Bookatlas
1868–1936Russia & Eastern Europe
Portrait of Maxim Gorky

Maxim Gorky

Russia

Rough-hewn and declamatory, working-class speech and hard physical detail marshaled toward open moral instruction, sincerity favored over subtlety at every turn.

Born Alexei Peshkov in Nizhny Novgorod, Gorky was orphaned young and raised by a violent grandfather before running away as a teenager to spend years wandering Russia as a dishwasher, baker, and dockworker. That itinerant education in poverty supplied his pen name, Gorky, meaning the bitter one, and the raw material for the autobiographical trilogy beginning with My Childhood.

He moved in revolutionary circles close to Lenin personally, though he publicly criticized Bolshevik violence in a series of newspaper essays written just after the 1917 revolution. He left Soviet Russia in 1921 and settled in Sorrento, partly for his tuberculosis and partly from friction with the new government, before Stalin lured him back in 1932.

Once home he became the figurehead of the newly created Union of Soviet Writers and the doctrine of Socialist Realism that Mother had anticipated decades earlier. He died in 1936 under circumstances long rumored, never proven, to have been engineered by the secret police, and his native city was renamed Gorky in his honor.

The Soviet Century

Lines of influence

Leo Tolstoy
Maxim Gorky

No descendants recorded, yet.

Their books in the atlas

  1. 1906
    Cover of Mother
    Mother
    Lvl 3political novel
  2. 1913
    Cover of My Childhood
    My Childhood
    Lvl 4autobiographical fiction

Meanwhile, elsewhere

Portrait of Knut Hamsun1859–1952Knut HamsunNorwayWestern Europe · NorwayPortrait of Luigi Pirandello1867–1936Luigi PirandelloItalyWestern Europe · ItalyPortrait of Miguel de Unamuno1864–1936Miguel de UnamunoSpainWestern Europe · SpainPortrait of Selma Lagerlöf1858–1940Selma LagerlöfSwedenWestern Europe · SwedenPortrait of Rudyard Kipling1865–1936Rudyard KiplingEnglandWestern Europe · EnglandPortrait of Romain Rolland1866–1944Romain RollandFranceWestern Europe · France

If you like Gorky, try

Portrait of Mikhail Sholokhov1905–1984Mikhail SholokhovRussiashared movement: The Soviet Century · both shaped by Tolstoy · kindred genres: family saga, political novelPortrait of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn1918–2008Aleksandr SolzhenitsynRussiashared movement: The Soviet Century · both shaped by Tolstoy · kindred genres: political novel, autobiographical fictionPortrait of Leo Tolstoy1828–1910Leo TolstoyRussiashaped Gorky · both write in Russian · neighboring movementsPortrait of Boris Pasternak1890–1960Boris PasternakRussiashared movement: The Soviet Century · both shaped by Tolstoy · both write in RussianPortrait of Vasily Grossman1905–1964Vasily GrossmanUkraine / Russiashared movement: The Soviet Century · both shaped by Tolstoy · both write in RussianPortrait of Ivan Bunin1870–1953Ivan BuninRussiaboth shaped by Tolstoy · kindred genres: autobiographical fiction · both write in Russian