The main problems of M. Gorky's journalism

The name of M. Gorky has always been associated with the revolution. Gorky is the “petrel of the revolution”, “the Great Proletarian Artist”. However, the publication of M. Gorky’s book “Untimely Thoughts,” which was banned for more than seventy years, changed ideas about Gorky the thinker.

In the book, Gorky criticizes Lenin, denounces the revolution, Soviet power, and predicts future national disasters. “Our revolution gave full play to all the bad and brutal instincts that had accumulated under the lead roof of the monarchy, and, at the same time, it threw aside all the intellectual forces of democracy, all the moral energy of the country.”

“How does Lenin’s attitude to freedom of speech differ from the same attitude of the Stolypins, Plehve and other half-humans? Isn’t it the same way that Lenin’s power grabs and drags into prison those who do not think according to their opinions, just as the Romanov government did?” “Imagining themselves to be the Napoleons of socialism, the Leninists tear and rush, completing the destruction of Russia - the Russian people will pay for this with lakes of blood.”

For Gorky, the revolution of 1905 was the awakening of a “new, powerful, truly vital force”, the beginning of the struggle of the working class for “the right to be a person, and not a profitable item for the bourgeoisie.” Gorky welcomes the revolution. But in her way “stands a fat man with a paunch, a lover of oysters, women, good poetry... a man who absorbs all the blessings of life like a bottomless bag” - a bourgeois intellectual. According to Gorky at that time, the intelligentsia is the ballast of the nation, which must be gotten rid of.

Gorky and Blok are two key figures of the era who were in the field of view of readers, critics, cultural figures, and politicians. They represented two poles of the life of the nation, two wings of Russian culture at the beginning of the 20th century. Gorky comes from the people, knowing life in its most unsightly, sometimes ugly forms; Blok is a hereditary intellectual, an esthete, brought up in the traditions of Western European humanism, on the highest examples of Russian and world culture. They belong to the same time, they are occupied with the same problems, but they solve them differently.

Blok considered the relationship between the people and the intelligentsia to be dramatic and even tragic. The poet states a “terrible division”: “there are really not only two concepts, but two realities: the people and the intelligentsia; one hundred and fifty million on the one hand and several hundred thousand on the other; people who do not mutually understand each other in the most “basic” way. But Blok is sure that there is a “thin line of agreement” between the people and the intelligentsia, and Gorky is “the last significant phenomenon” on this line.

After February Revolution The main thing for Gorky was to protect its gains and fight for the development of culture. However, the first revolutionary events also caused the first disappointments. Gorky’s point of view on the intelligentsia changes under the influence of historical circumstances: “The Russian intelligentsia... must undertake the great work of spiritual healing of the people. Now she can work in conditions of greater freedom...” Now Gorky reacts painfully to the misunderstanding between the people and the intelligentsia, trying to find an explanation for the tragic alienation between them.

Gorky himself rejected the possibility of any “conciliation line”, he believed true meaning revolution “separation” from the philistine intellectuals. Gorky asserts the unconditional priority of mass creativity over individual creativity. The masses create history, realize the creativity of life itself. Gorky was inspired by the idea of ​​​​the advantages of a collective society...

Gorky understands that the revolution turned into anarchy, destruction, violence, rampant cruelty, hatred, and a threat to the existence of culture. In “Untimely Thoughts” the following insistently sounds: “Citizens! Culture is in danger!”; “If the revolution is not capable of immediately developing intense cultural construction in the country... then the revolution is fruitless, has no meaning, and we are a people incapable of life”; “I don’t know anything else that can save our country from destruction.” Now Gorky sees the cause of the destruction of personality in collectivism, in the chaos of dark passions and ignorance.

“What new does the revolution give, how does it change the brutal Russian way of life, how much light does it bring into the darkness of people’s life?” - asks Gorky. And he answers: “During the revolution, there have already been up to 10 thousand “lynchings.” This is how democracy judges its sinners.” He cites an episode when a crowd that had beaten a caught thief “held a vote: what death should the thief be executed with: drowning or shooting?”

From article to article, Gorky’s polemics with the Bolsheviks become more and more noticeable, gradually moving to an increasingly open, harsh form: “I believe that the mind of the working class, its consciousness of its historical tasks will soon open the eyes of the proletariat to all the unrealizability of Lenin’s promises, to the full depth of his madness and his Nechaev-Bakunin anarchism.” It becomes obvious that for the Bolsheviks the only way to retain power is to maintain and strengthen the dictatorship.

Gorky sees with horror how the campaign of unbridled Red Terror is unleashed: “Everything that contains cruelty or recklessness will always find access to the feelings of the ignorant and savage. Recently, the sailor Zheleznyakov, translating the ferocious speeches of his leaders into the simple language of a man of the masses, said that for the well-being of the Russian people, a million people can be killed.”

Gorky sees the essence of the tragedy in the substitution and then complete displacement of culture by politics, and the complete subordination of culture to politics, in the transformation of culture into a means political activity and class struggle, and therefore in the distortion of the essence and meaning of culture as such.

Blok has a different perception of October. Not being a revolutionary, an ally of the Bolsheviks, Blok, unlike Gorky, accepted the revolution, but as an inevitable event of history, as a conscious choice of the Russian intelligentsia, thereby bringing the great national tragedy closer. Hence his perception of the revolution as “retribution” against the former ruling class, an intelligentsia cut off from the people, refined, “pure”, in many ways elitist culture, the leader and creator of which was himself.

In the article “Intellectuals and Revolution” (1918) he writes: “In that stream of thoughts and premonitions that captured me ten years ago, there was a mixed feeling for Russia: melancholy, horror, repentance, hope.” Revolution is retribution against the past. But the fact of the matter is that the meaning of the revolution, its essence, is aspiration into an unknown future, which is why horror, repentance, and melancholy are covered by hope for the best. "Russia - big ship, which is destined for a great voyage.”

The revolution in Blok’s romantic view is a whirlwind, a storm; “she is akin to nature”: “What were you thinking? That the revolution is an idyll? That creativity does not destroy anything in its path? That people are good boys? That hundreds of swindlers, provocateurs, Black Hundreds, people who love to warm their hands, will not try to grab what is bad? And, finally, what is so “bloodless” and so “painless”, and will the centuries-old discord between the “black” and “white” bones, between the “educated” and the “uneducated,” between the intelligentsia and the people be resolved?

“Only the spirit can fight horrors.” Blok called the “spirit” - of Russia, revolution, renewal - music. He spoke of the "duty of the artist" to "listen to the music" of the revolution - "with all his body, with all his heart, with all his mind." This perception took Blok away from the harsh and harsh reality, poeticized and elevated the revolution in his eyes.

After the revolution, as Blok said, art, life and politics developed inseparably, but henceforth they could not merge into any sociocultural unity. Their destiny was a mutual attraction to each other and a fierce struggle among themselves. This was expressed in the articles of Blok and Gorky about the intelligentsia and the revolution.

