The mysterious life and death of Maxim Gorky. Maxim Gorky's mental illness

Gorky's death has been the subject of controversy and speculation for several decades. This began soon after the death of the writer, when the doctors who treated him, D. D. Pletnev, L. G. Levin, I. N. Kazakov, were accused of poisoning the leader of proletarian literature chocolates with poisonous filling. “I plead guilty,” Levin testified at the trial, “that I used treatment that was contrary to the nature of the disease... I caused the premature death of Maxim Gorky and Kuibyshev.” Other doctors who were charged with more than just the murder of the writer said something similar... However, everything is in order.

In May 1936, Gorky became seriously ill. On the 27th he returned from Tesseli to Moscow and the next day went to his dacha in Gorki. On the way, the car drove into Novodevichy Cemetery- Gorky wanted to visit the grave of his son Maxim. The day was cold and windy. And in the evening, as nurse O.D. Chertkova recalls, Gorky felt uneasy. The temperature rose, weakness, malaise appeared...

The disease developed rapidly. Eyewitnesses note that already on June 8, Gorky was on the verge of death.

E. P. Peshkova:
“Alexei Maksimovich’s condition deteriorated so much that the doctors warned us that his near end was inevitable and their further intervention was useless. They invited us to enter for a final farewell...
Alexey Maksimovich is sitting in a chair, his eyes are closed, his head is bowed, his hands are lying helplessly on his knees.
Breathing is intermittent, pulse is uneven. The face, ears and fingers turned blue. After a while, hiccups began, restless movements with his hands, with which he seemed to be moving something away, removing something from his face.
One after another, the doctors quietly left the bedroom.
Only relatives remained near Alexey Maksimovich: me, Nadezhda Alekseevna, Maria Ignatievna Budberg (Alexey Maksimovich’s secretary in Sorrento), Lipa (O.D. Chertkova - a nurse and a family friend), P.P. Kryuchkov - his secretary, I.N. Rakitsky is an artist who lived for a number of years in the family of Alexei Maksimovich...
After a long pause, Alexey Maksimovich opened his eyes.
Their expression was absent and distant. As if waking up, he slowly looked around us all, stopping for a long time on each of us, and with difficulty, dully, separately, in a strangely alien voice, he said:
“I was so far away, from where it’s so difficult to return...”

The story recorded from the words of M.I. Budberg, with the exception of a few points, confirms what was said above: “On June 8, the doctors announced that they could do nothing more. Gorky was dying... Relatives gathered in the room... G[ Orky] was seated in a chair. He hugged Maria I[gnatievna] and said:
“All my life I’ve been thinking about how I could decorate this moment. Did I succeed?”
“It was a success,” answered M[aria] I[gnatievna].
- “Well, good!” He breathed heavily, rarely spoke, but his eyes remained clear. He circled everyone present and said:
“It’s so good that only close ones (no strangers).” He looked out the window - the day was gray - and said to Maria I[gnatievna]:
“It’s kind of boring.” Silence again. K.P. asked:
"Alexey, tell me, what do you want?" Silence. She repeated the question. After a pause, Gorky said:
“I’m already far away from you and it’s difficult for me to return.” His hands and ears turned black. Dying. And, dying, he weakly moved his hand, as one says goodbye when parting."

And then suddenly a miracle happened, about which all eyewitnesses write. They called and said that Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov were coming to visit Gorky. And Gorky came to life! Just like in medieval legends, when a touch or a look healed the sick. True, here the “miracle” was facilitated by a horse dose of camphor, injected into Gorky to support his strength and a worthy meeting with the leader. And the writer became so emboldened that he spoke with the visiting leader of the USSR about women writers and French literature.

“We’ll talk about the matter when you get better,” Stalin interrupted him.
“There’s so much work...” Gorky continued.
“You see,” Stalin shook him reproachfully. head - work a lot, and you decided to get sick, get better soon! - And after a pause he asked:
- Maybe there is wine in the house? We would drink a glass to your health... Wine, of course, was found. Gorky just took a sip of it. Either Stalin's visit inspired him with strength, or his body had not yet exhausted all its resources, but the writer lived after that for another 10 days.

In the story of Gorky's death, eyewitnesses also agree on the main details. P.P. Kryuchkov says that Gorky did not believe the doctors. Knew he was dying. After the 8th he said about the doctors: “However, they deceived me.” He was sure from the first day that he did not have the flu (as he was told), but pneumonia. “The doctors are mistaken. I can see from the sputum that there is pneumonia. We need to figure this out ourselves.” After the 8th, the picture changed from day to day.

Periods of improvement were followed by more and more attacks. Lived only on oxygen (150 pillows of oxygen). Timosha spoke about death: “You have to die in the spring, when everything is green and cheerful.” He told Lipa: “We need to make it fun to die.” He believed only Speransky. When the number of doctors increased, he said: “Things must be bad - the doctors have arrived...” On the 10th, Stalin and others arrived at night. (For the second time! - A.L.) They were not allowed in. They left a note. Its meaning is this: “They came to visit, but your “aesculapians” did not let you in”... Stalin and Co. came back on the 12th. A[lexey] M[aksimovich] again spoke like a healthy man about the situation of the French peasants.

I was in my bedroom all the time. He was sitting on the bed, not lying. Sometimes they lifted him up. One day he said: “Exactly the ascension!” (when he was lifted by his arms).

The injections were painful, but he did not complain. Only in one of last days said barely audibly: “Let me go” (to die). And the second time, when he could no longer speak, he pointed with his hand at the ceiling and doors, as if wanting to escape from the room.

The story of P. P. Kryuchkov complements O. D. Chertkov:
“One night he woke up and said: “You know, I was arguing with the Lord God. Wow, how he argued. Do you want to tell me?" But I was embarrassed to ask him... On the 16th [June] the doctors told me that pulmonary edema had begun. I put my ear to his chest to listen - is it true? What if he hugs me tightly, like he’s healthy, and kissed him. So we said goodbye to him. He never regained consciousness. Last night there was a strong thunderstorm. He began to go into agony. All the relatives gathered. They gave him oxygen all the time. During the night they gave me 300 bags of oxygen, conveyed by conveyor straight from the truck, up the stairs, into the bedroom. Died at 11 o'clock. He died quietly. I was just out of breath. The autopsy was performed in the bedroom, on this table. They invited me. I did not go. So that I can go watch him being gutted? It turned out that his pleura had grown in like a corset. And when they tore it off, it broke, it was so calcified. It was not for nothing that when someone grabbed him by the sides, he would say: “Don’t touch me, it hurts!”

P.P. Kryuchkov, who was present at the autopsy, also says that “the condition of the lungs turned out to be terrible. Both lungs were almost completely “ossified,” as well as the bronchi. How he lived and how he breathed is unclear. The doctors were even glad that the condition of the lungs turned out to be in such bad condition. They were absolved of responsibility."

No, no one relieved them of responsibility. Later, they were nevertheless accused - first of incompetence, and then of outright malice.

