Maxim Gorky Biography

His biography, similar to an adventure novel, accommodated the lives of a laborer and fashionable writer, a political prisoner and emigrant, an opposition and a regime apologet. Today, everyone will see something in Gorky, but his search for a “new person” remain invariably relevant. The childhood and youth of Maxim Gorky, the future founder of literary socialist realism and the singer of “people from the bottom of society” was born on March 16 28 in Nizhny Novgorod.

The father of the family Maxim Savvyvyevich Peshkov was carpentry, her mother Varvara Vasilievna led the household. The boy was three years old, when he, sick with a cholera, infected his father, who looked after him. Alyosha recovered, but Maxim Savlyevich died. Varvara Vasilievna soon got married again. Alyosha did not develop relations with his stepfather, so he spent his childhood in the family of grandfather Vasily Vasilyevich Kashirin, a wealthy tradesman who owned a dyeing workshop.

Being competent, he learned to read the grandson. But the main person in the childhood of the future writer was the grandmother Akulina Ivanovna. Later, Alexei Maksimovich recalled: “I was filled with grandmother’s poems as a hive of honey; It seems that I thought in the forms of her poems. " Soon his grandfather ruined, and the family was forced to move to the poor district of Nizhny Novgorod - Zaoksky Kanavinsky Sloboda.

Now Alyosha had to help the elders: he tried to earn schedule, in the company of the same children and adolescents from poor families, crushed. In the year, at the age of 10, Alyosha entered the Kanavinsky Primary School. He was doing well, he received commendable sheets, but the teaching had to be abandoned: he constantly lacked money, and classmates mocked a little ragged. Soon, the boy’s mother died of consumption, and his childhood ended.

Alexei earned the living of the devil and student of the shoemaker, worked as a clerk in a shop, an apprentice with an icon painter and a cook on a Volga steamer. In his free time, Alyosha liked to read Balzac, Flauber, Stendhal, and later carried away by philosophy, absorbing Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and others. He recorded impressions of read books in the diary. In the summer of the year, summer Alexei went to Kazan to enter the university where he was not accepted due to the lack of a certificate of secondary education.

The young man did not have money. First, he lived with friends, then in the night, working in the Kazan port. Then Alexei began to write poetry and stories. Soon he settled down in the bakery, then in another, belonging to the merchant A. The owner patronized the revolutionaries; Here people gathered, who introduced Alexei Peshkov to forbidden literature. Soon he entered the local Marxist circle, from which he conducted campaign and educational work.

The rest of the circle did not take him seriously - for them a beggar without a system education remained only the “son of the people”. Alexey touched and tormented. A great test for Alexei was the death of a grandmother and grandfather, who died one after another in the spring of the year. Having quarreled with his comrades in the Marxist mug, in December of the same year, Alexei tried to shoot himself in a fit of depression.

When he was operated on in the hospital, taking a bullet from a light bullet, he immediately made an attempt to poison, equally unsuccessful. The attack of cowardice cost Alexei the remaining shameful memories that remained until the end of his life, undermined health and temporary excommunication. The next two years passed in wanderings in the country and searching for work.

In the second half of the year, Alexei Peshkov returned to Nizhny Novgorod and settled down a secretary to the jury of the attorney A. By this time the young man was already under constant police supervision and several times were arrested. At this stage in Alexei’s life, an important acquaintance with V. Korolenko, an already famous writer. When Alexei showed him his poem “The Song of the Old Duba”, Korolenko pointed to a young colleague to numerous spelling and stylistic mistakes, and that very hurt.

Subsequently, Alexei Maksimovich said: "I decided not to write any more poems, no prose, and indeed, all the time in the lower - almost two years - I did not write anything." At the beginning of the year, Alexei Peshkov decided to go around Russia. For a year and a half, except for the Volga region, he visited Ukraine and the Caucasus, in the Crimea. During the travels, the young man talked a lot with local residents, earning a living in railway workshops and in oil fields, in fishing artels and earthen work.

Then he began to write again. Kalyuzhny and introduced him to his manuscripts. Kalyuzhny was carried by the manuscript of the story “Makar Chudra” to the familiar journalist in the newspaper “Caucasus”, and in September the first work of Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov was published with the signature “M. So at the same time the writer and his famous pseudonym were born, selected in honor of his father and a difficult path to success.

Upon returning to Nizhny Novgorod, Alexei Peshkov continued to write.Soon he was also noticed in the capitals: the story “Emelian Pilai” was published in the Moscow newspaper “Russian Vedomosti”, the story “Chelkash” was accepted in the St. Petersburg weekly “Russian wealth”. In the year, Alexei moved to Samara and became a journalist of the local Samara Gazeta, where, under the pseudonym, Jehudiil Khlamida led a literary column and published, among other things, his works.