Maksim Gorky

BOOK

ABOUT RUSSIAN PEOPLE

Pavel Basinsky

IN THE DISPUTE OF SOUL AND MIND

Memoirs and journalism of M. Gorky

Gorky's memoirs are undoubtedly one of the best pages of his work. It was in the memoir genre that he created a number of undoubted masterpieces Russian prose of the 20th century. Memories of Tolstoy at one time changed the ideas of many about this personality. Before the whole world (the essay was quickly translated into European languages) appeared not just a brilliant writer and a mysterious preacher, the creator of a special direction in Christianity, but, figuratively speaking, man-work, every gesture, every randomly thrown phrase of which was in itself a fact the highest art. From short meetings and conversations with Tolstoy, Gorky sculpted an amazing artistic image, a kind of “other Tolstoy.” Some people who knew Tolstoy closely disputed the reliability of Gorky’s testimony about the Yasnaya Polyana elder. But contrary to, perhaps, the literal truth of life, the “other Tolstoy” turned out to be more lively and interesting than the social icon of the “great Leo,” which, by the way, weighed heavily on Tolstoy himself, becoming one of the reasons for his “departure.” He fled from Yasnaya Polyana not only from his family, but also from himself, as he established himself in public opinion. Gorky was one of the few who was able not only to rationally explain this tragic act of a great man, but to show from the inside the irrational knot of spiritual passions and contradictions that tormented Tolstoy and had no way out, for he, so to speak, outgrew the boundaries of a mere man and became self-sufficient the world, the thing in itself.

The memoir portrait of Leonid Andreev is constructed differently. This is a real mini-novel with a plot, highest point development of action and denouement. By the time the memoirs were written, Leonid Andreev was no longer alive; he died in Finnish emigration in 1919, cursing the Bolsheviks and speaking sharply negatively about Gorky, whom he, not without reason, accused of collaborating with these “German spies.” Between former friends and comrades, and then, from about 1908, enemies and literary opponents,

Gorky and Andreev, so many unresolved grievances had accumulated that it seemed unthinkable to write an essay in hot pursuit without slipping into bias. Somehow Gorky managed to do this. Perhaps because he managed to rise above history, as it were, making himself the hero of his own memories. The frankness with which he talks about the details of their close relationship (for example, the scene with prostitutes) is sometimes shocking, but it is precisely this that does not allow one to doubt the reliability of the testimony. Unlike Tolstoy, Gorky certainly knew the hero of this essay better than anyone and even, if you like, too much deeply understood. He knew, for example, that some motifs in the works of Leonid Andreev were inspired by their friendship and enmity, that some of his characters were a reflection of the two of them. This knowledge placed a special responsibility on the memoirist, which he coped with brilliantly.

As another example of Gorky’s virtuoso skill as a memoirist, it is worth appreciating his essay about Sergei Yesenin. It is known that Gorky did not like the peasantry. This is partly due to an unpleasant episode of his early biography, when in the village of Kandybino he tried to protect a woman who was subjected to humiliating public torture for cheating on her husband, and was brutally beaten by men. Oddly enough, in that situation both sides were right and wrong. Young Gorky acted like a romantic idealist who could not afford to ignore the mockery of a weak creature and not stand up for him. But the village peasants were not driven by innate cruelty. According to the laws of the “world,” a wife’s betrayal of her husband was a very serious crime, and interference in the “world” from the outside was completely unacceptable. In the essay by a great expert on Russian peasant life, Gleb Uspensky, “Don’t Mess,” it is said that an urban intellectual sometimes “messes” into the village “world” with his charter and is sincerely perplexed as to why his seemingly fair actions lead to unpredictable results. Gorky turned out to be just such a passerby intellectual.

However, it was Gorky who was the first to write deeply about the tragedy of the poet Sergei Yesenin - the tragedy village man, poisoned by urban culture and unable to develop an antidote to it. Gorky was not closely acquainted with Yesenin, like, say, Nikolai Klyuev. He did not belong to the village culture and was even hostile to it. It is all the more striking that the views on the death of Yesenin, Gorky and Klyuev (“Lament for Sergei Yesenin”) largely coincided. This suggests that Gorky the memoirist had a precious talent - he could step away from himself and describe the situation from the inside, revealing it inner meaning, and not imposing yours. Even in classical examples of memoirs this is, unfortunately, rare.

Separately, it is necessary to talk about “Notes from the Diary”, which are printed in their entirety for the first time since Full meeting Gorky's artistic works and may seem unexpected to readers.

Gorky did not leave behind full-fledged, much less multi-volume diaries, like, for example, A. A. Blok, L. N. Tolstoy, M. M. Prishvin, K. I. Chukovsky and others, who looked at diaries as an important component of your creativity. And although part of Gorky’s legacy is still stored in archives, including foreign ones, although the “story of the suitcase” in which he left some papers abroad in the care of M.I. Budberg before returning to the USSR in the late twenties (thus, we can expect new finds and discoveries) - today we can say for sure that Gorky is not a classic of the diary genre. The explanations for this are simple. Gorky was a man of direct, active action. He sought not just to observe the course of events, but to direct them himself, to be not just a chronicler of his era, but its main participant.

In this regard, it is interesting to compare Gorky’s series of articles “Untimely Thoughts” and Ivan Bunin’s diary, known as “Cursed Days.” Both books were written at the same time and are dedicated to the events of the revolution and Civil War. Both authors, although with to varying degrees categorical, negatively assessed the Bolshevik revolution. And yet, the works turned out different. Here the choice of genre was determined not by artistic considerations, but by the social temperaments of the authors and the position they took in relation to events in the country. Bunin felt like an outcast, part of a persecuted and spat upon Russia. The diary genre was the niche in which he, without fear of being completely destroyed, could describe and analyze events (however, there was fear here too; he hid the text of the diaries in the garden in front of the house, fearing searches). Gorky, on the contrary, did his best to achieve publicity and wrote his articles, counting, in particular, on the fact that the Bolsheviks would read them. The character of the works was determined accordingly: the passionate, uncompromising tone of Bunin and the no less passionate, but still politically verified pathos of Gorky. One did not hope for anything and left a deeply personally experienced chronicle of the revolution, the other hoped to change the course of events and left the obviously doomed pedagogical experience of admonishing the authorities, who did not want to listen to the teacher.

It is still unclear whether Notes from a Diary existed in its original form diary in the strict sense, or is this a kind of artistic technique. It is only known that Gorky first considered these notes as preparation for writing a major literary work, which, in the end, became “The Life of Klim Samgin.” But as a result, the “notes” resulted in an independent work, which has almost no overlap with “Samgin”. This can be compared with the work of the artist A. Ivanov on the painting “The Appearance of Christ to the People.” Today, numerous sketches for this gigantic painting form a separate exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery, which is valued by some amateurs much higher than the most overwhelmingly grandiose painting.