In principle, the majority of evidence still suggests that Gorky died of pneumonia. But we cannot discard the facts that speak in favor of the version of poisoning. For the sake of objectivity, we will present them too.

1. For some reason, the head of the GPU hung around the house of the dying writer. O. D. Chertkova, for example, says that when Stalin visited Gorky, he saw G. G. Yagoda in the dining room. “Why is this guy hanging out here?” Stalin allegedly asked. “So that he wouldn’t be here...” Perhaps Stalin was afraid that Yagoda, by too zealously carrying out the order of poisoning, would give rise to unwanted rumors.

2. Despite his poor lungs, Gorky was physically very resilient. V.F. Khodasevich, who at one time knew Gorky closely and noted that “there was a connection between his last illness and the tuberculosis process that was discovered in his youth,” further wrote: “But this process was healed about forty years ago, and if it reminded of itself with a cough, "bronchitis and pleurisy, but still not to the same extent as they constantly wrote about it and as the public thought. In general, he was cheerful, strong - not without reason, and lived to be sixty-eight years old." A N.P. Kryuchkov testifies that Gorky had a beautiful heart, which for a minute could withstand surges from 60 to 160 beats.

3. Both G. Yagoda and the doctors who treated Gorky were killed - perhaps as unwanted witnesses. (Yagoda, of course, was destroyed in connection with other “slippery” matters.)

4. Immediately after his death, Gorky’s body was “gutted” by doctors. According to the story of P.P. Kryuchkov, when he entered the room, he saw a sprawled, bloody body in which doctors were swarming. Then they began to wash the insides. They somehow sewed up the cut with simple twine... The brain was placed in a bucket to be delivered to the Brain Institute. P.P. Kryuchkov remained convinced: if Gorky had not been treated, but had been left alone, he might have recovered.

5. The Soviet government (that is, in fact, Stalin) decided to cremate Gorky. E. P. Peshkova, who asked Stalin to allocate at least a particle of ashes for her to be buried in the same grave with the writer’s son Maxim, was denied this - and denied not through anyone, but through Yagoda.

6. On trial Yagoda, arrested in April 1937, his secretary Bulanov testified that Yagoda had a special cabinet of poisons, from where, as needed, he removed precious vials and handed them over to his agents with the appropriate instructions. L.D. Trotsky writes that “in relation to poisons, the head of the GPU, by the way, a former pharmacist, showed exceptional interest. He had at his disposal several toxicologists, for whom he built a special laboratory, and funds were allocated for it unlimitedly and without control. It is impossible, of course, not to moment to allow Yagoda to build such an enterprise for his personal needs. No, and in this case he performed an official function. He was a poisoner, like the old woman Locust at court Nero, instrumentum reghi. He is only far ahead of his dark predecessor in the field of technology!

Sitting next to Yagoda in the dock were four Kremlin doctors accused of murdering Maxim Gorky and two Soviet ministers."

Further, Trotsky sets out his reasons in favor of the murder version. He does not believe that the doctors were slandered; in his opinion, they nevertheless committed the poisoning on Yagoda’s orders. But why did Stalin need to kill the “petrel of the proletariat”? Here is how Trotsky argues: “Maxim Gorky was neither a conspirator nor a politician. He was a compassionate old man, an intercessor for the offended, a sentimental Protestant. This was his role from the first days of the October revolution. During the period of the first and second Five-Year Plans, hunger, discontent and repression reached the highest limit. Dignitaries protested, even Stalin's wife, Alliluyeva, protested. In this atmosphere, Gorky posed a serious danger. He was in correspondence with European writers, foreigners visited him, offended people complained to him, he formed public opinion. There was no way to force him to remain silent. It was even less possible to arrest him, deport him, much less shoot him. The idea of ​​speeding up the liquidation of the sick Gorky “without shedding blood” through Yagoda should have presented itself under these conditions to the owner of the Kremlin as the only way out...

Having received the order, Yagoda turned to “his” doctors. He didn't risk anything. Refusal would be, in Levin's words, "our death, that is, the death of me and my family."

“There is no salvation from Yagoda, Yagoda will not back down from anything, he will pull you out of the ground.” Why, however, did not the authoritative and honored doctors of the Kremlin complain to members of the government, whom they knew closely as their patients? One doctor Levin’s list of patients included 24 high dignitaries, all members of the Politburo and the Council of People’s Commissars! The answer is that Levin, like everyone in the Kremlin and around the Kremlin, knew very well whose agent Yagoda was. Levin submitted to Yagoda because he was powerless to resist Stalin.

Gorky's dissatisfaction, his attempt to escape abroad, and Stalin's refusal of a foreign passport were known and whispered in Moscow. After the writer’s death, suspicions immediately arose that Stalin had slightly helped the destructive force of nature. The Yagoda trial had the incidental task of clearing Stalin of this suspicion. Hence the repeated statements by Yagoda, doctors and other defendants that Gorky was a “close friend of Stalin,” a “confidant,” a “Stalinist,” who fully approved of the “leader’s” policies and spoke with “exceptional delight” about Stalin’s role. If this were even half true, Yagoda would never have dared to take upon himself the murder of Gorky, and even less would he have dared to entrust such a plan to a Kremlin doctor, who could destroy him with a simple telephone call to Stalin.”

And yet, despite many seemingly convincing arguments, the version of Gorky’s poisoning seems unlikely. After all last years Gorky truly fully accepted Stalin's policies - including the policy of repression. Let us at least remember his visit to the camp on Solovki and his participation in the trip along the White Sea Canal. Let us remember his famous catchphrase: “If the enemy does not surrender, he is destroyed.” And Gorky very often came into “exceptional delight” about phenomena much less significant than the “genius of all peoples.” Why, one might ask, did Stalin need to visit the sick writer three times (sic!) within a week if he had already given the order for his destruction? Or is this an example of sophisticated, sadistic entertainment? Lots of questions. At the most pathetic moment, history, as always, puts on an impenetrable mask. We must guess the true expression of her face intuitively.

N.A. Peshkova, Gorky’s daughter-in-law - the wife of his son Maxim; her family's name was Timosha.
And also a mistress, according to N.N. Berberova. It is believed that M.I. Budberg was both an agent of the GPU and the Intelligence Service.
*** E. P. Peshkova.
**** One of the doctors who treated Gorky.
***** Means of execution (lat.)

A day is a small life, and you have to live it as if you were supposed to die now, and you were unexpectedly given another day.

The most active ally of the disease is the despondency of the patient.

How can you not trust a person? Even if you see that he is lying, believe him, that is, listen and try to understand why he is lying?

A. M. Gorky with his son
Maksim Gorky (Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov) was born on March 29, 1868. His father was a cabinetmaker (according to another version, the manager of the Astrakhan office of the shipping company I.S. Kolchin), and his mother was the daughter of the owner of a dye shop. He was orphaned at the age of nine, and his grandmother had a decisive influence on him.

