MAXIM GORKY
Maksim Gorky, also Gor’kiy, pseudonym of Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov (1868-1936),
Soviet novelist, playwright, and essayist, who was a founder of socialist
realism. Although known principally as a writer, he was also prominent in the
Russian revolutionary movement.
Gorky was born in Nizhniy Novgorod (renamed Gorky in his honor from 1932 to 1991),
into a peasant family. He was self-educated. Compelled to earn his own living
from the age of nine, Gorky worked for many years at menial jobs and tramped
over a great part of European Russia. During this time he shot himself through a
lung in an attempted suicide, later developing tuberculosis, which left him in
ill health for the rest of his life. His pen name means “the bitter one” in
Russian.
Gorky's first short story was published in a Tbilisi newspaper in 1892, and
thereafter he wrote stories and sketches frequently for publication in various
newspapers. His collected Sketches and Stories (1898) was an instantaneous
success and made him famous throughout Russia. He had thrown off his earlier
romanticism and wrote realistically although optimistically of the harshness of
the life of the lower classes in Russia. He was the first Russian author to
write knowledgeably and sympathetically about workers and such people as tramps
and thieves, emphasizing their courageous fight against overwhelming odds. “Twenty-Six
Men and a Girl” (1899; translated 1902), a tale of sweatshop conditions in a
bakery, is considered by many his finest short story.
In 1899 Gorky became associated with the revolutionary activities of the
Marxists, and in 1906 he went abroad to raise funds for the Russian Social
Democratic Labor Party. In 1907, because of failing health, he settled on the
Italian island of Capri. He returned to Russia in 1915.
Maksim Gorky, also Gor’kiy, pseudonym of Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov (1868-1936),
Soviet novelist, playwright, and essayist, who was a founder of socialist
realism. Although known principally as a writer, he was also prominent in the
Russian revolutionary movement.
Gorky was born in Nizhniy Novgorod (renamed Gorky in his honor from 1932 to 1991),
into a peasant family. He was self-educated. Compelled to earn his own living
from the age of nine, Gorky worked for many years at menial jobs and tramped
over a great part of European Russia. During this time he shot himself through a
lung in an attempted suicide, later developing tuberculosis, which left him in
ill health for the rest of his life. His pen name means “the bitter one” in
Russian.
Gorky's first short story was published in a Tbilisi newspaper in 1892, and
thereafter he wrote stories and sketches frequently for publication in various
newspapers. His collected Sketches and Stories (1898) was an instantaneous
success and made him famous throughout Russia. He had thrown off his earlier
romanticism and wrote realistically although optimistically of the harshness of
the life of the lower classes in Russia. He was the first Russian author to
write knowledgeably and sympathetically about workers and such people as tramps
and thieves, emphasizing their courageous fight against overwhelming odds. “Twenty-Six
Men and a Girl” (1899; translated 1902), a tale of sweatshop conditions in a
bakery, is considered by many his finest short story.
In 1899 Gorky became associated with the revolutionary activities of the
Marxists, and in 1906 he went abroad to raise funds for the Russian Social
Democratic Labor Party. In 1907, because of failing health, he settled on the
Italian island of Capri. He returned to Russia in 1915.