreme Soviet, the organ of the proletarian dictatorship? I suppose that he would have been very indignant not only with the actions of the anti-Soviet Yeltsin, who ordered to shoot The White house, but also by the actions of Soviet generals (Minister of Defense Grachev and his deputy Kobets, generals Evnevich and Polyakov, colonels Savilov and Tishin), who carried out his decree No. 1400.

What did the so-called "president" do with the country and its people? It practically destroyed the economy of the entire country. Introduced a new anti-Soviet Constitution. Transferred state finances into the hands of foreign tycoons. Fragmented homogeneous Soviet society into antagonistic classes, estates and sects. Banned the Communist Party and liquidated independent trade unions.

Was there among the Russian-speaking liberals, among those who cannot fly, at least one honest and cultured writer who captured all the criminal anti-people, anti-Soviet actions of Yeltsin? No one!!

None of the liberals tried to describe the picture of the execution of the White House on his orders on October 3-4, 1993. None published their "untimely" thoughts about those bloody days.

Only M. Gorky could honestly formalize his "Untimely Thoughts". One Gorky and no one else.

And here are some of his "timely thoughts" applicable to the current situation in Russia, from the same book:

“But telling the truth is the most difficult art of all arts, because in its “pure” form, not connected with the interests of individuals, groups, classes, nations ...

“For those who destroy millions of lives in order to seize several hundred miles of foreign land into their own hands, for them there is neither god nor devil. The people for them are cheaper than stone, love for the motherland is a series of habits. They love to live the way they live, and let the whole earth shatter into dust in the universe - they do not want to live otherwise than they are used to.

“Politics is the soil on which the thistle of poisonous hostility, evil suspicions, shameless lies, slander, painful ambitions, disrespect for the individual grows rapidly and abundantly—list all the evil that is in a person—all this grows especially vividly and richly precisely on ground of political struggle.

"The task of culture is the development and strengthening of social conscience, social morality in a person, the development and organization of all abilities, all talents of the individual - is this task feasible in the days of universal brutality?"

Later, M. Gorky criticized his erroneous judgments expressed by him in the articles we are considering. More on this ahead.

Not everyone from the first reading understands the meaning of the title of M. Gorky's collection - "Untimely Thoughts". Others understand, but deliberately troll, distort its meaning.

Why did he call the thoughts that arose in him after February 1917 "untimely" and nothing else?

In his younger years, like many writers at the beginning of the 20th century, Gorky did not escape the fascination with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). In the works of this philosopher, he found several "Untimely reflections" on history, culture, and man. He argued that the lot of modernity is small thoughts, insignificant passions, pitiful feelings. We must rise above the present and peer into the distance of the future.

Nietzsche MADE A VERY IMPORTANT DISCOVERY that "... there is such a degree of insomnia, constant chewing of the cud, such a degree of development of historical feeling, which entails enormous damage to all living things and eventually leads to its death, whether it be an individual, or people, or culture."

Let's stop and go back to our days. Do our contemporaries have "insomnia", "experience of chewing gum"?

Of course there is. Any government is trying propaganda and agitation, psychological methods to put the masses into a sleepless state. Lulls him with promises and never keeps them.

We will open any TV channel of Russian companies. Each of them is given several false ideas, which they are obliged to "chew", "suck in" daily. Sofa inhabitants are thoroughly saturated with this lie and behave law-abidingly.

If such chewing continues from day to day, a person, the population of an entire country, develops "... such a degree of development of historical feeling, which entails enormous damage to all living things and eventually leads to its death, whether it be an individual person, or people, or culture." To an uprising, to a revolution, to the Arab Spring...

In other words, the time is coming, the deep spiritual CRISIS, which can lead certain people, state, civilization to chaos and death

We are experiencing such an era, which began in 1917, the era of the GLOBAL transition of mankind from capitalist to non-capitalist relations. It has been going on for a whole century, and the ruling bourgeois classes and estates have no hope of maintaining the status quo that currently exists.

Nietzsche argued that such a crisis could lead humanity and all life on the planet to death. In the Second World War, the USSR saved humanity from destruction. Now again the smell of gunpowder of a new world war. Who can save humanity?

M. Gorky understood the idea expressed by Nietzsche in a different way. He was seriously frightened by what he observed in 1917 in Petrograd after he abdicated. the last Romanov. He was horrified by the chaos that arose in the city - murders, robberies, banditry, etc. And he, describing this chaos, wanted to warn people in his "untimely" articles about the death that the revolution allegedly brought to people and culture.

Lenin called him to move from Petrograd to Moscow. He moved. He looked at the new life of the people and stopped publishing articles in Novaya Zhizn. The period of compiling the annals of the transformations that took place in the USSR before his eyes began.

Already in mid-May 1918, Gorky wrote in one of his articles:

“Dirt and rubbish are always more noticeable on a sunny day, but it often happens that we, focusing our attention too intensely on facts that are irreconcilably hostile to the thirst for a better one, no longer see the rays of the sun and, as it were, do not feel its life-giving power ... Now the Russian people are all involved in the creation of one's own history is an event of great importance, and from this one must proceed in assessing everything good and bad that torments and pleases us.