“Due to exceptionally difficult living conditions, disagreements and complex contradictions in views on reality with the populists who took over Derenkov’s bakery, the death of his grandmother, the arrest and death of people close to him, Gorky experienced mental depression, which he later described in the story “An Incident in the Life of Makar” " On December 12, 1887, in Kazan, Gorky tried to commit suicide.

Having bought an old revolver at the market, Maksim Gorky at eight o’clock in the evening on the banks of the Kazanka River near the Fedorovsky Monastery he shot himself in the chest.” “The bullet missed the heart, only slightly hitting the lung. The wounded man was brought first to the police station, and then to the zemstvo hospital.”
From December 12 to 21, Gorky was in this hospital. In March 1888, at Romas’s suggestion, he left Kazan...” January 2 1888 years after the failed assassination attempt suicide discharged from the zemstvo hospital.

In his short essay “On the Harm of Philosophy,” Gorky artistically, colorfully, but apparently quite truthfully describes mental illness which he suffered in 1889—1890 years. However, it is unlikely that Gorky himself believed that philosophy made him mentally ill, although cosmogonic delusional ideas or ideas play big role in Gorky's delirium.

Gorky's friend, who lectured him on philosophy, loved bread sprinkled with a thick layer of quinine; he poisoned himself repeatedly until he finally poisoned himself with indigoid in 1901. After two lectures, Gorky fell ill. And maybe even earlier! Already at the second lecture of Vasilyev Gorky „

I saw something indescribably terrible: inside a huge, bottomless bowl, overturned on its side, there were ears, eyes, palms of hands with outstretched fingers, rolling heads without faces, human legs walking, each separately from the other, something clumsy and hairy jumping, reminiscent of a bear, the roots of the trees move like huge spiders, and the branches and leaves live separately from them; multi-colored wings fly, the eyeless faces of huge bulls silently look at me, and their round eyes jump in fear above them; Here the winged leg of a camel is running, and after it the horned head of an owl is rapidly rushing - the entire inside of the bowl that I see is filled with the whirlwind movement of individual members, parts of pieces, sometimes connected to each other in an ironically ugly way.

In this chaos of gloomy disunity, in a silent whirlwind of torn bodies, Hatred and Love, indistinguishably similar to each other, move majestically, opposing each other, a ghostly, bluish radiance pours out from them, reminiscent of the winter sky on a sunny day, and illuminates everything that moves with a deathly monochromatic light ".

„after a few days I felt that my brain melts and boils, giving rise to strange, fantastic thoughts visions and pictures. A feeling of melancholy, sucking life out, overtook me, and I began to fear madness. But I was brave, I decided to go to the end of fear, and this is probably what saved me".

There follows a whole series of fantasies, which Gorky experienced partly hallucinatorily, and of which the most interesting, since it contains a “description” of eternity, is the following:

„

Large black men with copper heads could come out of the mountain on which I was sitting. Here they are in a close crowd walking through the air and filling the world with a deafening ringing; from it, trees and bell towers fall as if cut by an invisible saw, houses are destroyed, and now everything on earth has turned into a column of greenish burning dust, only a round, smooth desert remains, and in the middle I, alone for four eternities. Exactly —at four, I saw these eternities: huge dark gray circles of fog or smoke, they slowly rotate in the impenetrable darkness, almost indistinguishable from it in their ghostly color...

“...Beyond the river, on a dark plane, a human ear grows almost to the skies, an ordinary ear, with thick hair in the shell, grows and —listens to everything I think."

“With the long two-handed sword of a medieval executioner, flexible as a whip, I killed countless people; they walked towards me from right and left, men and women, all naked, walked silently, bowing their heads, submissively stretching their necks. There was an unknown creature standing behind me, and it was by his will that I killed, and it breathed cold needles into my brain.”

“A naked woman came up to me with bird legs instead of feet, golden rays emanating from her breasts. So she poured handfuls of burning oil on my head, and, flaring up like a clump of cotton wool, I disappeared.”

In addition to visual hallucinations, Gorky at this time had clearly expressed auditory hallucinations, which were so intense that they caused him to make noisy speeches:

„

And two mice, tamed by me, were waiting for me at home. They lived behind a wooden paneling wall; they gnawed a gap in it at table level and crawled out straight onto the table when I began to rustle with the plates of dinner that the landlady had left for me.”

And so I saw: funny animals turned into little gray imps and, sitting on a box of tobacco, dangled their furry legs, looking at me importantly, while a boring voice, unknown whose, whispered, reminiscent of the quiet sound of rain:

— common goal of all devils—to help people in search of misfortune.

- It's a lie! - I shouted angrily. - No one is looking for misfortune...

Then someone appeared. I heard him rattle the latch of the gate, open the door of the porch, the hallway, and - here he is in my room. He is round, like a soap bubble, without arms, instead of a face he has a clock face, and the hands are made of carrots, which I have had an idiosyncrasy for since childhood. I know that this is the husband of the woman I love, he just changed his clothes so that I wouldn’t recognize him. Here he turns into real person, plump with a light brown beard, soft gaze of kind eyes; smiling, he tells me everything evil and unflattering that I think about his wife and that no one but me can know.

“Get out!” I shout at him.

Then there’s a knock on the wall behind my wall—it’s the landlady, the sweet and smart Filitsata Tikhomirova. Her knock brings me back to the world of reality, I wet my eyes cold water and through the window, so as not to slam doors or disturb the sleeping people, I climb out into the garden and sit there until the morning.

In the morning over tea the hostess says:

And you screamed again at night...

I am inexpressibly ashamed, I despise myself."

A very important symptom that completes the picture of Gorky’s illness, which we are trying to reproduce here based on excerpts from “On the Harm of Philosophy,” is sharp dreamlike stupor, leading to the fact that Gorky, while working, suddenly forgets himself and his surroundings and unconsciously introduces into his work elements that are completely alien to it, which are not in direct or indirect connection with it, as happens in a dream, where the most impossible contradictory facts are connected in one unit. Here is what Gorky says:

„

At that time I worked as a clerk for sworn attorney A.I. Lapina, wonderful person, to whom I owe a lot. One day, when I came to him, he met me, wildly waving some papers, shouting:

-Are you crazy?

did you go? What did you, my friend, write in your appeal? Please rewrite it immediately, today is the deadline for submission. Marvelous! If this is a joke, then it’s a bad one, I’ll tell you!

I took the complaint from his hands and read the clearly written quatrain in the text:

- The night lasts forever...

My torment has no measure.

If only I could pray.

If only I knew the happiness of faith.

These poems came as much of a surprise to me as they did to my patron; I looked at them and almost didn’t believe that it was written by me.”

And fantasies and visions take possession of Gorky more and more:

“From these visions and night conversations with by different persons, which unknown how appeared in front of me and subtly disappeared, as soon as the consciousness of reality returned to me, from this too interesting life on the borderline of madness it was necessary to get rid of it. I had already reached such a state that even during the day in the light of the sun I was intensely expecting miraculous events.”

“I probably wouldn’t be very surprised if any house in the city suddenly jumped over me. Nothing, in my opinion, prevented the driver’s horse from standing on its hind legs and proclaiming in a deep bass voice:

- “Anathema.”