Gorky took the idea, which arose by chance, very seriously. Original title“Notes from a diary” - “A book about Russian people, what they were like.” The book was written in exile in the early twenties, when Gorky left Russia (in fact, he was expelled by Lenin), desperate to influence the course of events in the country. Thus, we have before us not just “notes,” but the experience of describing a certain passing civilization, which Gorky defined with the capacious word “Rus” (hence the name of Gorky’s cycle of stories “Across Rus'”). “Rus” in his view did not coincide with the concept of Russia as Peter’s empire. No matter how angry Gorky was with Lenin’s policies in its specific manifestations (arrests of the intelligentsia, incitement of the Civil War, etc.), in general he considered him the successor of Peter the Great, as is directly stated in the first edition of the essay on Lenin, which is published in our book. IN new edition the parallel with the emperor was erased - perhaps because a completely different person lay claim to the role of emperor of Russia in the thirties - Joseph Stalin, and Gorky, of course, could not help but take him into account.

Gorky's attitude towards "Rus", as well as towards "Russia", was twofold. If he valued “Russia” with his mind, not accepting with his soul the inhumane method of “raising” a peasant country in order to force it into Europe (in this sense, Lenin, in Gorky’s opinion, was not much different from Peter I), then he loved “Rus” precisely soul, rejecting it with mind. This is not the place to discuss Gorky’s position in the classic debate between Westerners and Slavophiles. He was a Westerner by conviction and a Slavophile by artistic instinct. Without knowing this, one cannot understand the central idea of ​​“Notes from a Diary.”

“Completely alien to nationalism, patriotism and other diseases of spiritual vision, I still see the Russian people as exceptionally, fantastically talented, unique. Even fools in Russia are stupid in an original way, in their own way, and lazy people are positively brilliant. I am sure that by their intricacy, by the unexpectedness of their twists, so to speak - by the figurativeness of thoughts and feelings, the Russian people are the most fertile material for an artist,” he wrote in the afterword to “Notes.” In other words, he viewed the phenomenon of “Rus” as a kind of historical disease, as a pathological abnormality, as an exception to the general European rule. But that is precisely why she excited his artistic instinct. In this one felt Gorky’s peculiar aestheticism, as well as a paradoxical closeness to the views of the most radical Russian soil scientist, Konstantin Leontiev, whom, by the way, he carefully read. But, unlike Leontyev, Gorky’s cultural ideal was the European West.

The dispute between soul and mind was reflected not only in memoirs, but also in Gorky’s journalism. Articles from 1905–1916 devoted to the first Russian revolution, the cultural essay “Destruction of Personality” (1908), the cycle “Untimely Thoughts” (1917–1918) and even one of Gorky’s most unfair works - the book “On the Russian Peasantry” (1922), in which the overwhelming majority of the Russian population was actually denied the right to independent existence - occupy at least a completely original, unique place in the history of Russian thought. Often Gorky’s judgments (say, his sharp criticism of the “harmful” ideology of Dostoevsky or the total rejection of the Russian peasantry, whose life he considered meaningless and hostile to culture) cause shock, but you cannot forget them, you cannot erase them from the intellectual history of Russia, for they were in the air of their time and are still partly worn today. Gorky was their most brilliant and visible guide, bringing to them his personal temperament and remarkable talent.

In the series of articles “Untimely Thoughts,” he fiercely opposed the cruelty of the Bolshevik government, fought for every arrestee, and cursed revolutionary murderers and rapists. At first glance, it may seem that Gorky was opposed to violence in general. And it is unclear: how could a person who stood for humanity in 1917–1918, ten years later, justify Stalin’s policies, which were even more cruel and inhumane? Were there really “two Gorkys,” as others believe?

But, carefully reading “Untimely Thoughts,” we find an interesting episode. Opposing the sending of tens of millions of people to the Russian-German front, Gorky suddenly falls into dreamy idealism. “Imagine for a moment that in the world they live reasonable(my italics - P.B.) people who are sincerely concerned about the improvement of life, confident in their creative powers, imagine, for example, that we, Russians, need, in the interests of the development of our industry, to dig the Rigo-Kherson Canal to connect the Baltic Sea with Cherny - a thing that Peter the Great dreamed of. And so, instead of sending millions of people to slaughter, we send some of them to this work, which is needed by the country and all its people...”

This was not said at all in the late twenties and not in the thirties, when Gorky, together with employees of the GPU, visited the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON) and communist construction sites like the White Sea-Baltic Canal. Stalin, where millions of prisoners worked. This was said when Gorky was considered a knight of humanism, a defender of individual rights.

Gorky's coming to Stalin was almost inevitable. Desperate to curb Lenin and not forgiving him for the senseless victims of the revolution and the Civil War, he nevertheless, ten years later, convinced himself that Stalin’s “iron will” would straighten out the situation in the country and put it on the rails of socialist construction. He saw chaos and barbarism in Bolshevik politics. Stalin personified order and discipline. The millions of people forcibly sent to build canals did not confuse his mind, unlike the millions of victims of military slaughter.

And yet Gorky’s soul protested. It is still unknown exactly how many people were saved thanks to him in the thirties. Among them are artists, writers, painters, and scientists. But what is known for sure is that the ominous year of 1937 followed immediately after the death of Gorky in 1936, when the last hand that could somehow stop Stalin fell. It is also known that Gorky did not write the explicitly ordered portrait of Stalin, thereby terribly insulting the tyrant. I couldn't. My soul didn't allow it.

Pavel Basinsky

5. Journalism of the period of revolution and civil war (M. Gorky, A. Blok)

Gorky's Untimely Thoughts is a series of 58 articles that were published in the newspaper Novaya Zhizn, the organ of the Social Democratic group. The newspaper existed for a little over a year - from April 1917 to July 1918, when it was closed by the authorities as an opposition press organ.

Studying Gorky’s works of the 1890–1910s, one can note the presence in them of high hopes that he associated with the revolution. Gorky also speaks about them in “Untimely Thoughts”: the revolution will become the act thanks to which the people will take “conscious participation in the creation of their history”, gain a “sense of homeland”, the revolution was called upon to “revive spirituality” among the people.

But soon after the October events (in an article dated December 7, 1917), already anticipating a different course of the revolution than he expected, Gorky anxiously asked: “What new will the revolution give, how will it change the brutal Russian way of life, how much light will it bring? into the darkness of people’s life?” These questions were addressed to the victorious proletariat, which officially took power and “gained the opportunity for free creativity.”

The main goal of the revolution, according to Gorky, is moral - to transform yesterday's slave into a person. But in reality, as the author of “Untimely Thoughts” bitterly states, the October events and the outbreak of the civil war not only did not carry “signs of the spiritual rebirth of man,” but, on the contrary, provoked an “outburst” of the darkest, most base - “zoological” - instincts. “The atmosphere of unpunished crimes,” which removes the differences “between the bestial psychology of the monarchy” and the psychology of the “rebellious” masses, does not contribute to the education of a citizen, the writer asserts.

“For each of our heads we will take a hundred heads of the bourgeoisie.” The identity of these statements indicates that the cruelty of the sailor masses was sanctioned by the authorities themselves, supported by the “fanatical intransigence of the people’s commissars.” This, Gorky believes, “is not a cry of justice, but a wild roar of unbridled and cowardly animals.”