So the term "untimely thoughts" of M. Gorky entered the journalistic and scientific circulation and became a chronicle of those historical events that he observed, but could not understand the future turn from chaos to a new socialist order.

So Nietzsche gave Gorky "... the opportunity... to penetrate into that unhistorical atmosphere in which every great historical event, and breathe it for a while, then such a person would be able, perhaps, as a knowing being, to rise to a supra-historical point of view, which ... he pointed out as a possible result of historical reflections "...

(Continued in the 4th article)

What do we call the beginning

Often this is the end.

We're coming to an end

Start all over.

Where there is an end, there is a beginning.

The revolution can neither pity nor bury its dead,

I. Stalin

In the poem “The People and the Poet,” Blok refers to the “artist,” that is, apparently, to himself: “You have been given a dispassionate measure to measure everything that you see.” I think that no reasoning, just like feeling, can be objective, "dispassionate", but I agree with this statement, because a person of art is really capable of conveying not only time and events, but also making us feel them, because he also paints the inner world of people. Both Blok and Gorky were waiting for the revolution: Gorky as one of its active supporters. Blok as a person who supports her, but feels that this is his “last sunset”, and the sunset is natural. The illusion of the "march of children to a new life" in the material world turned into blood without a temple. Blok at first tried to justify the "revolutionaries", looking at their deeds as retribution. Subsequently, he wrote in the “Note on the Twelve” that he “blindly gave himself up to the elements.” But soon he felt that this element was not elevating, like love, creativity, but destroying. Providence is not a rare thing, and I found in Blok a description of the metamorphosis of the revolution back in 1904, this poem “Voice in the Clouds”, although I don’t think that Blok had a revolution in mind when he wrote about sailors lured to the rocks by a “prophetic voice” . Gorky, the “petrel of the revolution,” wrote to his wife back in 1908 that the Bolshevik detachment assigned to him had killed 14 people and that he could not accept this. He was more uncompromising than Blok, probably because he really was a petrel: he actively helped the Bolsheviks and was much more specific, bloodless and optimistic. In life, she appeared before him as a revelry of senseless cruelty, murders, a revelry of “grave Russian stupidity”, and the new government, its former associates - in 1917 Gorky did not confirm his membership in the RSDLP (b) - not only do not stop, but, on the contrary , maintain this bestial atmosphere. Gorky accused Lenin and the government of conducting “a ruthless experiment on the tortured body of Russia, on living people, an experiment doomed to failure,” and their decrees were nothing more than feuilletons. For him, socialism was not so much an economy as a concept of “social”, “cultural”, and he called for a move away “from the struggle of parties to cultural construction”. It was not just a call, but an action: the creation of the “Association of Positive Sciences”, etc. Gorky blamed tsarism in many ways, seeing his legacy in the ongoing atrocity, but at the same time noted that then “there was a conscience that has died now” , and he and Blok saw the “internal enemy”, as Gorky called “the attitude of a person to other people, to knowledge”, and for the poet this is the image of an “old lousy dog” (the worst thing is that he is hungry). You can get rid of it only through getting rid of yourself, or rather, changing yourself. But how difficult it is for a person living during the “Twelve” when: “Freedom, freedom! Eh, eh without a cross!” I think Blok also could not accept the revolution, because it "ripened anger", awakened not "youth and freedom", as he dreamed, but "black malice: holy malice." The poem "The Twelve" for me is a statement of what is happening and the rejection of sovereignty, lack of spirituality, justification of murder. At the same time, she is full of deep compassion for these people, especially Petka, who are ready for anything, who do not want anything, but also see nothing ... True creativity “attaches a person to higher harmony,” and the image of Christ, which ends the poem and the poet himself, arose precisely from this harmony. It has many meanings and interpretations: an indication of the way of the cross of Russia, the supremacy of the spiritual (“behind is a hungry dog, in front is Jesus Christ), but after I read Untimely Thoughts, it also became for me the poet’s answer to a publicist: Gorky writes that the revolution needs "a fighter, a builder of a new life, and not a righteous man who would take upon himself the vile sins of everyday people."

Christ is the Righteous and the Sacrifice, who is needed most of all by all people, not only by the “bloom of the working class and democratic intelligentsia”, when everything is collapsing, when nothing is visible and everyone goes berserk from it. Both writers were always amazed by the combination of cruelty and mercy among the people, as if in a kaleidoscope every minute changing places. Immediately after The Twelve, Blok writes Scythians, as if a historical explanation of such a character, such a fate. This is an appeal to the “old world”, in my opinion, not only European, but also Russian, so that through the “evil”, “Scythian” they see goodness and love in the people and support them so that they extinguish the hatred in the souls of the “twelve”. Gorky, on the other hand, believed that the merit of the Bolsheviks and the revolution was that they “shaken Asian inertia and Eastern passivism” and thanks to this “Russia will not perish now”, and cruelty can soon “inspire disgust and fatigue, which means death for her”. The writer's prognosis, unfortunately, did not come true: appetite comes with eating.

Now we are learning history in a new way, and there are fewer people who absolutely support the revolution. Increasingly, the name “Great October Socialist Revolution” is being replaced by the “October Revolution”. Everything that has happened to us in seventy-three years was brilliantly predicted by Bakunin back in the middle of the last century and told to Marx himself. But what can you do, “because of the illusion a person loses his freedom”, he also loses the freedom to listen to criticism.