Having returned to Nizhny Novgorod in the year, Maxim Gorky headed the editorial office of the newspaper Nizhny Novgorod Left, but soon he was first diagnosed with tuberculosis, and the writer and his young wife were forced to leave for treatment in Crimea. The literary and social activities of Maxim Gorky, despite the fact that E Gg. Gorky devoted mainly journalism, he did not abandon literary work.

In - gg. The writer gained fame. In the year, Gorky first came to St. Petersburg, but soon he was sent to Arzamas for contact with the Marxists. At the same time, the Moscow Art Theater began to prepare the production of Gorky's debut play “The Beschiki”, whose premiere was not successful in March. By that time, the writer's Arzamas link ended, and Gorky returned to Nizhny Novgorod, where he completed the second play - “At the bottom”.

This time, the premiere, held in the same Moscow Art Theater in December, was with a deafening success. Subsequently, the play based on the play, albeit cut by censors, was staged by many provincial groups - on the stage of imperial theaters it was prohibited. In the year, Gorky, at the invitation of the famous publisher K. Pyatnitsky, headed the “Knowledge” partnership, which, with his arrival, began to specialize in the publication of the realistic direction.

In a short time, setting fees that exceeded the prices of competitors several times, and having organized an advances system for the authors, Gorky managed to bring “knowledge” to a leading position in the country. In the next decade, I. Bunin, A. Serafimovich, L. Andreev, A. Kuprin, V. Veresaev, I. Shmelev and many other authors, whose works over time will compose the gold fund of domestic literature, were published.

In addition to the publication of the books of their authors in Russia, “knowledge” under the leadership of Gorky was engaged in their advancement abroad. In his activities, Gorky paid great attention to educational work among the people, trying to publish as many cheap, affordable books as possible: “The best, most valuable and at the same time the most attentive and strict reader of our days is a competent working, competent man-democrat.” Gorky adopted the revolution of the year with heat.

Supporting working performances, he wrote proclamations, but was soon arrested and put in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Under the pressure of the public, including international, the writer was released, and in February he left Russia. At first, Gorky went to the United States, where he lived for six months, collecting money for the needs of the revolution and working on the collection “in America”, and in the fall he moved to Italy.

There, for the next six years, he settled on the Mediterranean island of Capri with a climate favorable for light writer. In exile, Gorky worked on the novel “Mother”, publishing it in Germany. There Gorky met V. Lenin, from that moment their close friendship began. Later, Lenin has repeatedly visited Gorky in Capri. In the year, in honor of the Flight of the Romanov House in Russia, a partial amnesty was announced for political criminals.

Gorky returned to Russia and settled in St. Petersburg, continuing to lead an active social and political life, communicating with the revolutionaries, criticizing power. At the same time, Gorky completed the autobiographical novels “Childhood” and “In People”. During the First World War, Gorky wrote anti -war articles, published a cycle of stories “In Rus'”.

By the February Revolution of the year, the writer was reckoning with great alertness, and after the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks began to criticize the activities of the Bolsheviks. Under the new government, he continued public and human rights, protecting the intelligentsia from repressions. In the year, the writer created the “House of Arts” - the prototype of the future Union of Writers of the USSR, and also organized the publishing house “World Literature”, designed to release the anthology of the classics of world fiction for the education of citizens of the new country.

The emigration and return to the USSR by the official reason for the departure of Gorky from the USSR was the next deterioration in health, but in reality he left the country due to disagreements with the government. Living in Berlin, Gorky published the magazine "Conversation", in which he printed Russian emigrants, but soon the publication was closed. In the year, Gorky moved to the Italian Sorrento, wrote a lot, working on the novel "Life of Klim Samghin." In these years, in his work, Maxim Gorky was thinking about the fate and place of the Russian intelligentsia.

As a public figure, he accepted efforts to bring the Russian emigration closer to the abandoned homeland. In the year, I. he traveled a lot around the country, talked with fans, and in the year with a great triumph he finally returned to the USSR. In his homeland, Gorky published the magazines “Literary Study” and “Our Achievements”, as well as the book series “The Life of Wonderful People” and “The Library of the Poet”.

In the year, at the first congress of Soviet writers, the charter of the established Union of Writers of the USSR was adopted, and Maxim Gorky elected him the chairman. The couple got married. Two children were born in marriage: the son Maxim - and the daughter of Katerina - with his only official wife Gorky lived for seven years, the marriage did not dissolve to the death of the writer.