The next fundamental difference between Gorky and the Bolsheviks lies in their views on the people and their attitude towards them. This question has several facets.

First of all, Gorky refuses to “half-adore the people,” he argues with those who, based on the best, democratic intentions, passionately believed “in the exceptional qualities of our Karatayevs.” Looking at his people, Gorky notes “that they are passive, but cruel when power falls into their hands, that the renowned kindness of their soul is Karamazov’s sentimentalism, that they are terribly impervious to the suggestions of humanism and culture.” But it is important for the writer to understand why the people are like this: “The conditions among which he lived could not instill in him either respect for the individual, or consciousness of the rights of a citizen, or a sense of justice - these were conditions of complete lawlessness, oppression of man, shameless lies and brutal cruelty." Consequently, the bad and terrible that appeared in spontaneous actions masses in the days of the revolution, is, according to Gorky, a consequence of that existence, which for centuries has killed dignity and a sense of personality in Russian people. This means a revolution was needed! But how can we combine the need for a liberation revolution with the bloody bacchanalia that accompanies the revolution? “This people must work hard in order to acquire consciousness of their personality, their human dignity, this people must be calcined and cleansed from the slavery fed in it by the slow fire of culture.”

What is the essence of M. Gorky’s differences with the Bolsheviks on the issue of the people?

Relying on all his previous experience and on his many deeds confirmed reputation as a defender of the enslaved and humiliated, Gorky declares: “I have the right to tell the offensive and bitter truth about the people, and I am convinced that it will be better for the people if I tell this truth about them.” first, and not those enemies of the people who are now silent and hoarding revenge and anger in order to... spit anger in the face of the people...”

Let's consider one of Gorky's most fundamental differences with the ideology and policy of the “people's commissars” - the dispute over culture.

This is the core problem of Gorky’s journalism of 1917–1918. It is no coincidence that when publishing his “Untimely Thoughts” as a separate book, the writer gave the subtitle “Notes on Revolution and Culture.” This is the paradox, the “untimeliness” of Gorky’s position in the context of time. The priority he gave to culture in the revolutionary transformation of Russia may have seemed overly exaggerated to many of his contemporaries. In a country undermined by war, torn apart by social contradictions, and burdened by national and religious oppression, the most primary tasks of the revolution seemed to be the implementation of the slogans: “Bread for the hungry,” “Land for the peasants,” “Plants and factories for the workers.” And according to Gorky, one of the most primary tasks of the social revolution is the purification of human souls - getting rid of “the painful oppression of hatred”, “mitigating cruelty”, “recreating morals”, “ennobling relationships”. To accomplish this task, there is only one way - the path of cultural education.

However, the writer observed something exactly the opposite, namely: “the chaos of excited instincts,” the bitterness of political confrontation, the boorish violation of personal dignity, the destruction of artistic and cultural masterpieces. For all this, the author blames, first of all, the new authorities, who not only did not prevent the rioting of the crowd, but even provoked it. A revolution is “sterile” if it is “not capable... of developing intensive cultural construction in the country,” warns the author of “Untimely Thoughts.” And by analogy with the widespread slogan “The Fatherland is in danger!” Gorky puts forward his slogan: “Citizens! Culture is in danger!”

In “Untimely Thoughts,” Gorky sharply criticized the leaders of the revolution: V. I. Lenin, L. D. Trotsky, Zinoviev, A. V. Lunacharsky and others. And the writer considers it necessary, over the heads of his all-powerful opponents, to directly address the proletariat with an alarming warning: “You are being led to destruction, you are being used as material for inhuman experimentation, in the eyes of your leaders you are still not a person!”

Life has shown that these warnings were not heeded. What happened to both Russia and its people was what the author of “Untimely Thoughts” warned against. To be fair, it must be said that Gorky himself also did not remain consistent in his views on the revolutionary breakdown taking place in the country.

Introduction

1. The beginning of M. Gorky's journalistic activity
2. The main ideas of M. Gorky's journalistic activities

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

At the turn of the new revolutionary upsurge in the mid-90s, when the “mass labor movement with the participation of social democracy” began in Russia, M. Gorky entered the field of professional journalist. The early journalism of the great proletarian writer continued the best traditions revolutionary democratic press. Working in 1895-1896. in the provincial newspapers of the Volga region and the South of Russia - "Samara Gazeta", "Nizhegorodsky Listok" and "Odessa News" - he invariably defended the interests of the people. True, at that time his worldview had not yet fully formed; rejecting the landowner-bourgeois system, Gorky did not see any real ways to replace it. And, nevertheless, the appearance of Gorky in the legal press was important event in Russian journalism.

1. The beginning of M. Gorky’s journalistic activity

Samara Gazeta was a typical liberal-bourgeois provincial publication. It had widely developed departments of chronicles, reviews (metropolitan and provincial press, local life), correspondence, feuilletons, and fiction were published. In the 90s, the following people collaborated with the newspaper: N. I. Asheshov, S. S. Gusev, N. G. Garin-Mikhailovsky, S. G. Petrov (Wanderer). The newspaper's circulation was two to three thousand copies.

In “Essays and Sketches,” which Gorky began writing immediately upon his arrival in Samara in the spring of 1895, he for the first time had the opportunity to directly address the reader and give a public assessment of a number of phenomena public life. “Essays and Sketches” were based mainly on materials from the provincial press.

Almost simultaneously, Gorky, under the pseudonym Yehudiel Chlamida, began to run one of the most militant sections of the newspaper - a feuilleton on a local topic under the title “By the way.” He uses everyday facts for serious conversation on important issues, notices what is typical, and moves on to broad social generalizations. Unlike many provincial newspapermen, Gorky does not succumb to the fact: it is important to him not only in itself, but as a reason for conversation with the reader on acute problems life. Gorky deeply believed in the great progressive power of the press and viewed the newspaper as “an arena for the struggle for truth and goodness,” calling it “the scourge of the philistine conscience, a noble bell that broadcasts only the truth.”

The general character of the speeches of Gorky the publicist is protesting, accusatory. His materials indicate the author’s deep dissatisfaction with the entire system of life of the landowner-bourgeois state. The writer's feuilletons with extraordinary courage revealed many ulcers provincial life: mockery of human dignity, lack of rights for women, savagery, lack of culture, the inner emptiness of the lives of ordinary people, etc.

The greatest attention is paid to operation working people. Not afraid of administrative and censorship persecution, Gorky exposes the Samara manufacturer Lebedev, who uses child labor in his factory (“By the way”). The situation of the workers is discussed in the sketches “Something about typesetters”, “Just like ours”, etc. Gorky’s sympathies are entirely on the side of the workers. He rejoices at the manifestation of solidarity among them, the craving for culture, “the emergence among some of the working environment of self-awareness and awareness of their human rights.”