To these extravagant antics of unbridled imagination, to dreamlike stupor, hallucinations, obsessions, actions and deeds are sometimes added:

“Here on a bench on the boulevard, near the Kremlin wall, sits a woman in a straw hat and yellow gloves. If I go up to her and say:

- There is no god.

She will exclaim in surprise and offence:

- How? A—I?—will immediately turn into a winged creature and fly away, after which the whole earth will immediately become overgrown with thick trees without leaves, fat, blue mucus will drip from their branches and trunks, and I, as a criminal, will be sentenced to be a toad for 23 years and so that I all the time, day and night, he rang the large, echoing bell of the Ascension Church.

Since I really, unbearably want to tell the lady that there is no God, but I clearly see what the consequences of my sincerity will be, I leave as quickly as possible, sideways, almost running.”

Reality, the world of actual phenomena, at times ceases to exist completely for Gorky:

"Everything is possible. And it’s possible that there is nothing, so I need to touch fences, walls, trees with my hand. This is somewhat reassuring. Especially if you hit something hard with your fist for a long time, you become convinced that it exists.

“The earth is very treacherous, you walk along it as confidently as all people, but suddenly its density disappears under your feet, the earth becomes as permeable as air, remaining dark, and the soul falls headlong into this darkness endlessly for a long time, it lasts seconds."

“The sky is also unreliable; it can at any moment change the shape of the dome to the shape of a pyramid, with the top down; the tip of the top will rest against my skull and I will have to stand motionless at one point until the iron stars that hold the sky together rust out, then it will crumble into red dust and bury me.

Everything is possible. It’s just impossible to live in a world of such possibilities.

My soul was in great pain. And if two years ago I had not been convinced personal experience"How humiliating is the stupidity of suicide, I would probably use this method of treating a sick soul" .

(Delirium febrile ). This diagnosis is supported by the characteristic combination of symptoms (fantasies, illusions, hallucinations, the affect of fear), which we have already pointed out, illustrating them with excerpts from Gorky’s description of his illness, dreamlike stupor and fever. Kraepelin briefly characterizes febrile delirium as delirium, “accompanied by a more or less sharp dreamlike stupor, an unclear, often perverted assimilation of the environment and fantastic experiences, sometimes also quite strong anxiety with a fearful or cheerful mood.”

Gorky undoubtedly suffered from feverish delirium, which, thanks to Gorky’s passion for cosmogonic fantasies, received especially rich food and flourished magnificently, perhaps longer than it would have been under other, less favorable conditions.

Gorky sought advice from a psychiatrist and reports how the psychiatrist treated him, thus giving us the opportunity to judge the psychiatric science of that time in its application in practice.

„.

..A small, black, hunchbacked psychiatrist, a lonely man, smart and skeptic, asked me for two hours how I was living, then, slapping me on the knee with a terribly white hand, he said:

“You, my friend, first of all need to throw the books and, in general, all the rubbish on which you live to hell. In terms of your build, you are a healthy person—and it’s a shame for you to let yourself go like that. You need physical labor. What about women? Well! This won't do either. Give abstinence to others, and get yourself a woman who is more greedy in the game of love - this will be useful.

He gave me some more advice, equally unpleasant and unacceptable to me, wrote two recipes, then said several phrases that are very memorable to me:

“I heard something about you and—I apologize if you don’t like it.” You seem to me like a primitive person, so to speak. And primitive people fantasy always prevails logical thinking. Everything you read and saw aroused only your fantasy, and it is completely irreconcilable with reality, which, although it is also fantastic, is in its own way. Then: one ancient wise man said: whoever willingly contradicts is incapable of learning anything useful. It’s well said: first study, then contradict—that’s how it should be.

As he saw me off, he repeated with a smile of a cheerful devil:

“And the little babe is very useful for you.” .

I purposely quote the entire passage where Gorky draws a psychiatrist because of the historical value of this passage. Oddly enough, but long before the emergence and spread of Freudian psychoanalysis (the book “Studien uber Hystherie”, which Freud wrote together with Joseph Breuer and which served as the basis and starting point of psychoanalysis, was published only in 1895), attributing to the sexual sphere, in fact psychosexual disorders, main role in the development of mental illness, there was a view among Russian psychiatrists that sex life takes an active part in the formation of a healthy and sick psyche of a person, and the psychiatrist who gave Gorky advice insists (!) on him having "a woman who is more greedy for love play" assuring him that it would be useful to him!

Gorky mentions many times that his sex drive was poorly developed in his youth, explaining this partly due to severe physical labor, partly by a passion for literature and science. Dr. I. B. Galant (Moscow)psychiatry. ru › book _ show . php...

In 1918, Maxim Gorky published in the newspaper " New life"an article condemning the consequences of the Bolshevik coup in the country: "No, the proletariat is not generous and not fair, but the revolution was supposed to establish possible justice in the country... If the internecine war had been that Lenin had grabbed the petty-bourgeois hair of Miliukov, and Miliukov would have ruffled Lenin’s lush curls... But it’s not gentlemen who fight, it’s serfs. And you won't be happy to see how healthy forces countries are dying, mutually destroying each other. And thousands of people walk along the streets and, as if mocking themselves, shout: “Long live the world!”

Maxim Gorky died on June 18, 1936 in the town of Gorki, near Moscow. He was buried on June 20, 1936 in Moscow on Red Square near the Kremlin wall. Gorky's brain was sent for study to the Brain Institute in Moscow. There is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding his death, as well as the death of his son Maxim. It is interesting that among other accusations against Genrikh Yagoda at the so-called Third Moscow Trial in 1938 was the accusation of poisoning Gorky’s son. According to Yagoda's interrogations, Maxim Gorky was killed on Trotsky's orders, and the murder of Gorky's son, Maxim Peshkov, was his personal initiative.

Some publications blame Stalin for Gorky's death. An important precedent for the medical side of the accusations in the “Doctors’ Case” was the Third Moscow Trial (1938), where among the defendants were three doctors (Kazakov, Levin and Pletnev), accused of the murders of Gorky and others.

The thirties in the Soviet Union were marked by a sharp increase in the power of I.V. Stalin, accompanied by a departure from the principles of the world revolution and political repression, towards the construction strong state. Against this background, a series famous figures cultures such as Maxim Gorky, who had great authority, both in the country and abroad, became deadly dangerous.

Cage for the "petrel" of the revolution

About how I.V. Stalin and his entourage fought against their political opponents as is well known. It was more difficult with writers and poets who had great weight in society and gained fame as true fighters for happiness working people. Repressions against them were impossible for many objective reasons. It was also impossible to allow them to work, since they, clearly understanding what was happening in the country, could begin to work against the current government. M.A. was especially irritated in this regard. Bitter. The writer repeatedly tried to read moral teachings and call for humanism to V.I. Lenin, and then I.V. Stalin. Moreover, the writer’s friendship with Bukharin, Stalin’s competitor in the struggle for power, seemed very dangerous to the latter. Feeling himself the conscience of the revolution, M.A. Gorky actively campaigned for the creation of a new party, the Union of Intellectuals. Together with him, cultural and scientific figures who were disillusioned with the Soviet power. This could not be allowed to happen. Gorky had to disappear, preferably naturally. The authorities needed him as an icon, but not as a living cultural figure. In order to reduce the writer’s activity, he was actually forcibly not released from his dacha in Crimea. State leaders stopped responding to the writer’s letters, and all incoming correspondence was carefully censored.

