“When a person is uncomfortable lying on one side, he rolls over onto the other, and when he is uncomfortable to live, he only complains. And you make an effort - roll over."
A. M. bitter
Alexey Peshkov was born in Nizhny Novgorod on March 16 (28), 1868. His paternal grandfather was from ordinary people, he rose to the rank of officer, but for cruel treatment of his subordinates he was demoted to the ranks and sent to Siberia. At the age of nine, his son Maxim was assigned to the workshop carpenters of the city of Perm, and at twenty he was already an experienced cabinetmaker. While working in Nizhny Novgorod, the young man met the daughter of the shop foreman, Varvara Vasilievna Kashirina, and persuaded her mother, Akulina Ivanovna, to contribute to their wedding, which she did. Soon after the birth of Lesha, Maxim Savvatievich, together with his family, went to the city of Astrakhan to manage the steamship office. At the age of four, the boy fell ill with cholera. His father managed to get out, but at the same time he caught the infection himself and soon died. On the day of the death of Maxim Savvatievich, Varvara Vasilievna gave birth to a premature boy, whom she named Maxim. However, on the eighth day, the newborn died. Subsequently, Alexey Peshkov, guilty of himself, took his father's and brotherly names, as if trying to live unlived lives for them.
After the death of her husband, Gorky's mother decided to return to Nizhny Novgorod to her parents. Soon after arriving home, Varvara Vasilievna remarried, and Lesha's childhood passed under the supervision of his grandmother and grandfather. Grandmother Akulina Ivanovna was a lacemaker, knew a great variety of folk songs and fairy tales and, according to Gorky, "was not afraid of anyone and anything except black cockroaches." Grandfather Kashirin, “red-haired and similar to a ferret,” in his youth boiled on the Volga River, and then gradually broke out into the people and for thirty years was a shop foreman. His children (and then grandchildren, including "Leksey"), grandfather Kashirin in the process of "education" mercilessly sec. At the age of seven, Alexei fell seriously ill with smallpox. Once, delirious, he fell out of the window, as a result of which his legs were taken away. Fortunately, after he recovered, the boy went again.
In 1877, Alyosha was assigned to an elementary school for the poor. There he appeared in his own words "in a coat altered from his grandmother's sweater, in trousers" outside "and a yellow shirt". It was “for the yellow shirt” that Peshkov received the nickname “ace of diamonds” at the school. In addition to his studies, Alexey was engaged in rags - he collected nails, bones, paper and rags for sale. In addition, Peshkov traded in stealing wood and wood from warehouses. Subsequently, the writer said: "In the suburb, theft was not considered a sin, being for half-starved bourgeois not only a custom, but almost the only means of livelihood." Despite the more than cool attitude to study, Alexei, who since childhood was distinguished by a phenomenal memory, at the end of the year received a certificate of commendation at the educational institution: "for good behavior and success in science, excellent before others." Right on the note of commendation, the well-behaved student deciphered the abbreviation of the NSC school as Our Svinskoe Kunavinskoe (instead of Nizhny Novgorod Slobodskoe Kunavinskoe). The half-blind grandfather did not consider the inscription and was pleased.