Christ warned of false prophets who would come "in sheep's clothing, but they are ravenous wolves" and "you will know them by their fruits." We see the fruits, and we ourselves, probably, are partly the fruits.

It seems to me that the strongest feeling generated by the 1917 revolution is fear. Now this revolution seems to be a prologue to the end of the world, but once Bartholomew’s Night, the fall of Rome, the invasion of the Horde seemed to be such an end ... It’s terrible that nothing could stop the “bloody rain”, it doesn’t stop now, we really “go in circles ".

It seems to me that great theorists should beware of power, as they often use abstract concepts: masses, classes, and the like, and this distances them from life. The awakening thirst for practice pushes them to experiment, and life is chaotic, they try to introduce rationalism into it, but living people understand it in a living way, and more often in an animal way. And what was true in scientific works, in fact, turns into a tragedy. And the rejection of an idea in which so much effort has been invested is like death.

People striving for power always forget the example of Macbeth and Claudius, they forget that blood carries power in itself. The Bolsheviks chose a new way to cover up the crime: to legitimize it. The good intention - to stop the world war - turned into fratricide, justified by the "class struggle". But even the Greek tragedians said that it is difficult to calm the “thirst for blood” when “revenge reigns in the heart”, and “woe to the one who supports it”.

The shake-up of the soul in the revolution grew into an attempt to seize it. The enormity, the “greatness” of what is happening, politics were opposed to the personal. Personality was relegated to the background (unlike Christianity and other religions) by the words addressed to the young and asserting that morality is something “beneficial to this or that class”, the zoological division into classes in itself - all this broke or smoothed out the internal a barrier called conscience, God, after which "everything, therefore, is possible." What happens in the soul cannot be changed by the mind. The shock, the loss of a person, at first tearing and restless, and then passive, continued for a long time, but he was not treated, but the disease was driven deeper.

I see the revolution as yet another loss. I do not argue that not everyone lived well in Russia (it cannot be in general that absolutely everyone would be happy), they were hungry, humiliated, but, despite this, in Russia there was a special spiritual subtlety. She, that one, will no longer be, she left with the Turbins, Zhivago ... Spiritual subtlety will be reborn, I believe, but it will already be different.

Believers accepted the revolution as God's punishment. We should, I think, accept it the same way: it will save us from curses. Cursing your past, no matter how terrible it may be, can only be a bad person. We have already had such experience and have seen its fruits. We must do what we did not do then: sympathize with the past. Even those "through whom sins come." It's very difficult, but if you think about it, were they happy? What did they remember?

Gorky Maxim (real name and surname Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov) (March 16, 1868, Nizhny Novgorod , - June 18, 1936, Gorki, near Moscow). Father - cabinetmaker: mother from the middle class. Studied for 2 years. From 1878 his life "in people" began. Lived in the slums, among the tramps; wandering, he lived by day labor. He visited the Volga region, the Don, Ukraine, South Bessarabia, the Crimea, the Caucasus. He was arrested more than once for social and political activities. Member of the Revolution of 1905-1907. In the autumn of 1905, he joined the RSDLP (in 1917, having parted ways with the Bolsheviks on the issue of the timeliness of the socialist revolution in Russia, he did not re-register the party members and formally dropped out of it). From 1906 he lived abroad. In the spring of 1907 cases. 5th (London) Congress of the RSDLP (with an advisory vote). In 1907-1909 experienced a great influence A.A. Bogdanova , V.A. Bazarov, A.V. Lunacharsky (revision philosophical foundations Marxism, god-building propaganda), whom he supported in philosophical disputes with V.I. Lenin . Together with Bogdanov and his supporters, he took an active part in organizing a party school for Russian workers in Capri (Italy).

By the 1910s Gorky's name became one of the most popular in Russia, and then in Europe (his first story was published in 1892), his work caused a huge critical literature (91 books about Gorky were published in 1900-1904; from 1896 to 1904 critical literature about him amounted to over 1860 titles). Performances of his plays on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater were an exceptional success and were accompanied by anti-government speeches of the public.

In con. 1913 returned to Russia. From the first days first world war adopted an anti-militarist, internationalist position. Gorky greeted the February Revolution of 1917 enthusiastically, seeing in it the victory of the democratic forces of the country, the insurgent people. His apartment in Petrograd in February-March "resembled a headquarters" where political and public figures, workers, writers, artists, actors. Gorky became the initiator of a number of social and cultural undertakings, paid great attention to the protection of cultural monuments, became a member of the "Special Conference on Claims", was chairman. Commission on issues of lawsuits under the executive committee of Petrograd. RSD Council. On March 12, in a speech at a rally in the Mikhailovsky T-re, he announced the measures taken to protect the monuments of the claim. He wrote a number of articles, indignant at the mass export of art from Russia. of valuables worth "Amer. millions", protested against the robbery of the country, participated in the establishment of the "Society of Memory of the Decembrists", "Society of the House-Museum of the Memory of Freedom Fighters" (May). With the active participation of Gorky, the "League of Social Education" was created (June 4), and the House of Scientists was organized. He is a member of the commission on the hands of Nar. house in Petrograd, was later elected before. org. to-ta "Educational Society in memory of February 27, 1917 "Culture and Freedom"" (March 1918); it also included V.N. Figner , G.A. Lopatin , IN AND. Zasulich , G.V. Plekhanov , V.A. Bazarov etc. Main. the goal of the society was to coordinate all the cult-prosvet, about-in, clubs, circles. In order for the society to be able to fulfill the task of spiritual revival and moral purification of the country, Gorky believed, it was necessary first of all to unite "the intellectual forces of the old, experienced intelligentsia with the forces of the young worker-cross intelligentsia." And for this it is necessary to "rise above politics" and direct all efforts to "immediate intensive cultural work", involving in it the workers and the cross, the masses ("New Life", 1917, June 30). Culture, he believed, must be instilled in the people, brought up for centuries in slavery, given to the proletariat, the broad masses of the systematic. knowledge, a clear understanding of their world-ist. mission, their rights and duties, to teach democracy.