Strange disease

Gorky was able to escape from his Crimean imprisonment only in May 1936, when two of his granddaughters, who lived in Moscow, unexpectedly fell ill with the flu. However, barely M.A. Gorky arrived in Moscow, and on June 1 he himself fell ill with the flu, which smoothly turned into pneumonia and heart failure. At first glance there is nothing strange. Climate change and the writer’s advanced age allowed for a similar scenario. But the writer himself did not believe in the accident of his illness. He believed that his son, who had died two years earlier from a similar illness, had been poisoned. However, M.A. Gorky was transferred to Gorki, where V.I. had recently been treated. Lenin, and immediately assigned 17 of the best doctors to him. However, the writer got worse and worse, despite the heroic efforts of the luminaries of Soviet medicine. Finally, on June 8, 1936, doctors reported to the Kremlin that the patient was completely unwell and they should come to say goodbye to him. Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov immediately went to Gorki to visit the sick man. The doctors, thinking that everything had already been decided, left the patient without attention. At this moment, midwife Chertkova, who was looking after Gorky, voluntarily decided to inject the patient with a large dose of camphor so that the writer would feel better and he could communicate normally with distinguished guests. At that moment a miracle happened. Gorky felt so much better that he got out of bed. Visitors were amazed when they saw not a dying, but a completely active writer, who flatly refused to talk about his health, beginning to take a keen interest in current affairs. Stalin even had to send for wine to toast the recovery of the great proletarian writer.

Work on mistakes

After the guests left, M.A.'s health Gorky was on the mend. By June 16, doctors stated that the crisis had passed. But the next day, the writer suddenly became worse. Gorky began to choke, his pulse jumped, his lips turned blue. A day later, on June 18, 1936, he died. Immediately, by order of Yagoda, all rooms in Gorki were sealed, and the writer’s papers were studied in detail by representatives of the NKVD. M.A. Gorky was cremated, and the urn was buried in the Kremlin wall. However, rumors spread throughout the country that the writer had been poisoned. There really was a reason for such conversations to arise. Over the course of several years, many well-known figures of science and culture, who openly expressed dissatisfaction with the current government, fell ill in a strange way and died suddenly. It is noteworthy that a similar illness as Gorky’s was observed in several members service personnel in Gorki, who could eat the same food as the writer. At the same time, a number of researchers point to the active work of the NKVD toxicology laboratory during these years, which also dealt with poisons. Genrikh Yagoda, who was well versed in pharmaceuticals, was a big fan of the use of poisons for operational purposes. Moreover, even when Gorky was in Gorki, in Moscow, they openly talked about his death as a de facto accomplished fact. It is interesting to note that the secretary of the Writers' Union, Yudin, told his acquaintances that Gorky was mortally ill and would soon die on May 31, although the writer fell ill only on June 1. This and many other indirect facts suggest that the writer was maliciously poisoned with poison. However, it is impossible to say anything for sure. If there was poisoning, then all the ends were carefully cleaned up. In such cases, witnesses and documents are not left, and the writer’s body was cremated, eliminating the possibility of re-examination.

Great Russian writer, classic of Soviet literatureAlexey Maksimovich Gorky was born on March 28 (16), 1868. Died June 18, 1936

“Here medicine is innocent...” This is exactly what doctors Levin and Pletnev initially said, who treated the writer in the last months of his life and were later brought in as defendants in the trial of the “right-wing Trotskyist bloc.” Soon, however, they “admitted” the deliberately incorrect treatment... and even “showed” that their accomplices were nurses who gave the patient up to 40 injections of camphor per day. But as it was in reality, there is no consensus. Historian L. Fleischlan directly writes: “The fact of Gorky’s murder can be considered immutably established.” V. Khodasevich, on the contrary, believes in the natural cause of the death of the proletarian writer.

On the night when Maxim Gorky was dying, a terrible thunderstorm broke out at the state-owned dacha in Gorki-10.

The autopsy of the body was carried out right here, in the bedroom, on the table. The doctors were in a hurry. “When he died,” recalled Gorky’s secretary Pyotr Kryuchkov, “the doctors’ attitude towards him changed. For them he became just a corpse...

He was treated horribly. The orderly began to change his clothes and turned him from side to side, like a log. The autopsy began... Then they began to wash the insides. They sewed up the cut somehow with simple twine. The brain was put in a bucket..."

Kryuchkov personally carried this bucket, intended for the Brain Institute, into the car.

In Kryuchkov’s memoirs there is a strange entry: “Alexei Maksimovich died on the 8th.”

The writer’s widow Ekaterina Peshkova recalls: “June 8, 6 pm. Alexey Maksimovich’s condition deteriorated so much that the doctors, who had lost hope, warned us that a near end was inevitable... Alexey Maksimovich - in a chair with eyes closed, with his head bowed, leaning on one or the other hand, pressed to his temple and resting his elbow on the arm of the chair.

The pulse was barely noticeable, uneven, breathing became weaker, the face and ears and limbs of the hands turned blue. After a while, when we entered, hiccups began, restless movements of his hands, with which he seemed to be moving something away or taking something off..."

And suddenly the mise-en-scene changes... New faces appear. They waited in the living room. Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov enter the resurrected Gorky with a cheerful gait. They had already been informed that Gorky was dying. They came to say goodbye. Behind the scenes is the head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda. He arrived before Stalin. The leader didn't like it.

“Why is this guy hanging out here? So that he wouldn’t be here.”

Stalin behaves like a master in the house. He scared Genrikh and intimidated Kryuchkov. "Why so many people? Who is responsible for this? Do you know what we can do to you?"

The “owner” has arrived... The leading party is his! All relatives and friends become only corps de ballet.

When Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov entered the bedroom, Gorky came to his senses so much that they started talking about literature. Gorky began to praise women writers, mentioned Karavaeva - and how many of them, how many more will appear, and everyone must be supported... Stalin playfully besieged Gorky: “We’ll talk about the matter when you get better. You’ve decided to get sick, get better soon. Or maybe at home If there is wine, we’d like to drink a glass to your health.”

They brought wine... Everyone drank... As they left, at the door, Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov waved their hands. When they came out, Gorky allegedly said: “What good guys! How much strength they have...”

But how much can you trust these memories of Peshkova? In 1964, when asked by American journalist Isaac Levin about Gorky’s death, she answered: “Don’t ask me about that! I won’t be able to sleep for three days...”