A number of essays and feuilletons are devoted to the situation of peasants. Gorky does not idealize the peasant, he sees his underdevelopment, downtroddenness, suppressed sense of human dignity and understands that the social system is to blame for this, dooming the people to a powerless, half-starved existence. Officials and merchants treat the peasant rudely, rob him in transactions, and selfishly take advantage of his hopeless situation. Gorky is especially outraged by the cynicism of people of intelligent professions - lawyers, doctors - in relation to to the common people(“Operation with a man”). He condemns the morals of the bourgeois provincial press, which makes the troubles and misfortunes of some people entertainment for others.

Much space in the feuilletons is given to the contrasts of a large capitalist city, criticism of the backwardness of provincial life, lack of culture. Gorky's clearly expressed sympathies for workers, peasants and small employees aroused the anger of the local bosses, but this did not frighten him. "...Newspaper! I am pleased with her, she does not give quiet days to the local public. She pricks like a hedgehog. Fine! Although it would be necessary for her to hit empty heads like a hammer,” Gorky noted in a letter to Korolenko on March 15, 1895.

Samara themes under Gorky’s pen sounded socially broad, going far beyond the borders of the city and province. In the writer’s feuilletons published in Samara Gazeta, the face of the entire autocratic Russia is clearly visible.

His stay in Samara was an extremely important stage in Gorky’s ideological and creative growth. Along with journalism, “Song of the Falcon”, “Old Woman Izergil” and other works were created here. Work at Samara Gazeta gave the writer ample material for developing the theme of philistinism, “okurovshchina.”

At the end of 1895, Gorky, as a correspondent for the Odessa News newspaper, went to Nizhny Novgorod for the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition and at the same time began to collaborate in the Nizhny Novgorod Listok newspaper.

According to the plan of Tsar's Minister Witte, the exhibition was supposed to show the successes of Russian capitalism achieved over the past 10-12 years. But the advertising nature of the exhibition did not deceive Gorky. He was among those few Russian correspondents who were able to fairly evaluate it, despite the fuss raised by liberal and monarchist newspapers around the “Nizhny Novgorod miracle.” Gorky’s sober voice sounded throughout Russia: “The exhibition is much more instructive as a truthful indicator of imperfections human life, than as a picture of the success of the country’s industrial technology.” The young journalist was not overwhelmed by the scope and pomp with which it was arranged.

Gorky immediately noted a decisive drawback of the exposition: the pavilions and stands did not reflect at all the life and work of the people who produced all the valuables on display. How, by whom, and under what conditions tons of iron, coal, cotton were mined, cars were built, things were made - it was impossible to find out. The exhibition did not show the great creative power of the people.

The writer takes every opportunity to recall the cruel exploitation that reigns in domestic enterprises, which, of course, the organizers of the exhibition kept silent about. He talks about miserable wages, about the semi-slave labor of workers under capitalism. Life is abnormal when iron takes precedence, and man slavishly serves it (essay “Among the Metal”).

Describing the final preparations for the opening of the pavilions, Gorky notes that even here, scenes of exploitation are encountered at every step: “On all sides you are surrounded by various architectural delicacies..., and between them, on the same ground... bent over in three deaths, dirty and sweat-drenched workers drive wooden wheelbarrows and carry ten-pound boxes with exhibits “on their backs.” This is too striking... It’s unpleasant to see at an art and industrial exhibition an exhibition of the grueling day labor of unskilled workers.”

2. The main ideas of M. Gorky’s journalistic activities

Gorky's essays and correspondence that made up the cycle “From the All-Russian Exhibition” are full of deep indignation against the absurd, unjustified admiration of its organizers for foreignness and neglect of their own, domestic. It's a shame to see the West constantly and everywhere as our teacher, he says. The engine department is striking in the absence of Russian names - there are only Bromleys, Laharpes, Nobels, Tsindels around, and this offends Gorky’s patriotic feeling.

“I’m not a nationalist, not an apologist for Russian identity, but when I walk through the engine room, I feel sad. There are almost no Russian surnames in it - all German and Polish surnames. But, however, some guy, it seems, Ludwig Tsop, is producing iron “according to the engineer Artemyev’s system”... This makes a piercing impression. They say that the soil of industrial activity is most likely to be akin to humanity. This would be good, of course, but for now I still want to see engineer Artemyev independently implementing his product processing system.”

The writer looks with alarm at how foreign capital, with the connivance of the tsarist government, is taking over one after another the leading branches of national industry: engineering, oil, textiles. Official patriotism is alien to him. He condemns the organizers of the exhibition for trying to present the self-taught artisan Korkin, who tried to make a bicycle and a piano by hand, as an example of Russian ingenuity, as a national genius, and sneers at those who remembered Polzunov and Yablochkin just for the sake of the exhibition.

The work of talented and hardworking Russian people, well organized and skillfully directed, could really produce great results, but in Tsarist Russia this does not and cannot happen.

Gorky truthfully depicts the degeneration of the bourgeois intelligentsia, its pernicious influence on all aspects of social and cultural life. Everything that the bourgeoisie touches with its dirty hands is vulgarized: cinema, painting, music, theater. The exhibition particularly clearly demonstrated the desire of the bourgeoisie to turn art into piquant entertainment. The bourgeois intellectual, like the Siberian merchant, only had access to café pleasures (“Entertainment”).

The severity of Gorky's essays and correspondence was such that city newspapers were forbidden to print his articles during the Tsar's visit to Nizhny Novgorod.

It should be noted that there is some difference in approach to the theme of the exhibition between Gorky’s essays and correspondence in Nizhny Novgorod List and in Odessa News. Nizhny Novgorod residents were more fully informed about the exhibition and exhibition life, so they were not interested in descriptions of the celebration, but in the assessment and comments of the publicist. And vice versa, the Odessa reader wanted to know about all the attractions of the exhibition, about how and what life is like in Nizhny Novgorod. Gorky took this into account in his correspondent work, never, however, sacrificing serious conclusions for the sake of entertainment. On the pages of Odessa News, he was able to emphasize the shortcomings of the existing social system by contrasting moods, landscapes, allegories, and remarks from his interlocutors.

Gorky’s articles, essays and correspondence about the All-Russian Exhibition of 1896 helped the Russian reader understand the ostentatious nature of “this universal shop”, which covered up the anti-people essence of the policy of the tsarist government. They played a significant role in the creative growth of the writer himself.

The exhibition gave Gorky new material for sharp criticism of decadent bourgeois culture, art and literature. In a number of articles and essays, the writer revealed the reactionary essence of naturalism and decadence - movements in art generated by the era of capitalism, developing into imperialism.