When Peshkov was twelve, his mother died of consumption. The story “Childhood”, written on the eve of the First World War, ends with these words of Kashirin’s grandfather to his grandson: “Well, Alexei, you are not a medal. There is no place for you on my neck, but go to people … ". There was nothing particularly cruel in the deed of my grandfather, at that time it was a common practice of accustoming to working life. “In people” Alexey Peshkov began to serve in a shop of “fashionable footwear”. Then he got a job as an apprentice to his great-uncle, a construction contractor and draftsman Sergeev. Uncle was a good man, but "the women ate his little boy." Instead of drawing, Lesha had to clean dishes, mop floors and darn socks. As a result, he escaped and joined a steamer pulling a barge with prisoners as a dishwasher. There, a local chef made the boy read. Carried away by books, Peshkov often left the dishes unwashed. In the end, the kid was driven off the ship. In subsequent years, he changed many occupations - he traded in icons and learned to write them, caught birds for sale, served as a foreman for the same uncle Sergeev on the construction of the famous Nizhny Novgorod fair, moonlighted as a port loader …
At the same time, Alexei did not stop reading, since there were always people who gave him new books. From popular prints like "The Golden Dirt" and "The Living Dead", which blossomed the boring life of a teenager, Peshkov gradually made his way to the works of Balzac and Pushkin. Alexei read, as a rule, at night by candlelight, and during the day he asked those around him who, for example, the Huns were, confusing the questioned. In 1884, sixteen-year-old Alexei Peshkov decided to enter Kazan University. To study, remembering Mikhail Lomonosov, he was advised by one friend, a Kazan high school student. However, upon arrival in the city, it turned out that the young man not only had nothing to gain knowledge, but also too early. Peshkov lived in Kazan for about four years, and he had his own universities here.
The young man graduated from the first course among loaders, crooks and tramps, about whom Gorky later wrote: “They were strange people, and I did not understand much about them, but I was very bribed in their favor by the fact that they did not complain about life. They spoke about the well-being of the "common people" ironically, mockingly, but not out of latent envy, but as if out of pride, out of the consciousness that they live badly, and that they themselves are much better than those who live "well." At that time, the young man literally walked along the edge - by the writer's own admission, he "felt quite capable of a crime and not only against the" sacred institution of property "…". Alexey took the second course in a bakery, where, working seventeen hours a day, he kneaded up to three hundred kilograms of dough with his hands. Peshkov's third course consisted of conspiratorial work - the "seminars" of the Tolstoyans were interspersed with the "seminars" of the Nietzscheans, since the young man was interested in everything. The fourth and final year of his Kazan universities was the village of Krasnovidovo near the city, where he worked in a local shop.
In 1887, Gorky's grandmother died, his grandfather survived her by only three months. At the end of their lives, both fought Christ. Peshkov never made real friends, and he had no one to tell his grief. Subsequently, Gorky wrote sarcastically: “I regretted that in those days of acute melancholy there was neither a dog nor a horse around me. And I didn’t think to share my grief with the rats - there were many of them in the shelter, and with them I lived in a relationship of good friendship”. At the same time, a nineteen-year-old boy, out of sheer disappointment in people and in life, shot himself in the chest. Peshkov survived, but punched his own lung, which is why he subsequently developed tuberculosis. Gorky would later mention this in My Universities.
In 1888, the future writer left Kazan and went on a journey across Russia. All the places that Gorky visited were subsequently marked on his literary map. First, Peshkov sailed on a barge along the Volga to the Caspian Sea, where he joined a fishing artel. It is in the fishery that his story "Malva" takes place. Then the young man moved to Tsaritsyn, where he worked at railway stations as a watchman and a weigher. After that, he went to Leo Tolstoy in Moscow. By that time, Alexei decided to found a Tolstoy colony, but land was needed for this. It was he who decided to borrow it from the famous writer. However, the newly-made Tolstoyan did not find Lev Nikolaevich at home, and Sofya Andreevna met the "dark bum" rather coolly (although she treated him to coffee and a roll). From Khamovniki, Gorky went to the Khitrov market place where he was beaten half to death. Having recovered, the young man in the "cattle carriage" returned to Nizhny Novgorod (in 1889), where no one was waiting for him.
Peshkov, with his leaky lung, was not taken into the army, and he got a job in a beer warehouse. His job was to deliver drinks to points (in modern terms, the future writer was a sales manager). At the same time, he, as before, attended revolutionary circles, as a result of which he spent two weeks in prison. In Nizhny Novgorod, Gorky also met the writer Vladimir Korolenko. Alexey Maksimovich soon got bored with work in the warehouse, and the young man went to the law office as a clerk. At the same time, Peshkov was overtaken by love - for the wife of the former exiled Olga Kaminska, who was nine years older than him. And in April 1891 he went on a journey again. For a year and a half, the future writer traveled the entire south of Russia from Bessarabia to Ukraine and from the Crimea to the Caucasus. Whoever he worked - and a fisherman, and a cook, and a farm laborer, was engaged in the extraction of oil and salt, worked on the construction of the Sukhumi-Novorossiysk highway, funeral service for the dead and even delivered childbirth. The fate of the tramp confronted the young man with a variety of people, he later wrote: "A lot of educated people lived a humiliating, half-starved, difficult life, spending valuable energy looking for a piece of bread …".