The second time Stalin and his comrades came to the mortally ill Gorky on June 10 at two o’clock in the morning. But why? Gorky was sleeping. No matter how afraid the doctors were, Stalin was not allowed in. Stalin's third visit took place on June 12. Gorky did not sleep. The doctors gave us ten minutes to talk. What were they talking about? About Bolotnikov's peasant uprising... We moved on to the situation of the French peasantry.

It turns out that June 8 main concern General Secretary and Gorky, who returned from the other world, were writers, and on the 12th, French peasants became. All this is somehow very strange.

The leader’s visits seemed to magically revive Gorky. It was as if he did not dare to die without Stalin's permission. This is incredible, but Budberg will say this directly: “He essentially died on the 8th, and if not for Stalin’s visit, he would hardly have returned to life.”

Stalin was not a member of the Gorky family. This means that the attempted night invasion was out of necessity. And on the 8th, and the 10th, and the 12th, Stalin needed or straight Talk with Gorky, or a steely confidence that such a frank conversation would not take place with someone else. For example, with Louis Aragon traveling from France. What would Gorky say, what statement could he make?

After Gorky’s death, Kryuchkov was accused of having “killed” Gorky’s son Maxim Peshkov with doctors Levin and Pletnev, on Yagoda’s instructions, using “sabotage methods of treatment.” But why?

If we follow the testimony of other defendants, the political calculations were made by the “customers” - Bukharin, Rykov and Zinoviev. In this way, they allegedly wanted to speed up the death of Gorky himself, carrying out the task of their “leader” Trotsky. Nevertheless, even at this trial there was no talk of the direct murder of Gorky. This version would be too incredible, because the patient was surrounded by 17 (!) doctors.

One of the first to speak about the poisoning of Gorky was the emigrant revolutionary B.I. Nikolaevsky. Allegedly, Gorky was presented with a bonbonniere containing poisoned sweets. But the candy version doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Funeral of A.M. Gorky

Gorky did not like sweets, but he loved to treat them to guests, orderlies and, finally, his beloved granddaughters. Thus, it was possible to poison anyone around Gorky with sweets, except himself. Only an idiot could plan such a murder. Neither Stalin nor Yagoda were idiots.

There is no evidence of the murder of Gorky and his son Maxim. Meanwhile, tyrants also have the right to the presumption of innocence. Stalin committed enough crimes to pin one more on him - unproven.

The reality is this: on June 18, 1936, the great Russian writer Maxim Gorky died. His body, contrary to the will to bury him next to his son in the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent, was cremated by order of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and the urn with the ashes was placed in the Kremlin wall.

Maksim Gorky

Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov ( literary pseudonym Maxim Gorky) is one of the largest Russian writers at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. After the revolution of 1917, he was the most authoritative representative of Russian culture on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Since 1928, when Gorky returned from emigration to Capri in the USSR, he became the country's main writer. Gorky's cult of personality is not inferior to Stalin's. In 1932, his hometown of Nizhny Novgorod was renamed Gorky. In 1934, the name “Maxim Gorky” was given to the world’s largest aircraft, ANT-20.

Gorky and all his numerous circles, and this is quite a lot of people both abroad and in Russia, live at state expense. The treasury is incurring enormous expenses. Here is the score for three objects: “Gorki-10”, a house on Malaya Nikitskaya and a Crimean dacha.

“The approximate expenditure for 9 months of 1936 is as follows: a) food rubles. 560,000, b) repair and park expenses RUB. 210,000, c) staff maintenance rub. 180,000, d) various households. expenses rub. 60,000; total: rub. 1,010,000.”

An earthly god, the second man in the country after Stalin. Alexey Maksimovich died on June 18, 1936 in Gorki, near Moscow. In the same place where Ilyich died in 1924.

And just as in the case of Lenin, Gorky’s death still attracts the attention of researchers to this day.

Gorky really was largest figure and died, one might say, publicly, in front of the world community. Starting from June 7, 1936, bulletins about the writer’s health began to be published in the Pravda newspaper. The patient was visited by the country's leadership, including Joseph Stalin. According to Pravda, Gorky died from an exacerbation of tuberculosis, a disease from which he had suffered for forty years.

VERSION ONE: DEATH FROM TUBERCULOSIS

Pulmonary tuberculosis or consumption is a chronic infectious disease. The causative agent is Koch's bacillus, which enters the body through airborne droplets. As a result, bacteria actively multiply, destroy part of the lung and poison the human body with the products of their vital activity. In the absence of adequate treatment, the disease leads to death in almost all patients.

The life path of the author of “At the Depths” was extremely winding. In his youth, she confronted him with characters for whom consumption was a completely ordinary thing. Moreover, today tuberculosis is considered primarily a social disease. As we know, it mainly affects tramps, prisoners, etc. Previously, consumption decimated everyone. Beautiful ladies and their gentlemen were sick with her, literary characters and those who created them (the same Anton Chekhov).

However, with incredible strong character, a powerful body, a relatively healthy lifestyle and, most importantly, an attentive attitude to treatment, Gorky lived to the age of 68, being a prolific writer, an active public figure, and a man capable of romantic relationships. He lived in the Soviet Union as a member of the royal family: an estate in Crimea, an estate near Moscow, a luxurious mansion in the capital. Under the supervision of medical functionaries - the head of the Kremlin's medical department, Isaac Khodorovsky, and the People's Commissar of Health, Grigory Kaminsky, he was treated the best specialists countries, the same as Lenin, Stalin, Kirov: Lev Levin, professors Georgy Lang, Dmitry Pletnev, Maxim Konchalovsky. And on occasion, he could count on their colleagues from abroad.

Story last illness and the death of Maxim Gorky according to the first official version looks like that. Gorky and his numerous household members spent the winter in Tesseli, in the Crimea; We came to Moscow in the summer. He had business connections with Moscow. Alexey Maksimovich was an active public figure until his last days. It was not his plan to die at all. He had a fixed idea: to finally finish the huge novel “The Life of Klim Samgin.” He knew that death was somewhere nearby, and every time after exacerbations he thanked fate for the next period of time given to him.

A typical example for Gorky: upon arriving in Moscow, being seriously ill, he fulfills a friend’s request to edit the memoirs of a former thief. In two days, he sifts through the 80-page manuscript and returns it, covered in his own notes. For no reason, because he is Gorky. Gorky resisted the disease as best he could. He wanted to live and work.

On a trip in 1936 from Sevastopol to Moscow, while still on the train, he caught a cold and fell ill with the flu.

Gorky's illness was immediately announced in the Soviet press. The sick man was visited by party leaders, including Joseph Stalin. The attention of the whole world was focused on Gorki.

The first official bulletin on the writer’s health states: “Alexey Maksimovich Gorky became seriously ill on June 1st with influenza, which was further complicated by catarrhal changes in the lungs and symptoms of weakened cardiac activity.