Regarding the assessment of new trends in Russian painting, especially the paintings of Vrubel and Gallen, Gorky enters into polemics with the artist Karelin, who wrote in the newspapers Nizhegorodskaya Pochta and Volgar, and the publicist Dedlov from Nedelya. He criticizes not only the fashionable painting of the Impressionists, but also the poetry of the decadents and symbolists, which is alien to working people. “...Gentlemen artists and poets, stricken by decadence and a fashionable disease, look at art as an area of ​​free expression of their personal feelings and sensations, not constrained by any laws. “Art is free,” they firmly remember and confidently engage in haidama in art, putting forward in place of the crystal clear and sonorous verse of Pushkin their own non-rhythmic verses, without meter and content, with vague images and with exaggerated claims to the originality of themes, and in place paintings by Repin, Perov, Pryanishnikov and other colossi of Russian painting - colossal canvases, the technique of which is quite similar to the angular and disheveled verses of Madame Gippius and others like her. What social meaning is there in all this, what positive significance can this dance of St. Vitus have in poetry and painting?” The writer himself defends clarity and simplicity in art, its close connection with life. The task of literature and painting is to ennoble the human spirit, educate him ideologically, and show the truth of life. Art should teach a person to think; there can be no place in it for stupid and harmful “eccentricities.”

Gorky highly values ​​the realism of Makovsky’s painting, the acting of the Maly Theater actors, program music, asserts the immeasurable superiority of Renaissance artists and Russian masters of the 19th century. over impressionist painting. He especially appreciates the genuine art of the people themselves, no matter in what forms it appears. The writer speaks with delight about the nameless Russian stone-cutters, who give the stone “light, airy forms” and have “delicate taste,” “a confident hand,” and “a well-developed sense of proportion.” Gorky’s sympathies are given to “grandmother Irina,” the famous storyteller Irina Andreevna Fedosova (essay “Voplenitsa”).

Gorky’s speeches touching on issues of art are accompanied by his article “Paul Verlaine and the Decadents,” published by Samara Gazeta in 1896. It most fully reveals the roots and social meaning of decadence as an art generated by the decaying bourgeoisie. Pessimism and complete indifference to reality are characteristic features of the work of French and Russian decadents (Rimbaud, Malarme, Sologub, Merezhkovsky, etc.). “...Decadents and decadence are a harmful, antisocial phenomenon, a phenomenon that must be fought,” writes Gorky.

Conclusion

From article to article, Gorky's journalistic skills become stronger. Coming from the people, who saw a lot “in people” even during his wanderings in Rus', the writer tirelessly works on himself and comes closer and closer to the class truth of the proletariat, to the masterpieces of his work - “The Song of the Petrel”, the novel “Mother” and others the best works. Until the end of his life he did not stop his journalistic activities. Professional journalist school has proven to be extremely beneficial for the future growth of a writer.

Bibliography

1. Paramonov B.. Gorky, white spot. October, 1992, N 5, p. 158.
2. Drunk M.. Toward comprehension of the “Russian system of soul” in the revolutionary era. Star. - 1991 - N 7. - p. 183.

The series of my articles is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Russian writer, playwright and public figure A.M. Gorky.

War to the death for the interpretation of HIS LEGACY and theory the latest method in world literature - SOCIALIST REALISM - has been going on since the mid-1930s.

Maxim Gorky's contribution to the literature and aesthetics of Russian civilization and world literature is great.

Henri Barbusse, Heinrich Mann, Martin Andersen Nexe, Leonard Frank, Upton Sinclair, John Galsworthy, Bernhard Kellermann, Knut Hamsun, Theodor Dreiser, Georges Duhamel, Jacob Wasserman, Thomas Mann, Arthur Schnitzler, Selma Lagerlöf, Sherwood Anderson, Louis Aragon, John Steinbeck, Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and others wrote about Maxim Gorky. Even those who were far from him ideologically and creatively wrote about him as a great artist and/or as the first proletarian writer.

CONFERENCES and MONUMENTS...

The interest of Gorky scholars in the work of one of the greatest writers of the 20th century in world literature does not wane. At the end of March 2016, the XXXVII International Conference “M. Gorky - artist and thinker" in Nizhny Novgorod. A collection of her materials has already been published. It contains more than 50 scientific reports.

In 2017, the publishing house AST published A new book“The Mystery of Gorky’s Death: Documents, Facts, Versions”, prepared by the Gorky sector of the IMLI. The editor-in-chief is the leading modern liberal-leaning Gorky scholar Lidiya Spiridonova. The topic is completely, in my opinion, not relevant. Moreover, it is provocative. But one should not expect a different approach to the work of M. Gorky from such specialists.

The “dreamers,” very similar to the liar Solzhenitsyn, offer their childish, if not more precisely, stupid, version: that Stalin ordered the removal of M. Gorky. For the reason that he did not agree to write an essay about Stalin. Why then did the Leader almost tearfully beg the writer to return to his homeland? If he doesn’t want to, well, let him live in Italy.

No there was another one good reason. He asked to come because, surrounded by Russian-speaking Trotskyists and writers, he could not entrust anyone other than Gorky with the preparation, organization and holding of the founding congress Soviet writers. Gorky coped with the task brilliantly.

Therefore, only the Trotskyists could eliminate it. They removed Kirov in 1934?! And in 1937 they were preparing a coup d'etat. But the plot was discovered. The culprits were shot. That is why their grandchildren still write on this topic. By hook or by crook, remove all suspicion from your grandfathers. Prove that this is not so!!! But one should not expect a different approach to the work of M. Gorky from such specialists.

Literary scholars of the bourgeois-liberal school are looking for the killers of either Yesenin or Mayakovsky. They are trying to accuse the great Russian writer M. Sholokhov of plagiarism, but at the same time they are constantly and shamelessly glorifying Judas and the liar Solzhenitsyn. Unfortunately, among the Russian national intelligentsia today there are much more chicks from Judas’s nest than chicks from M. Gorky’s nest....

The International Scientific Conference“THE WORLD SIGNIFICANCE OF M. GORKY.” Gorky scholars will deal with the issues of studying and popularizing the work of M. Gorky in Russia and abroad. We can confidently predict: scientists from the Institute of World Literature named after. M. Gorky will be given guidelines about the key in which the significance of the work of the proletarian writer should be interpreted by scientists from Russia, neighboring countries, as well as Italy, Germany, China, Japan, Poland, the Czech Republic, the USA, Israel and other countries. It is clear that this key is anti-Soviet. It is diametrically opposed to the interpretation adopted in Marxist literary criticism....

On the night of July 31, 2017, the monument to Maxim Gorky, dismantled 10 years ago by the Moscow authorities, was returned to Tverskaya Zastava Square near the Belorussky Station...

These events indicate the enormous importance of studying and interpreting the work and heritage of the great Russian proletarian writer for the literature of Russian civilization. One can hope for the speedy publication of a detailed article on the global significance of M. Gorky’s work from a critic posing as the leader of Russian bourgeois literary criticism, Vladimir Bondarenko, as well as from fighters of the liberal front falling out of the nest of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

While we are watching how the bourgeois-liberal regime is preparing for the Year of Solzhenitsyn. The Kremlin ordered the Ministry of Culture to take action, and it restored the monument to M. Gorky. Otherwise it could have turned out somehow inconvenient. All progressive humanity is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great proletarian writer, the petrel of Russian revolutions. And in Russia, at the state level, they are either opening the Wall of Sorrow or celebrating the centenary of the birth of the world-famous anti-Soviet Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It would be indecent in the Year of Solzhenitsyn to throw M. Gorky out of the memory of the Russian people.