Having reached Tiflis, Alexey Maksimovich got a job in local railway workshops, which employed more than two thousand people. As elsewhere in the Caucasus, there were many political exiles. The future writer made acquaintance with many of them, including the old revolutionary Kalyuzhny. It was he who, having heard enough of Alexei's vagrant tales (by the way, Peshkov was an excellent storyteller), advised him to write them down. Thus, in mid-September 1892, the Kavkaz newspaper published the story “Makar Chudra” - a gypsy legend about Loiko Zobar and the beautiful Radda. The essay was signed with the pseudonym "Maxim Gorky". Following Alexei Maksimovich in Tiflis, after divorcing her husband, Olga Kaminskaya arrived with her daughter. And in 1892 Gorky, together with Olga Yulievna, returned to Nizhny Novgorod and got a job in the old place - as a clerk in a law office. At this time, the stories of the novice writer, with the support of Vladimir Korolenko, began to be published in the Kazan "Volzhsky Vestnik", in the Moscow "Russkiye vedomosti" and in a number of other publications.
Life with Kaminskaya did not work out, and at some point Alexey Maksimovich said to his beloved: "It seems that it will be better if I leave." And, indeed, he left. In 1923 he wrote about this: “Thus ended the story of the first love. A good story despite a bad ending. " From February 1895 Gorky was in Samara - thanks to the recommendation of Korolenko, he was invited to the "Samarskaya Gazeta" as a permanent columnist for newspaper news. For Sunday numbers, he wrote fictional feuilletons, signing them in the most strange way - Yehudiel Chlamida. Samara in Gorky's correspondence was presented as a "Russian Chicago", a city of beggars and moneybags, "wild" people with "wild" morals. The newly-minted journalist asked: “What important and good things have our rich merchants done for the city, what are they doing and what are they supposed to do? I know only one thing behind him - hatred of the press and persecution of it in various ways. " The result of these accusations was that Chlamyda was severely beaten by two men hired by one of the "offended" moneybags. In addition to the daily work of the newspaper, Aleksey Maksimovich managed to compose prose - in 1895 the Chelkash, created a year earlier, was published, and from 1896 to 1897, Gorky wrote one after another the stories Malva, The Orlov Spouses, Konovalov, Former People, and some other works (about twenty in total), which have now become classics. He tried himself in poetry, but the experience was unsuccessful, and more Gorky tried not to return to this.
In August 1896, an unknown employee of the "Samara newspaper" Alexei Peshkov made an offer to the proofreader of the same newspaper, Ekaterina Volzhina. They were soon married. Ekaterina Pavlovna was the daughter of a ruined landowner, a "small, sweet and unpretentious" person, as her husband himself described her in one of his letters to Chekhov. The wedding took place in the Ascension Cathedral, and on the same day the newlyweds went to Nizhny Novgorod, where the writer got a job as a columnist for the Nizhny Novgorod Leaflet. In the fall, Aleksey Maksimovich collapsed with consumption and, leaving the newspaper, in December went to improve his health in the Crimea. He had no money, and the Literary Fund allocated one hundred and fifty rubles for the trip to the young writer after a corresponding petition. At the end of July 1897 in the Ukrainian village of Manuylovka, where Aleksey Maksimovich continued his treatment, a son was born to the young, who was named Maksim.
