GORKI, MAXIM (1868-1936), pen-name of the Russian author Alexey Maximovich Peshkov, born at Nizhni-Novgorod. His father, an upholsterer, died when the boy was five; his mother married again, and he grew up in the family of his maternal grand father, a dyer, whose affairs went from bad to worse. At nine, the boy was made to earn his own bread. In the following 15 years he changed many trades, and covered in search of work all east and south Russia from Nizhni to the Danube and to Georgia. At the same time he contrived to give himself an education, read voraciously and early began to write. While at Tiflis, where he was working in the railway workshops, he succeeded in getting published a story in a local daily, over the signature that has become famous. He now became a provincial journalist, and in 1895 a tale of his (Chelkash, first Eng. trans. 1902) was accepted by a leading St. Petersburg review. Two years later his stories appeared in book form. The success was unprecedented. Gorki found himself placed in public opinion by the side of Tolstoy. Before long his fame crossed the frontier and he became one of the foremost world-celebrities. His play The Lower Depths (Na Dne, 1903, Eng. trans. 1912) had a run of almost two years at Berlin. His association (from 1899) with the Social-Democrats brought on him police persecution, but this only increased his popularity at home. In 1905 he took an active part in revolu tionary activities, and in 1906 left Russia for an anti-tsarist cam paign abroad. In 1907 he settled in Capri. About the same time he contracted a friendship with Lenin. In 1913 he returned to St. Petersburg and started a review (Letopis). During the World War he took a pacifist attitude, and in 1917 he gave his, not always unqualified, support to the Bolsheviks. After their victory he be came the official spokesman for culture before the new Govern ment, and did much to alleviate the hardships of the intellectual classes, as well as to preserve cultural treasures. In 1922 his health compelled him to go abroad. After a stay in Germany, he settled at Sorrento. In 1928 he visited the U.S.S.R., where he was given an enthusiastic reception.
Gorki's literary work falls distinctly into three periods. In the '9os he wrote the short stories that first made him famous. Their subject-matter is taken mainly from the lives of tramps and social outcasts, whom he represents with a mixture of outspoken realism and romantic gusto. It was the latter quality that most endeared them to the Russian public. The romantic colouring he gave his tramps and thieves has become somewhat the worse for wear, but the best of these early stories (My Fellow-traveller and Twenty-Six Men and a Girl, Eng. trans. 1902) fall little short of being masterpieces. After 1899 Gorki wrote longer and more am bitious novels and plays, which aimed at presenting a broad and comprehensive picture of Russian life and at finding the solution of burning social problems. Most of them lack constructive unity, and are disfigured by interminable conversations on "the meaning of life." The plays especially are hopelessly formless. Towards 1906 Gorki's popularity with the intelligentsia began to decline, but it increased among the working-class, who came to regard him as their literary spokesman. His proletarian novel Mother (1907, Eng. trans. 1921, publ. in U.S.A.) which has been recently turned into a splendid film by the great film-producer Eisenstein, is not, however, by itself a work of great value. Gorki's third period begins with the publication in 1913 of Child hood (Eng. trans. 1915), the first part of an autobiographical trilogy, of which the other parts are In the World (V Lyudyakh, 1915, Eng. trans. 1917) and My Universities (1923, Eng. trans. Reminiscences of my Youth, 1924). Together with a volume of Recollections (it includes the famous Recollections of Tolstoy, Eng. trans. 1920, a document of quite exceptional value), and Fragments from my Diary (1924, Eng. trans. 1924) these works are the best Gorki has written. The penetrating and plastic realism with which he presents a vast gallery of Russian characters, is unrivalled. After 1926 Gorki turned to fiction dealing with social problems: The Artamonov's Business, (trans. Decadence, 1927); The Bystander (trans., B. G. Guerney, 1930). (D. S. M.)