One of the most important scientific and educational undertakings of Gorky these days (March) was the creation of the "Free Association for the Development and Dissemination of Positive Sciences", which included prominent scientists and public figures (I.P. Pavlov, VA Steklov, LA Chugaev, A. E. Fersman, A. A. Markov, S. P. Kostychev, D. K. Zabolotny, V. G. Korolenko, L.B. Krasin , ON THE. Morozov, V.I. Palladium, etc.). Gorky three times (April - May) spoke in Petrograd and Moscow at public meetings of the association with speeches, asserted the importance of science for the free development of man.

According to Gorky, "there is no future without democracy", "a strong man is a reasonable man", and therefore it is necessary to "arm accurate knowledge"," instill respect for reason, develop love for it, feel its universal power "(" Chronicle ", 1917, N 5-6, pp. 223-28). Gorky called on all Russian society to "support" Free association of "scholars morally and materially": "The source of our misfortunes is our illiteracy. In order to live well, one must work well, in order to stand firmly on one's feet, one must work hard, learn to love work" (ibid.).

The greatest activity lit. and societies, the work of Gorky received in the gas he founded. Novaya Zhizn [came out in Petrograd from 18 Apr. ed. Gorky, with the closest participation (essentially - co-editors) V.A. Bazarova, V.A. Desnitsky, N.N. Sukhanov , A.N. Tikhonov and was the organ of a group of Social Democrats "internationalists", which united part of the Mensheviks - supporters Yu.O. Martova and dep. semi-Bolshevik intellectuals. orientation]. The newspaper from the first issue announced the struggle against the imperialists as its program. war, the unification of all roar. and democrat. forces to keep social and watered. conquest Feb. revolution, the development of culture, education, science on the way to the further implementation of social. transformations in the country, led by the Councils of the RSD under the hands of. s.-d. parties. In addition to the new cycle of "Russian Tales", stories, essays, Gorky published St. 80 articles, 58 of them-in a series"Untimely Thoughts", the title itself emphasizing their acute relevance and polemic. orientation. "Novozhiznenskaya" journalism compiled two books of the writer complementing each other - "Revolution and Culture. Articles for 1917." (P.. 1918) and "Untimely Thoughts. Notes on Revolution and Culture" (P., 1918; republished. M., 1990)

Gorky condemned the "senseless massacre, exposed the desire of the Provisional Government to bring the war to a victorious end. The internationalist position of the newspaper caused a sharp rejection of the bourgeois press: in V. L. Burtsev's article "Either we, or the Germans and those who are with them" Gorky was accused of espionage, treason (see: "Rus. Volya", July 7, 9, 20; "Living Word", July 9; Gorky's answer, see: "New Life", July 9, 12). Gorky also wrote in anger about "the disgusting pictures of madness that engulfed Petrograd on the afternoon of July 4," when, under the influence of Bolshevik propaganda, the indignation of the armed workers and soldiers became a rehearsal for the "social revolution," "However, the main activator of the drama," he wrote , - I do not consider "Leninists", not Germans, not provocateurs and secret counter-revolutionaries, but more evil, more strong enemy- heavy growth. stupidity" (ibid., July 14). Gorky believed that "the most terrible enemy of freedom and law is within us", "our cruelty and all that chaos of dark, anarchic feelings, which was brought up in our souls by the shameless oppression of the monarchy, its cynical cruelty" (ibid., April 23). With the victory of the revolution, only the "process of intellectual enrichment of the country" begins (ibid., April 18). Culture, science, and art are, according to Gorky, just that force (and the intelligentsia - the bearer of this force), which "will allow us to overcome the abominations of life and tirelessly, stubbornly strive for justice, the beauty of life, for freedom" (ibid., April 20).

