Editing Maxim Gorky (section)

==Life==
===Early years===
[[File:E. M. Lilien Ex Libris Gorki.jpg|thumb|"Ex Libris Maxim Gorki" [[bookplate]] from his personal library depicts the unchained [[Prometheus]] rising from the pages of a book, breaking a [[Cat o' nine tails|multi-tailed whip]] and shooing away black crows. [[Saint Basil's Cathedral]] is portrayed in the background]]
Born as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov on {{OldStyleDate|28 March|1868|16 March}}, in [[Nizhny Novgorod]], Gorky became an orphan at the age of eleven. He was brought up by his maternal grandmother<ref name="kirjasto" /> and ran away from home at the age of twelve in 1880. After an attempt at suicide in December 1887 he travelled on foot across the [[Russian Empire]] for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing.<ref name="kirjasto" /> 

In 1895, Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, a onetime shoemaker’s apprentice who had quit school at 10, adopted a new name: Maxim Gorky.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ireland |first=Corydon |date=2008-05-15 |title=Reminiscences of Maxim Gorky |url=https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/05/reminiscences-of-maxim-gorky/ |access-date=2025-03-01 |website=Harvard Gazette |language=en-US}}</ref>

As a journalist working for provincial newspapers, he wrote under the pseudonym {{lang|ru|Иегудиил Хламида}} (Jehudiel Khlamida).<ref name="librarything">{{cite web|title=Maxim Gorky|url=http://www.librarything.com/author/gorkymaxim|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091129212542/http://www.librarything.com/author/gorkymaxim|archive-date=29 November 2009|access-date=21 July 2009|work=[[LibraryThing]]}}</ref> He started using the pseudonym "Gorky" (from горький; literally "bitter") in 1892, when his first short story, "[[Makar Chudra]]", was published by the newspaper ''Kavkaz'' (The Caucasus) in [[Tiflis]] where he spent several weeks doing menial jobs, mostly for the Caucasian Railway workshops.<ref name="comment">[http://gorkiy-lit.ru/gorkiy/proza/rasskaz/makar-chudra.htm Commentaries to Макар Чудра]. The Works by M.Gorky in 30 volumes. Vol.1. [[Khudozhestvennaya Literatura]] // На базе Собрания сочинений в 30-ти томах. ГИХЛ, 1949–1956.</ref><ref>Commentaries to Makar Chudra // Горький М. Макар Чудра и другие рассказы. – М: Детская литература, 1970. – С. 195–196. – 207 с.</ref><ref>Isabella M. Nefedova. [http://az.lib.ru/g/gorxkij_m/text_0140.shtml Maxim Gorky. The Biography] // И.М.Нефедова. Максим Горький. Биография писателя Л.: Просвещение, 1971.</ref> The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky's first book ''Очерки и рассказы'' (''Essays and Stories'') in 1898 enjoyed a sensational success and his career as a writer began. Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice (though he worked hard on style and form) than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalisation, but also their inner spark of humanity.<ref name="kirjasto" />

===Political and literary development===
[[File:1900 yalta-gorky and chekhov.jpg|thumb|left|[[Anton Chekhov]] and Gorky. 1900, [[Yalta]]]]

Gorky's reputation grew as a unique literary voice from the bottom stratum of society and as a fervent advocate of Russia's social, political, and cultural transformation. By 1899, he was openly associating with the emerging [[Marxism|Marxist]] [[Social democracy|social-democratic]] movement, which helped make him a celebrity among both the [[intelligentsia]] and the growing numbers of "conscious" workers. At the heart of all his work was a belief in the inherent worth and potential of the human person. In his writing, he counterposed individuals, aware of their natural dignity, and inspired by energy and will, with people who succumb to the degrading conditions of life around them. Both his writings and his letters reveal a "restless man" (a frequent self-description) struggling to resolve contradictory feelings of faith and scepticism, love of life and disgust at the vulgarity and pettiness of the human world.{{citation needed|date=March 2018}}