In the spring of 1898, two volumes of "Essays and Stories" by Alexei Maksimovich were published, instantly glorifying the author - the end of the 1890s and the beginning of the 1900s in Russia passed under the sign of Gorky. It should be noted that in May 1898 the writer was arrested and sent to Tiflis by mail train, where he was imprisoned for several weeks in the Metekhi prison. In society, what happened caused a storm of indignation, and the circulation of the book of the writer who suffered from the "tsarist satraps" instantly sold out. In captivity, Alexei Maksimovich's illness worsened, and after he was released, he again went to the Crimea. There he met and became acquainted with Chekhov, Bunin and Kuprin. Gorky sincerely admired Anton Pavlovich: “This is one of the best friends of Russia. A friend is truthful, impartial, intelligent. A friend who loves the country and has compassion for it in everything. " Chekhov, in turn, noted: "Gorky is an undoubted talent, moreover, real, great … I do not like everything that he writes, but there are things that I really, really like … He is real."
In 1899, Gorky arrived in St. Petersburg, where he made acquaintance with Repin (who immediately painted his portrait) and with Koni. And in 1900, a significant event took place - Alexei Maksimovich nevertheless met Leo Tolstoy, who noted in his diary at their first meeting: “There was Gorky. We had a good talk. I liked him - a real man of the people. " At the same time, the writer finished the book "Foma Gordeev" and wrote "Three", which became a kind of challenge to Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment". By 1901, fifty of Gorky's works had already been translated into sixteen foreign languages.
While in St. Petersburg in 1901, Alexei Maksimovich sent a mimeograph (an apparatus for printing leaflets) to the Nizhny Novgorod revolutionaries, for which he was arrested. However, he did not sit in the prison of Nizhny Novgorod for long - Lev Tolstoy, through a friend, handed over to the Minister of Internal Affairs a note in which, among other things, he said that Gorky was "a writer appreciated in Europe as well." Under pressure from the public, Alexei Maksimovich was released, but put under house arrest. Chaliapin repeatedly visited the "sufferer" at home and sang, "gathering crowds of onlookers under the windows and shaking the walls of the dwelling." By the way, they became close friends. An interesting fact, in their youth, both at the same time went to be hired in the choir of the Kazan Opera House, and Gorky was then accepted, but Chaliapin was not.
At the same time, in Nizhny Novgorod, Aleksey Maksimovich organized a tea room specially for tramps called "Stolby". It was a very unusual teahouse for those times - no vodka was served there, and the inscription at the entrance said: "Alcohol is poison, like arsenic, henbane, opium and many other substances that kill a person …". It is easy to imagine the indignation, bewilderment and amazement of the "bangs" who were treated to tea and buns in "Stolby" and were treated to an amateur concert for a snack.
At the end of May 1901, the writer had a daughter, named Catherine, and in 1902 Alexei Maksimovich was awarded a link, which he served in Arzamas. Gorky's impressions of this place are reflected in the story "Okurov Town", which contains the epigraph from Dostoevsky "… the county and animal wilderness." Seeing him off at the station turned into a real demonstration. At the same time, Gorky (who was nicknamed Sweet in the police) ironically said to the gendarmes: “You would have acted smarter if you had made me a governor or given me an order. It would ruin me in the eyes of the public."
In February 1902, the Academy of Sciences elected Aleksey Maksimovich an honorary academician in the category of fine literature. But after the intervention of Nicholas II (the fame of the rebel writer reached the emperor), who drew a conclusion: "More than original," the election was declared invalid. It is worth noting that the name "graceful" is indeed difficult to attribute to Gorky's literature, however, the tsar had other arguments for his opinion. Having learned about this and elected to the Academy earlier, Chekhov and Korolenko, out of solidarity, decided to give up their titles. At the same time, in Nizhny Novgorod, one very unpleasant incident occurred with Gorky. One December evening, a stranger approached the writer, returning home alone, stabbed Alexei Maksimovich in the chest with a knife and disappeared. The writer was saved by chance. Gorky, who smoked over seven dozen cigarettes a day, always carried a wooden cigarette case with him. It was in it that the knife was stuck, easily piercing the coat and jacket.