Defending the social gains of the revolution, opposing reaction, conservative forces, bourgeois. parties, Time. pr-va, gas. Novaya Zhizn very soon entered into polemics with the Bolsheviks, who put the issue of armament on the agenda. uprising and carrying out social. roar-tion. Gorky is convinced that Russia is not ready for social. transformations, that the uprising will be drowned in a sea of ​​blood, and the cause of the revolution will be thrown back decades. He believed that before implementing the social. rev-tion. the people must "work hard in order to acquire the consciousness of their personality, their human dignity", that first they "must be incinerated and cleansed from the slavery nurtured in them by the slow fire of culture" (ibid., July 14). For Gorky as an artist, ist. Russia's development was revealed in Ch. arr. through life. Russian psychology. people and above all the cross-va: so, in his book. "On the Russian Cross-ve" (Berlin, 1922), the tragedy of the rev-tion was depicted in the atmosphere of the wild cruelty of both belligerents in Grazhd. war. Developing the ideas expressed as early as 1915 in Art. "Two Souls", Gorky wrote with anxiety about the passivity, slavish obedience to the circumstances of the Russian. man, while admiring his ability at a decisive moment to be heroic. affairs. Gorky tried to stir up a roar. the energy of the people, the activity of man as opposed to dreamy fatalism and philistine philistinism, as well as the anarchism of the countryside.

Back in the July days, Gorky saw a frightening "departure of the social roar." A week before October in st. "You can't be silent!" urges the Bolsheviks to abandon the "performance", fearing that "this time the events will take on an even more bloody and pogrom character, inflict an even more severe blow to the roar" ("New Life", 1917, 18 Oct.). After Oct. coup, the opposition New Life, led by Gorky, became an opponent new government, criticizing the "costs" of the revolution, its "shadow sides", the forms and methods of implementing social transformations in the country - the cultivation of the class. hatred, terror of violence, "zoological anarchism" of the dark masses: at the same time, Gorky defends the roar forgotten in the whirlwind. buden humanistic. ideals of socialism, ideas of democracy, human values, rights and freedom of the individual. He accuses the leaders of the Bolsheviks, Lenin and "his henchmen" of "destroying the freedom of the press", "adventurism", "dogmatism" and "nechaevism", justifying the "despotism of power". Imagining themselves "Napoleons from socialism", the Bolshevik-Leninists "complete the destruction of Russia - the Russian people will pay for this with lakes of blood" (ibid., November 10). From article to article, he writes about the October Revolution as an "adventure", which will only lead to "anarchy, the death of the proletariat and revolution" (ibid., November 7). Gorky speaks of the "cruel experience" of the Bolshevik fanatics and utopians over the Rus. a people "doomed in advance to failure" (ibid., December 10), "a ruthless experience that will destroy best forces workers and for a long time will stop the normal development of Rus. roar-tion" (ibid., November 10). He notes that the working class "will have to pay for the mistakes and crimes of their leaders - with thousands of lives, streams of blood" (ibid., November 12). In his opinion, Lenin and Trotsky, Bolshevik people's commissars - "leaders" of the backward working masses, "rebellious philistines" - "put into practice the beggarly ideas of Proudhon, but not Marx, develop Pugachevism, and not socialism, and in every possible way propagate universal alignment with moral and material poverty "(ibid., December 6). "Theft is developing - writes Gorky - robberies are growing, shameless people are practicing bribery just as cleverly as the officials of the tsarist government did it"; the rudeness of the representatives "pr-va nar. commissars" causes general indignation. And all this is being done in the name of the "proletariat" and in the name of "social revolution", and all this is a "triumph of animal life. the development of that Asiaticism, which is festering us. "" No, - the writer states, - in this explosion the zoological. instincts, I do not see pronounced elements of social rev-tion. This is Russian. revolt without socialists in spirit, without the participation of the social. psychology" (ibid., December 7). Gorky agrees with the "enemies" that "Bolshevism is a nat. misfortune, for it threatens to destroy the weak germs of Rus. culture in the chaos of the gross instincts excited by him" (ibid., 1918, March 22).

The essence, direction, general pathos of Gorky's Novozhiznenskaya journalism, like the entire social-lit. his activities in 1917-18 are permeated with the idea of ​​upholding and protecting the indissoluble unity of politics and morality. As a writer, Gorky is primarily concerned with the moral side of the roar. events, he measures everything with ordinary person, a single person. The separation of politics and morality, according to the writer, will have the most detrimental effect on the life of the people and the country in the present and threatens with grave and bloody consequences in the future. It contributes to the introduction of anti-democracy. methods in politics, leads to the justification of violence, cruelty and terror, the violation of social justice.

Gorky's activities in those years provoked sharp criticism from the authorities. Arguing with him, a Bolshevik. the party and official press wrote that the writer turned from a "petrel" into a "loon", "whose "happiness of battle" is inaccessible" ("Pravda", 1917. November 22), acts as a "sniffing layman" (ibid., 9 Dec.), “because of the trees he doesn’t see the forest” rm, November 25), that his conscience was gone” (“Petrogr. masses", "spitting on this people" ("Pravda", 1918, March 17), in a word - "changed the roar" and "solidizes with the reactionaries" (ibid., 1918, January 7).