Those in power would very much like ordinary citizens not to forget that the current regime in the Russian Federation is the “most democratic” in the thousand-year history of Russia.

Conferences are conferences, but I did not disdain to look into the Russian-language Wikipedia. I have never read so much Freudian chatter and nasty stuff about Gorky about the writer’s mistresses and even about his abnormal mental state. The stupidity of literary henchmen and Vlasovites and their hostility towards the great proletarian writer is off the charts.

And this circumstance is quite normal for the anti-Soviet regime. It would be funny if the newly-embourgeoisized degenerates and Russian-speaking mercenaries of world capital, who by deception and violence took away power from the councils of workers and collective farmers and plundered their national property, allowed them to preserve the foundations socialist literature and cultures that are the highest achievement of humanity in the 20th century.

The literary semi-literate oligarchs hold neither the storm petrels of the socialist revolution, nor the Pavka Korchagins, nor the Young Guards in high esteem. For those of them who have not yet forgotten how to read and have not lost interest in culture, give books about modern Gobseks and Ostap Benders. About Harry Potter and strawberries...

BUREVESTNIK OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS

M. Gorky is a great Russian proletarian writer. The first - in world literature. He openly wrote and spoke publicly about his political orientation: for the revolution, for socialism, for the proletariat - against the bourgeoisie, aristocracy, nobility, tsarist autocracy, clericalism and corrupt bureaucracy. He condemned the anti-people policy of the tsarist government, which used violence against strikers and the people. He did not hide the fact that he sponsored the Bolshevik Party and supported its revolutionary struggle for people's happiness.

Therefore, history and all progressive humanity honors the memory of this amazing artist of words and fighter for the progressive development of humanity.

I am writing not only to remember our great Russian writer, whose works we have read since childhood, and learned “The Song of the Petrel” by heart at school. I cannot imagine Soviet and Russian literature without Gorky, Yesenin, Sholokhov, Proskurin.

I am writing to ask a few questions to myself and my readers:

Are there proletarian writers, proletarian critics and proletarian literary critics among young Russian writers today?

What does it mean to be a proletarian and not a bourgeois writer in our days?

Can M. Gorky serve as an example of a fighter for people's happiness to young writers?

Do they remember the petrel of the Russian socialist revolution, which changed the world and humanity for all future centuries?

These questions and other topics are the subject of this series of my notes on the journalism of the founder of a new fiction in the universal history of mankind - PROLETARIAN. It is he who plays the role of the discoverer of a new imaging method reality. He laid the first concrete block in the foundation of the new world eternal socialist fiction. LITERATURES OF SOCIALIST REALISM. This great event occurred during the transition period from capitalist to socialist civilization, not only in Russia, but in all countries of the world.

M. Gorky's journalism is extremely rich in themes and ideas. We will get to know some of them in this series of articles.

________________________

Literary scholars and critics were more interested works of art M. Gorky than his historical and political essays and articles. Because they were written from a clear class perspective in their time, they received less attention from the reading public in Soviet times. Then all citizens were taught internationalism and a class approach to all events in the country and the world.

Now the situation has changed so much that it is Gorky’s journalism that should interest us most of all. Because it is precisely this that the ruling regime fears. Because so many lies and myths have been made up about the years of revolutions, the Civil War and foreign intervention, the first years of industrialization, collectivization, and the cultural revolution. So much - that it requires an appeal to the primary sources of those years, written by the first proletarian chroniclers, and not by the White Guard and emigrant enemies of Soviet workers and Russian-speaking anti-communists posing as liberals.

The relevance of the topic is dictated not only by the lies of Russian-speaking liberals, but also by the widely spread lies composed by the reactionary circles of Russian nationalists - the Vlasov and White Guard spill. There are quite a few of them divorced. Especially in circles close to the Russian Orthodox Church. The ranks of anti-Soviet clergy of the Gundyaev caste are also growing. In this environment, the ideology of the liar and Judas A. Solzhenitsyn is especially popular.

I was amazed by the interviews of the most “outstanding” Russian nationalists, heard on Orthodox radio and then published in the collection “Faith. Power. People: Russian Thought of the End of the 20th - beginning of the XXI century / Rep. ed. O. A. Platonov. - M.: Institute of Russian Civilization, 2016. - 1200. (The collection can be downloaded from the website of the Institute of Russian Civilization. We will need it when discussing issues related to the ideology of terry Russian nationalists - anti-communists and anti-Sovietists.)

M. Gorky sharply opposed the White Guards as the notorious enemies of the Soviet power of workers and collective farmers constantly.

ABOUT THE REVOLUTION OF 1905 AND ABOUT THE ROYAL AUTOCRASH.

Just over a hundred years have passed since the Russian Revolution of 1905. Is it a lot or a little? For the history of mankind, this is one moment.

How many events happened in the 20th century?! The Great October Russian Revolution. Civil and two world wars. More than one hundred million dead and twice as many maimed. You will not find a family that has not suffered from these events of unprecedented cruelty.

Gorky made a choice in Tsarist Russia - to work for the people, to liberate the working people from noble-bourgeois oppression, to fight for the people's happiness. What did he pay for for supporting the revolutionary proletariat in 1901-6... with the reputation of an “unreliable” writer?

In 1898, M. Gorky published two volumes of Essays and Stories, and the third volume the following year.

Turns to dramaturgy: the plays “The Bourgeois” (1901), “At the Lower Depths” (1902). He is already the author of six volumes literary works. About 50 of his works have been translated and published in 16 foreign languages.

Twice the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers and Composers awarded Gorky the Griboedov Prize for the plays “Philistines” and “At the Lower Depths” and became the leading playwright at the Art Theater (MAT). His new plays “Summer Residents”, “Children of the Sun”, “Barbarians” are staged in theaters. He meets with many famous artists, writers and poets. Among them were L. N. Tolstoy, A. Chekhov, I. Repin, K. Stanislavsky and singer Fyodor Chaliapin. Not every young writer achieves such fame six years after entering the literary arena.

His "Song of the Petrel" (1901) was regarded as anti-government propaganda, as a call for the violent overthrow of the existing system. After a month's imprisonment in a Nizhny Novgorod prison, he was transferred to House arrest. For protesting against the shooting of a peaceful demonstration of workers on January 9, 1905, M. Gorky was arrested and imprisoned Peter and Paul Fortress. The arrest of the famous writer caused outrage not only in Russia, but also in Europe. The authorities had to release him a month later...

He wrote about the bourgeois intelligentsia of that time: “... it seems to the intellectuals that they are defending “democracy”, although it has already proven and continues to prove its powerlessness; they are defending “personal freedom”, although it is squeezed into the cage of ideas that limit its intellectual growth; defend “freedom of speech,” although the press has been captured by the capitalists and can only serve their anarchic, inhuman, criminal interests. The intellectual works for his enemy, because the owner has always been and is the enemy of the worker, and the idea of ​​“class cooperation” is as naive nonsense as friendship. wolves with rams." (volume 26 of the 30-volume collected works)

Both in Tsarist Russia and in Soviet Russia Gorky occupied a clear class position. As a native of the people, who during his wanderings around Rus' saw a lot of poverty and misery, ugly situations of lack of rights ordinary people, he, unlike some modern intellectuals who come from Soviet families and now serving the oligarchic comprador class, stood in defense of the interests of the oppressed masses.

