RUSSIAN WRITER Maxim Gorky (1868—1936), the nom de plume of Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov, was born in Nizhni-Novgorod (later renamed Gorky in his honor). Recognized as one of the foremost leaders in the Socialist Realism movement, a doctrine encouraging a Socialist view of society in works of art, music, and literature, Gorky was also actively involved in the 1917 Russian Revolution. Gorky identified with the Russian poor, and the protagonists of his stories were typically criminals, ordinary merchants, or laborers. A champion for the downtrodden, Gorky is deemed to be among the greats of Russian literature.
After his father died when he was just five years old, Gorky went to live with his maternal grandfather, who treated him harshly. The budding proletarian author began to earn his own way at the age of nine, assuming a wide variety of odd jobs that drew his attention to working class struggles. His early short stories such as “Makar Chudra” (1892) and “Chelkash” (1895) were first published in Soviet journals. Sketches and Stories (1898), his first collection, met with unparalleled success. In “Twenty-six Men and a Girl”—often regarded as his best short story—Gorky describes the lives of bakery workers in an evocative and powerful style that quickly gained popular approval. Securing him an international reputation, these authentic portrayals of social outcasts as also seen in his drama, The Lower Depths (1902), and his novel, Mother (1907), exerted considerable influence in post-revolutionary Russian society.
Gorky’s political activism caused him continual troubles with the tsarist government. A supporter of the Bolsheviks, he was exiled in 1902 for organizing an underground press. The following year, Gorky was elected to the Academy of Sciences, but this honor was rescinded by the government. In 1905, when Gorky was arrested for revolutionary activities, his followers issued formal protests to the tsar on his behalf. He traveled to the United States in 1906 to raise money for the revolution. Gorky returned to Russia after being granted amnesty in 1913.
Among Gorky’s greatest achievements were his memoirs. In 1913, he wrote My Childhood, the first work in a trilogy of autobiographies that included In the World (1915), and My Universities (1922). During the 1920s, he published his reminiscences of fellow Russian writers Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Andreyev. Other works by Gorky include several novels, short stories, nonfiction, and plays such as The Petty Bourgeois (1901). Ill for many years with recurring tuberculosis, Gorky died in Moscow in 1936.