Gorky sharply, painfully perceived this criticism, comparing him with "enemies of the working class" and accusations of "treason to the cause of the proletariat." He asserted and defended his “right to speak the offensive and bitter truth about the people”, about his passivity, slavish obedience, “gravitation towards equality in insignificance”, “about the costs” of the rev-tion: “Whoever has power, it’s up to me my human right remains to be critical of it" Novaya Zhizn, 1917, Nov. 19). At the same time, for Gorky, socialism is not a utopia: he continued to believe in his ideas, he wrote about "heavy labor pains" new world, "new Russia", noting that, despite all the mistakes, crimes, "the roar-tion, nevertheless, has grown to its victory" (ibid., 1918, June 11), and expressed confidence that the roaring whirlwind, which shook "to the very depths of Russia", "heal us, heal us", revive "to construction and creativity" (ibid., 1918, June 30). Stating that he is by no means going to defend the Bolsheviks, Gorky also pays tribute to them: "The best of of them - excellent people, to-rymi will eventually be proud of Rus. history ... "; "... and something good can be said about the Bolsheviks - I will say that, not knowing what results will lead us, in the end, watered, their activities, psychologically - the Bolsheviks have already rendered Russian. service to the people, moving their entire mass off the dead center and arousing in the entire mass an active attitude towards reality, an attitude without which our country would perish "(ibid., 1918, May 26). Nevertheless, attacks on Novaya Zhizn" did not stop, and in the second half of June 1918 criticism of Gorky and the positions of his newspaper by the Bolshevik press took on a particularly sharp character, going as far as direct accusations of the writer of collusion with the bourgeoisie. On July 16, 1918, with the consent of Lenin, the newspaper was finally closed (before that, the publication had been several once temporarily stopped). forces of the proletariat in the revolution.

During this period (and in subsequent years of the Civil War) Gorky was one of the organizers of the lit.-societies. and publisher. undertakings (publishing house "World Literature", "House of Writers", "House of Arts", etc.). He called for the unity of the old and new intelligentsia, spoke in their defense against unreasonable persecution by the Soviets. authorities. Dec. 1918 elected to Petrograd. Council (re-elected in June 1920). The writer worked in Petrograd, founded on his initiative. Commission for the Improvement of the Life of Scientists (PetroKUBU), since Jan. 1920 her prev. He opposed the military. intervention, called on the advanced forces of the world to protect the revolution, to help the starving. In 1918, his books In People, Russian Tales, Yeralash and Other Stories, Articles 1905-1916 were published, and a number of new works were also written.

Oct. 1921 due to deteriorating health and at the insistence of Lenin, Gorky went abroad for treatment; in 1928 he visited his homeland for the first time and since then he has been coming to Sov. Union (except 1931), until finally settled in the USSR in 1933

The materials of the article by I.I. Weinberg in the book: Politicians of Russia 1917. biographical dictionary. Moscow, 1993.

Gorky, revolution, intelligentsia

— Storm! The storm is coming soon!

This bold Petrel proudly flies between lightning bolts over the roaring sea; then the prophet of victory cries:

Let the storm blow up!

M. Gorky. "Song of the Petrel"

June 18, 1936, 80 years ago, passed away great writer Maksim Gorky. Great Russian and then Soviet writer had a very difficult and difficult fate.

Maxim Gorky (real name - Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov) was born (16) March 28, 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod in the family of Maxim Savvatevich Peshkov and Varvara Vasilievna Kashirina. By official biography his father was a cabinet maker (according to another version, he was the manager of the Astrakhan shipping company I.S. Kolchin), and his mother was the daughter of the owner of the dye house. The marriage did not last long, soon the father died of cholera. Alexey Peshkov fell ill with cholera at the age of three, his father managed to get him out, but at the same time he became infected himself and did not survive. The boy almost did not remember his father, but the stories of his relatives about him left a deep impression - even the pseudonym "Maxim Gorky", according to the old Nizhny Novgorod residents, was taken in memory of his father. The mother did not want to return to her father and remarried, but soon died of consumption. Thus, in early age little Alexei was orphaned and was raised by his grandfather and grandmother.

Maxim's grandmother - Akulina Ivanovna - replaced the boy's parents. Alexei spent his childhood in the house of his grandfather Kashirin in Nizhny Novgorod. Vasily Vasilyevich went bankrupt towards the end of his life, but taught his grandson. For the most part, Alexey read church books and got acquainted with the biographies of the saints. At the age of eleven, he met harsh realities working life, as he was completely alone. Alexei worked as an assistant on a steamer, in a store, as a baker, learned to paint icons, etc. Gorky never received a full education, although he studied at a local vocational school. Already during this period, Alexei Maksimovich became interested in literature and wrote his first works.

Since 1878, his life "in people" began. Lived in the slums, among the tramps; wandering, he lived by day labor. In 1884, Gorky entered the university in Kazan, but he was not enrolled. However, Alexei, at the age of sixteen, was already enough strong personality. He stayed in Kazan and began to work. Here he first became acquainted with Marxism. The life and work of Maxim Gorky were subsequently permeated with the ideas of Marx and Engels, he surrounded the image of the proletarian and the revolution with a halo of romance. Young Writer zealously involved in propaganda and already in 1888 he was arrested for his connection with the revolutionary underground. The young writer was placed under strict police surveillance. While working at the railway station, he wrote several short stories as well as poetry. Gorky was able to avoid imprisonment by going on a journey around the country. Don, Ukraine, Bessarabia, Crimea, further North Caucasus and, finally, Tiflis - this is the writer's travel itinerary. He worked hard and conducted propaganda among his colleagues, as well as peasants. These years of Maxim Gorky's life are marked by the first works "Makar Chudra" and "The Girl and Death".