A. M. Gorky is under continuous and careful medical supervision of Dr. L. G. Levin and Professor G. F. Lang.”

Alexei Maksimovich's condition either improved or worsened again. According to the memoirs of playwright Alexander Anfinogenov, “Gorky’s future biographer will add the night of June 8th to the list of next miracles.” Gorky's biography. That night Gorky died. Speransky was already on his way to the autopsy. His pulse was feverish, the old man was breathing intermittently, his nose was turning blue. Stalin and members of the Politburo came to say goodbye to him. They went to the old man, no one was allowed to see him anymore, and this arrival struck him as a surprise. Obviously, the thought immediately flashed - we came to say goodbye. And then the old man got up, sat on the bed and began to speak. He talked for 15 minutes about his future work, his creative plans, then he lay down again and fell asleep, and immediately began to breathe better, his pulse became well-filled, and in the morning he felt better.”

But the improvements were temporary. It became increasingly difficult to breathe, and symptoms of heart failure increased. On June 18, the agony begins: “11 o’clock. morning. Deep coma; the delirium almost stopped, motor excitement also decreased somewhat. Gasping breath. The pulse is very small, but can be read in this moment– 120. Extremities are warm.

11 o'clock 5 minutes. The pulse drops and is difficult to count. Comatose, does not respond to injections. Still loud tracheal breathing.

11 o'clock 10 min. The pulse began to quickly disappear. At 11 o'clock 10 min. – pulse cannot be felt. Breathing stopped. The limbs are still warm. Heart sounds are not heard. No breathing (mirror test). Death occurred due to symptoms of paralysis of the heart and breathing.”

The results of the autopsy showed: not only is it surprising that Gorky died, but his longevity is amazing. This is what Professor Konchalovsky said: “If you lay out the lungs of a normal person on a plane, they will occupy my entire apartment: 54 square meters. meters. Gorky's lungs are one tenth of this area. And on this tenth, all the vessels are sclerotic and the heart is sclerotic. He actually lived like a miracle. According to anatomical analysis, Gorky should have died ten years ago.”

Alexey Maksimovich was a passionate smoker; in the last years of his life he smoked up to 75 cigarettes a day. The flu that Gorky contracted in the summer of 1936 can be considered an exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In June 1936, up to a hundred oxygen pillows were brought to Gorky every day, and shortly before his death - three hundred.

According to the conclusion of the doctors who performed the autopsy, “The death of A. M. Gorky was due to an acute inflammatory process in the lower lobe of the lung, which resulted in acute expansion and paralysis of the heart. The severe course and fatal outcome of the disease were greatly facilitated by extensive chronic changes in both lungs - bronchiectasis (dilatation of the bronchi), sclerosis, emphysema, as well as complete closure of the pleural cavities and immobility of the chest due to petrification of the costal cartilages. These chronic changes in the lungs, pleura and chest created in themselves, even before pneumonia, great difficulties in the respiratory act, which became especially severe and difficult to tolerate in conditions of acute infection.”

The natural origin of the disease and the cause of death of Maxim Gorky did not raise any questions or discrepancies. an old man, chronically ill, smoker... They treated him best doctors countries. And even now doctors, reading the chronicle of the writer’s illness, do not see anything contradictory or strange in it.

However, in the spring of 1938, the country and the world were announced: Gorky had died violent death. He was treated by killer doctors ordered by the Trotskyist underground.

VERSION TWO: KILLER DOCTORS

On March 2, 1937, the so-called “Third Moscow Process” began in the Hall of Columns in the House of Unions in Moscow; officially it was called the process of the anti-Soviet “right-Trotskyist bloc.” The main, most famous defendants are the former leaders of the CPSU (b) Alexei Rykov, Nikolai Bukharin, Christian Rakovsky, Nikolai Krestinsky and the head of the NKVD Genrikh Yagoda. It was he, as well as Gorky’s secretary Pyotr Kryuchkov and doctors Nikolai Pletnev, Lev Levin and Ignatius Kazakov, who were accused of “the villainous killing of figures of the Soviet state: A. M. Gorky, V. R. Menzhinsky, V. V. Kuibysheva and Gorky's son Maxim Peshkov.

According to the indictment and the testimony of the defendants, Genrikh Yagoda, associated with the “right-wing Trotskyist” underground and foreign intelligence services, entrusted the murder of Maxim Gorky to his secretary and attending physicians. First, Kryuchkov killed (he deliberately caught a cold) his son Maxim. And then, together with the attending doctors Pletnev and Levin, he killed Gorky himself.

This is what Dr. Levin showed: “We talked with Kryuchkov, who constantly traveled to Crimea, and agreed on measures that would be harmful to Alexei Maksimovich. Gorky loved fire, flame, and we used it. Gorky stood near this fire, it was hot, and all this had a harmful effect on his health.

It was agreed to choose a moment so that he could catch the flu. He was very prone to catching the flu, and the flu was often complicated by bronchitis or pneumonia. Having learned that there was a flu in Maxim Gorky’s house, Yagoda reported this to Crimea, and Kryuchkov organized Maxim Gorky’s return to Moscow at that time. And indeed, having arrived at this flu-infested apartment, on the second or third day Gorky fell ill with the flu, which was very quickly complicated by pneumonia, which immediately took a severe course. So that no doubts or suspicions could arise, we used only those drugs to enhance cardiac activity that are usually used in these cases. But they were used in very large quantities. IN in this case they turned into their opposite. The heart motor was losing its efficiency, and, in the end, he could not stand it.”

Levin’s testimony was also confirmed by Professor Pletnev: “Yagoda directly suggested that I take advantage of my position as the attending physician of V.V. Kuibyshev and A.M. Gorky and hasten their death by using incorrect treatment methods. Yagoda told me that my accomplice would be Dr. Levin, and in relation to Gorky, in addition, A. M. Gorky’s secretary would be Pyotr Kryuchkov.”

The testimony of Kryuchkov, Yagoda, Pletnev and Levin was also confirmed by medical examinations signed by Honored Scientist Professor D.A. Burmin, Honored Scientist Professor N.A. Shereshevsky, Professor V.N. Vinogradov, Professor D.M. Rossiysky, Doctor of Medicine Sciences V.D. Zipalov.

The version of the murder of Gorky by doctors ordered by the “Trotskyists” seems absolutely absurd; now only crazy Stalinists believe in it.

The relationship between Gorky and Trotsky was never particularly close. The “Petrel of the Revolution” was friends with Lenin (although there were disagreements between them), and in recent years he was in close contact with Stalin; was the de facto Deputy Secretary General in the field of culture.

At the request of the leader, Gorky, without any resistance, threw out of his memoir essay about Lenin, a few warm words from Ilyich addressed to Trotsky. Lev Davydovich responded to Gorky’s death with a warm, although not apologetic, obituary: Gorky will go down in the book of Russian literature as an indisputably clear and convincing example of the enormous literary talent, which, however, was not touched by the breath of genius. We see him off without notes of intimacy and without exaggerated praise, but with respect and gratitude: this great writer and big man forever entered the history of the people paving new historical paths.

But, as far as we know, by 1935 the majority of Trotskyists were in prison or in exile. Even if they nurtured some kind of terrorist plans, then no real possibility They did not have the means to carry them out (especially with the help of the NKVD and doctors).