In October 1902, the Stanislavsky Art Theater staged Gorky's autobiographical play The Bourgeoisie. It was a major success, but the next play, At the Bottom, created such a sensation that no other drama has had in the theater since. The play was truly good - Chekhov, who introduced Alexei Maksimovich to Stanislavsky, after reading it "almost jumped with pleasure." Soon her triumphal march across Europe began. For example, in Berlin by 1905, At the Bottom was played more than five hundred (!) Times.
In 1903, Gorky finally moved to Moscow, becoming the head of the Znanie publishing house, which published four almanacs a year. There was no more popular publishing house in the country in those years - starting with thirty thousand copies, the circulation gradually rose to the "gigantic" six hundred thousand for that time. In addition to Gorky, such famous writers as Andreev, Kuprin, Bunin were published in the almanac. A young and thorny literary shoot, which held the position of socially critical realism, also stretched here. Its representatives, by the way, were ironically called “podmaximoviks”, since they copied both Gorky's literary style, and his manner of dressing, and his Volga okanie. At the same time, Alexei Maksimovich, who had never had a close friend, became close friends with Leonid Andreev. The writers were united not only by their almost cult service to literature, but also by the rebellion of the people of the city outskirts, as well as contempt for danger. Both at one time tried to commit suicide, Leonid Andreev even argued that "a person who has not tried to kill himself is cheap."
In Moscow, Alexei Maksimovich parted with his married wife. They parted as friends, and the writer supported her and his children all his life (his daughter Catherine died of meningitis in 1906). Soon after that, Gorky began to live in a civil marriage with Maria Andreeva, an actress of the Moscow Art Theater and the daughter of the chief director of the Alexandrinka. However, this was not all - Maria Fedorovna was an active Bolshevik, bearing the party nickname Phenomenon. And in 1905 the writer himself found himself at the center of revolutionary events. On the eve of January 9, he had a conversation with Witte, warning the chairman of the Committee of Ministers that if blood was spilled on the streets, the government would pay for it. Throughout Bloody Sunday, Gorky was among the workers, personally witnessed their execution, he almost died, and at night he wrote an "Appeal", calling for a fight against the autocracy. After that, Alexey Maksimovich went to Riga, where he was arrested and deported to St. Petersburg. Sitting alone in the Peter and Paul Fortress, he wrote the play Children of the Sun, a work about the transformation of the intelligentsia. At the same time, all of Russia and Europe protested against Gorky's persecution - both Anatole France, Gerhart Hauptmann, and Auguste Rodin noted … to become a performance stronger than At the Bottom, but in the fall of 1905 (after the Manifesto was published on October 17), the case against the writer was dropped.
Already in October 1905, with the participation of Gorky, the revolutionary newspaper Novaya Zhizn was organized, which, among other things, published Lenin's article "Party Literature and Party Organization." And at the end of 1905, an uprising broke out in Moscow with the construction of barricades and fierce battles. And again, Gorky was an active participant in the events taking place - his apartment on Vozdvizhenka served as a warehouse of weapons and the headquarters of the revolutionaries. After the defeat of the uprising, the arrest of the writer became a matter of time. The party he joined with Andreeva sent him to America out of harm's way. There was also a utilitarian goal here - fundraising for the needs of the RSDLP. In February 1906 Alexey Maksimovich left Russia for seven long years. In New York, Gorky was greeted with great enthusiasm. The writer met with American writers, spoke at rallies, and also published an appeal "Do not give money to the Russian government." In America, the envoy of Russian literature met the famous Mark Twain. Both writers grew up on the banks of great rivers, both took unusual pseudonyms - this is probably why they really liked each other.
In September 1906, Gorky left the United States and settled in Italy on the island of Capri. Emigration was rather difficult for them - quite often Aleksey Maksimovich asked his friends to bring him "simple black bread" from Russia. And a great many guests came to the writer, among whom were both cultural figures (Chaliapin, Andreev, Bunin, Repin) and revolutionaries (Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, Lenin). On Capri, Gorky took up "his old business" - he began to compose. He, like Gogol, worked well in Italy - here he wrote "Okurov Town", "Confession", "Vassa Zheleznov", "Tales of Italy" and "The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin".