In 1892, after long wanderings, Alexei Maksimovich returned to Nizhny Novgorod. "Makar Chudra" is published in the local newspaper, after which a number of his feuilletons, as well as reviews, are published. His original alias was strange name Yehudiel Chlamys. Maxim Gorky himself recalled him more than once in his biography and interviews. His Essays and Stories soon turned an almost unknown provincial writer into a popular revolutionary author. The attention of the authorities to the person of Alexei Maksimovich has grown significantly. During this period, the works "Old Woman Izergil" and "Chelkash" - 1895, "Malva", "Spouses Orlovs" and others - 1897, saw the light, and in 1898 a collection of his works was published.

This period will be the heyday of his talent. In 1899, the famous "Song of the Falcon" and "Foma Gordeev" appeared. In 1901, the “Song of the Petrel” was published. After the publication of "The Song of the Petrel": "Storm! The storm is coming soon! This bold Petrel proudly flies between lightning bolts over the roaring sea; then the prophet of victory shouts: “Let the storm break out more strongly! ..” - he wrote a proclamation calling for a fight against the autocracy. As a result, the writer was expelled from Nizhny Novgorod to Arzamas.

Since 1901, he has turned to dramaturgy. During this period, Maxim Gorky is characterized as an active revolutionary, a supporter of Marxism. His performance after the bloody events of January 9, 1905 was the reason for his arrest and imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Gorky was at that time at the peak of his popularity. In his defense came famous figures art, including representatives of the creative and scientific world from Germany, France, England and Italy. And they let him go. Gorky took a direct part in the revolutionary struggle of 1905. In November he joined the Russian Social Democratic labor party. In connection with the threat of reprisals, he was forced to leave for America. For the first time abroad, the writer did not stay long.

It must be said that Gorky, like other prominent creative figures, had not only an active social, but also a stormy personal life. He was married to Ekaterina Volozhina, he had cohabitants and mistresses, as well as many relatives and adopted children. So, Gorky left the family, and his civil wife became a famous Moscow actress Maria Andreeva.

In exile, the writer writes various pamphlets of a satirical nature about the "bourgeois" culture of France and the USA ("My Interviews", "In America"). Returning to Russia in autumn, he creates the play "Enemies", the novel "Mother". Barely returning to his homeland, Alexei Maksimovich again travels abroad. By the 1910s, his name had become one of the most popular in Russian Empire, and then in Europe, his work caused a huge critical literature: 91 books about Gorky were published in 1900-1904; from 1896 to 1904, the critical literature about him amounted to more than 1860 titles. The performances of his plays on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater were an exceptional success and were accompanied by anti-government performances by the public.

Until 1913, he lives in Italy due to health problems. The illness of the mother was passed on to the son, he suffered from consumption. Gorky returned to his homeland, taking advantage of the amnesty. From the beginning of the First World War, he took an anti-militarist, internationalist position. He enthusiastically met the February Revolution of 1917, seeing in it the victory of democracy, the insurgent people. His apartment in Petrograd in February-March 1917 looked like a "headquarters" where various political and public figures, writers, writers, artists, artists, and workers gathered. Gorky became the initiator of a number of social and cultural undertakings, paid great attention to the protection of cultural monuments and, on the whole, showed great activity. Wrote a number of articles, indignant at the massive export of art treasures from Russia for "American millions", protested against the robbery of the country.

In order for society to fulfill the task of spiritual revival and moral purification of the country, Maxim Gorky believed, it was necessary first of all to unite "the intellectual forces of the old, experienced intelligentsia with the forces of the young worker-peasant intelligentsia." And for this it is necessary to "rise above politics" and direct all efforts to "immediate intensive cultural work", drawing the masses of the workers and peasants into it. Culture, he believed, must be instilled in the people, brought up for centuries in slavery, to give the proletariat, the broad masses systematic knowledge, a clear understanding of their world-historical mission, their rights and duties, to teach democracy. One of Gorky's most important scientific and educational undertakings these days was the creation of the "Free Association for the Development and Propagation of Positive Sciences."

According to the great writer, “there is no future without democracy”, “a strong man is man of sense”, and therefore it is necessary to “arm yourself with accurate knowledge”, “instill respect for reason, develop love for it, feel its universal power”. Gorky noted: “The source of our misfortunes is our illiteracy. In order to live well, one must work well, in order to stand firmly on one's feet, one must work hard, learn to love work.

Gorky's literary and social work was most active at that time in the newspaper Novaya Zhizn, founded by him. It has been published in Petrograd since April 18 under the editorship of Gorky, its co-editors were V.A. Bazarov, V.A. Desnitsky, N.N. Sukhanov, A.N. Tikhonov. The newspaper actively opposed Russia's continued participation in the imperialist war (First World War), for the unification of all revolutionary and democratic forces to maintain the social and political gains of the February Revolution, the development of culture, education, science, in order to follow the path of further implementation of socialist transformations in Russia under the leadership of the Social Democratic Party. In addition to the new cycle of "Russian Fairy Tales", stories, essays, Maxim Gorky published over 80 articles in the newspaper (58 of them in the "Untimely Thoughts" series). Publicism in the "New Life" was two complementary books of the writer - "Revolution and Culture. Articles for 1917" and “Untimely Thoughts. Notes on Revolution and Culture.