In 1956, Pletnev and Levin were rehabilitated. Pletnev’s appeal to Voroshilov from the camp was published about the methods used to extract a confession from him: “I was subjected to horrific abuse, threats of the death penalty, dragging by the collar, strangulation by the throat, torture by lack of sleep, for five weeks sleeping 2-3 hours a day , threats to tear out my throat and with it a confession, threats of beating with a rubber truncheon, - wrote D. D. Pletnev from prison to K. E. Voroshilov in the hope of restoring justice. All this brought me to the point of paralysis of half my body.”

Since then, Soviet Gorky studies have returned to the first official version of the writer’s death – a severe pulmonary illness. But already since the 1950s, first in emigrant and then in post-Soviet literature, another version appears: Alexei Maksimovich was poisoned on the orders of Stalin.

VERSION THREE: STALIN'S ORDER

Since millions of innocent people were killed on Stalin’s orders, including his own long-term friends and close relatives, there is nothing surprising in this version. Did Stalin have a motive? There was, and not alone. Gorky possessed a number of qualities that were not to the leader’s heart.

Alexey Maksimovich was one of the most authoritative people of his time both within the country and abroad. There was continuity behind him - from acquaintance with Chekhov, Tolstoy to friendship with Herbert Wells, Romain Rolland and other Western writers. He could well have qualified for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Gorky behaved independently, his own group was formed around him - representatives of various trends in the new art trusted him. And Stalin burned out any groupism with a hot iron.

Gorky sought to live abroad, and it was quite difficult to keep him in the USSR by force, and abroad he could be dangerous as a “secret carrier.”

Gorky has been for several years now, despite hints and diverse approaches, actually sabotaged the writing of a book about Stalin.

Stalin needed Gorky as “ best friend“, but he didn’t intend to become one. And therefore it would be better not to exist. His death is another brick in the scenario about the villain Trotsky.

And, most importantly, it was in 1936 that Stalin outlined another turn - the famous Stalinist constitution was being prepared, and at the same time - the Great Terror. What we now call 1937. A radical turn requires strong measures. How will Gorky behave when many of his old acquaintances are in the dock? After all, from the first post-revolutionary years, Gorky took the place of, as they would now say, ombudsman. He was involved in the defense of human rights. He asked for acquaintances and strangers, for nobles, oppositionists, scientists, writers. In 1935, even the disgraced Zinoviev and Kamenev, who would be shot in 1937, turned to him for intercession. It is impossible to predict, it is better to be safe.

So, there is a motive, and for Stalin, to want means to be able.

Moreover, it was not difficult: the writer’s house was swarming with security officers. Genrikh Yagoda was considered a domestic man; Gorky’s secretary Pyotr Kryuchkov worked for the OGPU.

How was Gorky killed?

Supporters of the version “they killed on Stalin’s orders” draw attention to the following circumstances: according to the testimony of Ivan Koshenkov, the commandant of the Moscow mansion of Maxim Gorky, in June 1936, a sudden epidemic of tonsillitis occurred in Gorki: seven people from among the servants fell ill at once: the commandant’s wife, the cook, maids. Ivan Koshenkov was ordered to take all sick people to the OGPU isolation ward, and then thoroughly wash the car and disinfect it with a special compound.

Historian Arkady Vaksberg and famous Gorky scholar Lidia Spiridonova believe that a certain infection (“angopneumonia”), produced in a top-secret OGPU laboratory, was spread in the house before Gorky’s return from Crimea. This vaccine was not life-threatening healthy people, but was destructive for an elderly, seriously ill person.

The version coincides with the testimony of Gorky’s attending physician, Lev Levin. Only the infection in this version is not caused by “pests”, but by security officers. However, Koshenkov himself was a security officer; I would like to understand why he included such deadly facts for him in his diary? Maybe in order to retroactively confirm the testimony given by the “saboteurs” at the 1938 trial?

Another idea that is especially popularized by literary critic Vadim Baranov: Gorky was poisoned by his ex common-law wife Maria Budberg (Zakrevskaya), the famous “iron woman”, Cheka agent and Intelligent Service. She spent forty minutes alone with the sick writer. After that, Gorky became worse, and a few hours later he died.

It seems that the most plausible is the testimony given by Yagoda, Kryuchkov, Pletnev and Levin at the trial of 1938. A lie always looks more convincing if it is mixed with the truth. If we assume that Yagoda was subordinate not to the mysterious “right-left” bloc, but to Comrade Stalin, then the story of the death of Alexei Maksimovich looks very convincing.

It was not difficult to infect a writer with the flu. You can inject an extra dose of strafontin into an already sick old person with almost no risk. And then, by the irony of history, the death of Gorky rhymes with the death of Stalin: rather not a murder, but a criminal failure to provide assistance, the acceleration of natural death.

In any case, Gorky's death was to Stalin's advantage. It happened exactly when the leader needed it.

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Maxim Gorky In 1910, in Switzerland, my mother introduced me to the wife of Alexei Maksimovich Gorky. In 1912, she invited us to her place in Capri, where they lived then. There I met the two sons of Alexei Maksimovich. The youngest, Maxim, was my own. And the eldest - Zinovy ​​-

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ANT-20 "Maxim Gorky" In October 1932, Soviet journalist Mikhail Koltsov put forward the idea of ​​​​building a "giant airplane" to commemorate the fortieth anniversary creative activity Maxim Gorky. Considering that Gorky was one of Stalin’s favorite writers,

From the book Fate and the book by Artem Vesely author Veselaya Zayara Artemovna

From the book Tales and Stories. Memories by Wanderer

MAXIM GORKY AND ARTEM VESELY Olga Minenko-Orlovskaya, who knew Nikolai Kochkurov since adolescence, said that in his youth he admired Gorky, saw a special fateful sign in the fact that they are fellow countrymen, I looked for similarities in their youth. Clearly wanting

From the book You can believe in people... Notebooks good man author Saint-Exupéry Antoine de

Maxim Gorky I At the beginning of 1897, having returned from five years of wandering around Russia to my native city of Samara, for the first time as a permanent employee, at the age of twenty-six, I began publishing in the Samara Gazeta, from where I had just, a few months before my

From book silver Age. Portrait gallery of cultural heroes of the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. Volume 1. A-I author Fokin Pavel Evgenievich

Tragic death plane "Maxim Gorky" "Maxim Gorky", the largest plane in the world, crashed. He was landing when he was hit by a fighter flying at a speed of more than four hundred kilometers per hour. Some say that the wing was hit, others - the central engine, but

From the book Silver Age. Portrait gallery of cultural heroes of the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. Volume 2. K-R author Fokin Pavel Evgenievich

From the author's book

MAXIM GORKY present. first and last name Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov; pseudo. Yehudiel Chlamida;16(28).3.1868 – 18.6.1936Prose writer, playwright, poet, literary critic, public figure. One of the founders of the book publishing partnership “Znanie”. Publications in the magazines “Life”,