In 1913, in connection with the three-centenary of the House of Romanov, amnesty was declared to the disgraced writers. Gorky took advantage of this and returned home in December. Russia greeted the writer with open arms, Alexey Maksimovich settled in the capital, continuing his revolutionary activities. The police, of course, did not leave him with attention - at one time, twenty agents followed Gorky, replacing each other. Soon the First World War broke out, and the very next day after the declaration of war, the writer noted: "One thing is certain - the first act of a worldwide tragedy begins." On the pages of the Chronicle, Aleksey Maksimovich conducted active anti-war propaganda. For this, he often received soaped ropes and letters with curses from ill-wishers. According to Chukovsky's recollections, having received such a message, "Alexei Maksimovich put on his simple glasses and read it carefully, underlining the most expressive lines with a pencil and mechanically correcting mistakes."
In the chaos of the events of the February Revolution, Gorky, again surprising everyone, relied on culture and science. He said: "I do not know anything else that can save the country from destruction."Moving away at this time from all political parties, the writer founded his own tribune. The newspaper Novaya Zhizn published Gorky's articles in opposition to the Bolsheviks, collected in 1918 in the book Untimely Thoughts. At the end of July 1918, the Bolsheviks closed Novaya Zhizn. Lenin at the same time asserted: "Gorky is our man and, of course, will return to us …".
Alexey Maksimovich did not just say that culture would save the country, he did a lot and "beyond" words. In the years of famine (in 1919) he organized the publishing house "World Literature", which published the best works of all times and peoples. Gorky attracted famous writers, scientists and translators to cooperation, among whom were: Blok, Gumilyov, Zamyatin, Chukovsky, Lozinsky. It was planned to publish 1,500 volumes, there were only 200 books (seven times less than planned), and all the same, publishing books at a time when exhausted people did not see bread became a real cultural feat. In addition, Gorky saved the intelligentsia. In November 1919, the House of Arts, which occupied an entire quarter, was opened. Writers not only worked here, but also dined and lived. A year later, the famous Tsekubu (Central Commission for the Improvement of the Life of Scientists) arose. Aleksey Maksimovich also took the Serapion brothers under his wing: Zoshchenko, Tikhonov, Kaverin, Fedin. Chukovsky subsequently asserted: "We survived those typhoid, grainless years, and this is largely due to the" kinship "with Gorky, for whom everyone, both small and large, became like a family."
In August 1921, Gorky again left the country - this time for twelve years. Despite the fact that he was seriously overworked and ill (tuberculosis and rheumatism worsened), it looked strange - the writer was thrown out of Russia at the end of the first wave of emigration. It’s a paradox - the enemies of the revolution were leaving, and its messenger left too. Alexei Maksimovich, who did not approve of much in the practice of the Soviets, nevertheless, remained a convinced socialist, saying: "My attitude towards Soviet power is definitely - I do not think of a different power for the Russian people, I do not see and do not wish." Vladislav Khodasevich said that the writer left because of the then owner of Petrograd Zinoviev, who could not stand him.
Having crossed the border, Alexey Maksimovich with his family, but already without Andreeva, went to Helsingfors, and then to Berlin and Prague. During this time he wrote and published Notes from the Diary and My Universities. In April 1924, Bitter settled in Italy near Sorrento. Mail from Russia was delivered to him on a donkey - otherwise the postmen were unable to carry heavy bags to the writer. Children, village correspondents, workers wrote to Gorky, and he answered everyone with a smile, calling himself a "scribe." In addition, he was in active correspondence with young Russian writers, supporting them in every possible way, giving advice, correcting manuscripts. In Italy, he also completed The Artamanovs Case and began his main work, The Life of Klim Samgin.