At this stage of his life, the first contradictions arose with the views of Vladimir Lenin, with whom he was personally acquainted. So, Gorky condemned the "senseless massacre", exposed the desire of the Provisional Government to bring the war to a victorious end (in response, representatives of the bourgeois camp accused Gorky of "espionage, treason"). On the other hand, Gorky spoke out against the July 4 uprising, which began under the influence of socialist propaganda. Defending the social gains of the February Revolution, opposing reaction, conservative forces, bourgeois parties and the policy of the Provisional Government, Gorky's newspaper very soon entered into polemics with the Bolsheviks, who put the question of an armed uprising and carrying out a socialist revolution on the agenda. Gorky was convinced that Russia was not yet ready for socialist transformations, that the uprising would be drowned in a sea of ​​blood, and the revolution would be set back decades. He believed that before carrying out a socialist revolution, the people should "work hard in order to gain consciousness of their personality, their human dignity that first it "must be incinerated and purified from the slavery nurtured in it by the slow fire of culture." In his opinion, “the most terrible enemy of freedom and law is within us”, “our cruelty and all that chaos of dark, anarchic feelings, which is brought up in our souls by our shameless oppression of the monarchy, its cynical cruelty”. And with the victory of the revolution, only the "process of intellectual enrichment of the country" begins. Russia was not yet ready for a social revolution. Culture, science, art were, according to Gorky, just the force that "will allow us to overcome the abominations of life and relentlessly, stubbornly strive for justice, the beauty of life, for freedom."

Therefore, the writer met the October Revolution coolly. A week before October, in the article “You can’t be silent!” he calls on the Bolsheviks to abandon the "speech", fearing that "this time the events will take on an even more bloody and pogrom character, will inflict an even more severe blow to the revolution." After October, Novaya Zhizn, headed by Gorky, still occupied opposition positions and became an opponent of the new government. The newspaper criticized the "costs" of the revolution, its "shadow sides", the forms and methods of implementing social transformations in the country - the cultivation of class hatred, terror, violence, "zoological anarchism" of the dark masses. At the same time, Gorky defends the lofty humanistic ideals of socialism, the ideas of democracy, universal human values, the rights and freedom of the individual, forgotten in the whirlwind of the revolution. He accuses the leaders of the Bolsheviks, Lenin and "his henchmen" of destroying the freedom of the press, "adventurism", "dogmatism" and "nechaevism", "despotism", etc.

It is clear that such a position of Gorky sharp criticism authorities. Arguing with him, the Bolshevik party and official press wrote that the writer had turned from a “storm petrel” into a “loon”, “which is inaccessible to the happiness of battle”, that he acts as a “whimpering philistine”, that “his conscience has disappeared”, that “he changed the revolution, etc. On July 16, 1918, with the consent of Lenin, the newspaper was closed (before that, the publication had been temporarily suspended several times).

Gorky took this criticism sharply and hard. For him, socialism was not a utopia. He continued to believe in his ideas, he wrote about the "heavy pangs of childbirth" of the new world, "new Russia", noting that, despite all the mistakes, crimes, "the revolution, nevertheless, has matured to its victory", and expressed confidence that the revolutionary whirlwind that shook "to the very depths of Russia" "will heal us, heal us," will revive "to construction and creativity." Gorky also pays tribute to the Bolsheviks: "The best of them are excellent people, who in time will be proud of Russian history ..."; “... psychologically, the Bolsheviks have already rendered the Russian people a service, moving their entire mass off the ground and arousing in the entire mass an active attitude towards reality, an attitude without which our country would perish.”

Despite his particular view of the revolution, Gorky continued his creative activity and gave the young Soviet state many more patriotic works. After the assassination attempt on Lenin, Gorky again became close to him and to the Bolsheviks. Subsequently, the writer, assessing his positions in 1917-1918, recognized them as erroneous, explaining this by underestimating the organizational role of the Bolshevik Party and the creative forces of the proletariat in the revolution. Gorky became one of the organizers of literary, public and publishing initiatives: the publishing houses "World Literature", "House of Writers", "House of Arts", etc. As before, he called for the unity of the old and new intelligentsia, spoke in defense of it from unreasonable persecution from the side of the authorities. In December 1918 he was elected to the Petrograd Soviet, re-elected in June 1920. The writer worked in the Petrograd Commission for the Improvement of the Life of Scientists, founded on his initiative, and became its chairman. He opposed the military intervention of the Western powers, called on the advanced forces of the world to defend the revolution and help the starving.

In 1921, on Lenin's urgent recommendation, Gorky left for Italy. The public was informed that he was forced to be treated abroad. In 1928-1929 he came to the Union, and in 1931 he finally returned to Moscow and last years life received official recognition as the founder of socialist realism. In 1932, the writer's hometown - Nizhny Novgorod - on the occasion of his 40th birthday literary activity was renamed Gorky (the city bore this name until 1990).

Maxim Gorky in the last years of his life wrote his novel, which remained unfinished - "The Life of Klim Samgin". On June 18, 1936, he died unexpectedly under strange circumstances. He was buried on Red Square in Moscow near the Kremlin wall.

Alexander Samsonov

Elena Sirotkina