Maxim Gorky: A Life Shaped by Revolution and Literature

Maxim Gorky, born Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov in Nizhny Novgorod on March 28, 1868, emerged as one of Russia’s most influential literary voices. Raised in an impoverished artisan family, Gorky’s early life was defined by hardship. Forced to abandon formal education at the age of ten due to poverty, he entered the working world early, taking on a wide range of jobs. Over the years, he worked as an apprentice, porter, clerk, bakery hand, icon painter, and even as a walk-on actor in a traveling theatre troupe.

As a young man, Gorky became drawn to the populist movement and soon began collaborating with provincial newspapers. His literary breakthrough came in 1892 with the publication of his first short story, Makar Chudra. During the 1890s, he rapidly gained popularity as one of the first writers to emerge from the urban underworld of itinerant workers, beggars, thieves, and swindlers. The working class embraced his writing, recognizing their own struggles in his vivid portrayals of everyday life.

In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary member of the Russian Academy, an appointment later annulled by Tsar Nicholas II. His political engagement intensified during the revolutionary events of 1905, leading to his arrest and subsequent release following protests from international intellectuals. In 1906, he traveled to the United States with his wife to raise funds and gather support for the revolutionary cause. During this period, he wrote the novel Mother, a direct literary response to the failed uprising in Russia.

Unable to return home, Gorky moved to Italy and settled on the island of Capri, spending the years from 1906 to 1913 in exile. While abroad, he remained politically active, participating in the 1907 London Congress of Russian Social Democrats and later contributing to the party school on Capri in 1909. In 1913, he returned to Russia. Four years later, he founded the newspaper Novaia zhizn (New Life), where he openly criticized Lenin’s dictatorship and opposed the Bolshevik seizure of power during the October Revolution. His protests were silenced in 1918 when Lenin placed the newspaper under strict censorship.

During the following years in Petrograd, Gorky devoted himself to helping endangered scholars and writers survive famine and extreme hardship. Determined to preserve Russia’s cultural heritage, he became a kind of “guardian” of the country’s literary and intellectual legacy, offering support to those most at risk.

From 1922 to 1924, Gorky lived in Germany and Czechoslovakia, where he continued his political and literary work. He wrote the essay On the Russian Peasantry and actively defended Socialist Revolutionaries during their trial. In 1924, he moved to Sorrento, Italy, with his son and daughter-in-law. His return to Russia in 1928 coincided with the growing influence of so-called “proletarian writers.” His fourth visit to the Soviet Union came in 1932, when he celebrated the fortieth anniversary of his literary career and agreed to collaborate with Stalin in shaping the doctrine of socialist realism - a new artistic framework for literature and the visual arts.

The following year, Gorky left Italy accompanied by his son Maksim and their family. In 1934, the First Congress of Soviet Writers was held in Moscow, where Gorky delivered the keynote address, solidifying his position as a central figure in Soviet cultural life.

Maxim Gorky died in Moscow on June 18, 1936, leaving behind a literary body of work and a political legacy that would shape the cultural and ideological contours of Soviet literature for decades.

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Sources:

Gorki, Maksim. Hrvatska enciklopedija, mrežno izdanje. Leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krleža, 2013. – 2026, https://www.enciklopedija.hr/clanak/gorki- maksim

Tovah Yedlin, "Maxim Gorky: A Political Biography", Praeger Publishers, Westport, Connecticut, USA, 1999

Figes, Orlando, „Maxim Gorky and the Russian Revolution“, History Today, Vol. 46, No. 6, 1996