When I read articles by people who were born either before the Great Patriotic War or after it, writing, for example, about the revolutionary events of 1905 and proving that Russian workers and peasants lived better under Nicholas II than in the USSR, I always ask myself: Did they live in those days themselves? No, they didn't live. This means they are taking information from some unverified or deceitful source. Or they suck information out of their own fingers.

As a historian, I know what a reliable source is. In addition to the archives, there are notes and articles preserved in the works of great writers. What happened in January 1905 in Moscow? We take a volume of articles by M. Gorky, written by him in the revolutionary year nine hundred and five, and read his articles of that time.

We read not materials written by someone unknown, hired and paid, or an honest person, but the works of a classic of world literature. He described what he saw with his own eyes. He himself was a participant.

What did Gorky see in Russia before the revolution of 1905 and in what events did he take part? What did he write about them in the Russian and world progressive press?

About Russia, the one that modern monarchists lick, he wrote:

“We live in a country where people are whipped to this day, whipped with whips, beaten to death with sticks, where ribs are broken, hit in the face for fun, where there is no limit to violence against people, where the forms of torture are varied to the point of disgust, to the point of insane shame. A people brought up in a school so similar to a popular print depicting the torments of hell, a people brought up with fists, rods and whips, cannot be soft-hearted. A person who was trampled underfoot in the police station becomes capable of trampling underfoot someone like himself. In a country where lawlessness has reigned for so long, it is difficult for the people to immediately recognize the power of law; it is impossible to demand justice from them, unfamiliar with it."

Gorky saw with his own eyes the acute class struggle of the masses of the people with a group of nobles and bourgeois led by the monarch, and saw the division of society into antagonistic classes.

Without fear of revenge from the tsarist government, he wrote:

“People are increasingly divided into two irreconcilable camps - a minority armed with everything that can protect them, a majority who have only one weapon - their hands - and one desire - equality. To the right stand impassive, machine-like, iron-clad slaves of capital, they are accustomed to consider themselves masters of life, but in fact they are weak-willed servants of the cold, yellow devil, whose name is gold. To the left, the real masters of all life, the only living force that sets everything in motion, are increasingly merging into an irresistible squad - the working people... their heart burns with confidence in victory, and they see their future - freedom ... "

During the revolutionary events of 1905, the writer openly called on workers to unite and oppose the tsar, whom the current rulers and nationalists of all stripes and shades who supported them hastily ranked among the “saints.”

M. Gorky turned to foreign bankers and asked not to provide loans to the tsar, who ordered the execution of peaceful people on January 9. The day before, he, as part of a delegation, went to beg the Tsar to come out and talk to the people. The officials did not meet the requests of the people; they sent the Cossacks. They opened fire, as the butcher generals ordered.

And then bloody sunday he wrote:

“...everywhere one can see the vile work of a handful of people, maddened by the fear of losing their power over the country - people who strive to pour blood on the brightly flaring fire of the people’s consciousness of their right to be the builder of forms of life... These people are accustomed to power, they feel so good lived when they could, without giving an account of their actions to anyone, control the fate and wealth of our country, the strength and blood of the people: they were accustomed to look at Russia as their estate, they forcibly kept the powerless people in ignorance and filth - in order to weaken the spirit of the people, prevent their energy from growing, make them a blind and dumb slave, obedient to their will."

Do you think the current ruling class in Russia acts differently?

In those revolutionary days, he addressed the workers not only of Russia, but of all countries, published in newspapers: “Comrades! The struggle against the vile oppression of the unfortunate is a struggle for the liberation of the world, yearning for deliverance from a whole network of gross contradictions against which [all of humanity] is being broken, full of feelings of bitterness and powerlessness. You, comrades, are bravely trying to break this network, but your enemies persistently want to return you to even greater restrictions. Your weapon, your sharp sword is TRUTH, but the weapon of your enemies is FALSE. before his power and do not see the great ideals of the unity of all humanity in one big family free workers. This ideal sparkles like a star and rises higher and shines brighter in the darkness of the storm.

“The capitalists, nobles, and autocracy are frightened by the revolutionary uprising of the proletarian masses in Russia. They are fighting the proletariat and using all the means at their disposal in this merciless battle. Seeing the powerful movement of the masses towards freedom and light, they, trembling with horror, vainly console themselves with the hope of defeating justice and resort to the last resort, slander, presenting the proletariat as a crowd of hungry animals, capable only of mercilessly destroying everything that comes their way. They have turned religion and science into weapons of your enslavement. They came up with nationalism and anti-Semitism - this poison with which they want to kill faith in the brotherhood of all people. Their god, however, exists only for the bourgeoisie, in order to guard its property.... Long live the proletariat, boldly striving for the renewal of the world! Long live the workers of all countries, with whose hands the wealth of nations was created and who are now striving to [create] new life! Long live socialism - the religion of the workers! Hello to the fighters, hello to the workers of all countries, may they always maintain their faith in the victory of truth and justice! Long live humanity, united by the great ideals of equality and freedom!” (Maxim Gorky. Excerpts from articles. Volume 23 of a 30-volume collected works).

This is what it means to be a proletarian writer!!!

M. GORKY IN EXILE

At the beginning of 1906, M. Gorky was forced to leave Russia due to police persecution. He could not return, because arrest and trial awaited him. The progressive press published his articles that were unpleasant for the tsarist government and Black Hundred circles of the bourgeois and noble intelligentsia.

He went to America to raise funds for the revolutionary movement in Russia. At this time he writes and then publishes the story "Mother". Present at the V Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. Meets with V.I. Lenin in London.

Lenin praised the story: “A very timely book.” For the first time in Russian literature, “the image of the worker appeared as the future master of his country, as the creator of its history.” The story is translated into foreign languages. As A. Lunacharsky wrote, “the workers’ press, mainly German, and partly French and Italian, picked up this story and distributed it in the form of newspaper supplements or feuilletons in literally millions of copies. “Mother” has become a reference book for the European proletariat.”

Then M. Gorky goes to Italy and lives for several years in Capri. There he writes the story “Childhood,” one of Gorky’s most accomplished works. (The trilogy “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities” became mine reference books during school years).

While abroad, M. Gorky maintained a lively correspondence with Lenin, publishers, and writers.

Only at the end of 1913 was he finally able to return to his homeland: an amnesty was declared on the occasion of the “tercentenary of the House of Romanov.” “I was greeted by democracy kindly and touchingly; Moscow alone congratulated me over 70 times.” Greetings were received from students, professional society workers of the printing arts, from the society of periodicals and literature, from different cities, from newspapers and magazines.