At the end of the twenties, life in Sorrento no longer seemed quiet to Alexei Maksimovich, he wrote: "It is getting harder and harder to live here because of the fascists." In May 1928, he and his son Maxim left for Moscow. On the platform of the Belorussky railway station, the writer was greeted by an honor guard of pioneers and Red Army soldiers. There were also the country's top officials - Voroshilov, Ordzhonikidze, Lunacharsky … Gorky traveled all over the country - from Kharkov to Baku and from Dneprostroy to Tiflis - meeting with teachers, workers, scientists. Nevertheless, in October 1928, despite the naive exclamation of one worker in the Bauman district: “Maksimych, dear, don't go to Italy. We will treat you here and take care of you!”, The writer left for Italy.
Before finally returning to his homeland, Gorky made several more voyages. During his next visit, he visited Solovki, read the play "Yegor Bulychev and Others" at the Vakhtangov Theater, and the fairy tale "Girl and Death" to Voroshilov and Stalin, about which Joseph Vissarionovich said that "this thing will be stronger than" Faust ". In 1932 the writer returned home. It should be noted that back in 1919 Gorky met Baroness Maria Budberg (nee Countess Zakrevskaya). She told about their first meeting: “I was amazed by his mixture of cheerfulness, courage, determination, cheerful disposition. Since then I have been closely associated with him … ". The connection actually turned out to be "close" - this mysterious woman was the writer's last love. She was distinguished by her business acumen and broad education, there is also information that Budberg was a double agent - British intelligence and the GPU. With Gorky, the Baroness went abroad, but in 1932 she did not return to the USSR with him, but went to London, where she later became the mistress of H. G. Wells. An English agent assigned to the Baroness wrote in reports that "this woman is extremely dangerous." Maria Zakrevskaya died in 1974, destroying all her papers before her death.
Gorky liked to repeat: "An excellent position is to be a man on earth." Not a single Russian writer had such a bewitching fame during his lifetime that fate bestowed on Alexei Maksimovich. He was still quite alive and was not going to die, and the city was already named after him - in 1932 Stalin proposed to rename it to Gorky Nizhny Novgorod. Of course, this proposal was accepted with a bang, after which Gorky streets began to appear in almost every city, and theaters, liners, motor ships, steamships, parks of culture and recreation, factories and enterprises began to be named after the legendary writer. Gorky himself, who returned to the USSR, was ironic about the avalanche of perpetuations, in 1933 he told the writer Lydia Seifullina: “Now I am invited everywhere and surrounded with honor. Was among the collective farmers - became an honorary collective farmer, among the pioneers - an honorary pioneer. Recently I visited the mentally ill. Obviously I'm going to be an honorable madman. " At the same time, Khodasevich said that in everyday life the writer was surprisingly modest: "This modesty was genuine and came mainly from admiration for literature and from self-doubt … I have not seen a person who wore his fame with great nobility and skill."
Throughout 1933, Gorky was engaged in organizing the Writers 'Union, the chairman of the board of which was elected at the first congress held in August 1934. Also on the initiative of Alexei Maksimovich in 1933, the Evening Workers' Literary University was created. The writer, who came from the lower classes, wanted to facilitate the path of young people to "big" literature. In 1936, the Evening Workers' Literary University became the Literary Institute. Gorky. It is very difficult to list everyone who studied within its walls - a lot of young people got crusts here with a specialty: “literary worker”.
In May 1934, the writer's only son died suddenly. His death was in many respects mysterious, a strong young man very quickly burned out. According to the official version, Maxim Alekseevich died of pneumonia. Gorky wrote to Rolland: “The blow is really hard. The sight of his agony stands before his eyes. Until the end of my days I will not forget this outrageous torture of man by the mechanical sadism of nature … ". And in the spring of 1936, Gorky himself fell ill with pneumonia (it was said that he caught a cold at the grave of his son). On June 8, Stalin visited the patient (in total, the leader visited Gorky three times - another June 10 and 12). The appearance of Joseph Vissarionovich in a surprising way eased the writer's situation - he was suffocating and almost agonized, however, seeing Stalin and Voroshilov, he returned from the other world. Unfortunately, not for long. On June 18, Alexey Maksimovich died. A day before his death, recovering from a fever, he said: "And I was arguing with God … oh, how I argued!"