In 1916, Gorky said that the teachings of the ancient Jewish sage [[Hillel the Elder]] deeply influenced his life: "In my early youth I read...the words of...Hillel, if I remember rightly: 'If thou art not for thyself, who will be for thee? But if thou art for thyself alone, wherefore art thou'? The inner meaning of these words impressed me with their profound wisdom...The thought ate its way deep into my soul, and I say now with conviction: Hillel's wisdom served as a strong staff on my road, which was neither even nor easy. I believe that Jewish wisdom is more all-human and universal than any other; and this not only because of its immemorial age...but because of the powerful humaneness that saturates it, because of its high estimate of man."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://ia903101.us.archive.org/26/items/abookofjewishtho57218gut/57218-h/57218-h.htm#p138|title=A Book of Jewish Thoughts|publisher=Humphrey Milford, [[Oxford University Press]]|year=1920|editor-last=Herz|editor-first=Joseph H.|pages=138}}</ref>

He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and was arrested many times. Gorky befriended many revolutionaries and became a personal friend of [[Vladimir Lenin]] after they met in 1902. He exposed governmental control of the press (see [[Matvei Golovinski]] affair). In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary Academician of Literature, but [[Nicholas II of Russia|Tsar Nicholas II]] ordered this annulled. In protest, [[Anton Chekhov]] and [[Vladimir Korolenko]] left the academy.<ref>''Handbook of Russian Literature'', Victor Terras, Yale University Press, 1990.</ref>

[[File:1900 yasnaya polyana-gorky and tolstoy.jpg|right|thumb|[[Leo Tolstoy]] with Gorky in [[Yasnaya Polyana]], 1900]]
From 1900 to 1905, Gorky's writings became more optimistic. He became more involved in the opposition movement, for which he was again briefly imprisoned in 1901. In 1904, having severed his relationship with the [[Moscow Art Theatre]] in the wake of conflict with [[Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko]], Gorky returned to [[Nizhny Novgorod]] to establish a theatre of his own.{{efn|[[Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko]] had insulted Gorky with his critical assessment of Gorky's new play ''[[Summerfolk]]'', which Nemirovich described as shapeless and formless raw material that lacked a plot. Despite [[Konstantin Stanislavski|Stanislavski's]] attempts to persuade him otherwise, in December 1904 Gorky refused permission for the [[Moscow Art Theatre|MAT]] to produce his ''[[Enemies (play)|Enemies]]'' and declined "any kind of connection with the Art Theatre."{{sfn |Benedetti |1999 |pp=149–150}}}} Both [[Konstantin Stanislavski]] and [[Savva Morozov]] provided financial support for the venture.{{sfn |Benedetti |1999 |p=150}} Stanislavski believed that Gorky's theatre was an opportunity to develop the network of provincial theatres which he hoped would reform the art of the stage in Russia, a dream of his since the 1890s.{{sfn |Benedetti |1999 |p=150}}  He sent some pupils from the Art Theatre School—as well as [[Ioasaf Tikhomirov]], who ran the school—to work there.{{sfn |Benedetti |1999 |p=150}}  By the autumn, however, after the censor had banned every play that the theatre proposed to stage, Gorky abandoned the project.{{sfn |Benedetti |1999 |p=150}}

As a financially successful author, editor, and playwright, Gorky gave financial support to the [[Russian Social Democratic Labour Party]] (RSDLP), as well as supporting liberal appeals to the government for civil rights and social reform. The brutal shooting of workers marching to the Tsar with a petition for reform on 9 January 1905 (known as the [[Bloody Sunday (1905)|"Bloody Sunday"]]), which set in motion the [[Revolution of 1905]], seems to have pushed Gorky more decisively toward radical solutions. He became closely associated with [[Vladimir Lenin]] and [[Alexander Bogdanov]]'s [[Bolshevik]] wing of the party, with Bogdanov taking responsibility for the transfer of funds from Gorky to [[Vpered]].<ref>{{Citation
|last=Biggart|first=John|year=1989|title=Alexander Bogdanov, Left-Bolshevism and the Proletkult 1904–1932|publisher=University of East Anglia}}</ref> It is not clear whether he ever formally joined, and his relations with Lenin and the Bolsheviks would always be rocky. His most influential writings in these years were a series of plays on social and political themes, most famously ''[[The Lower Depths]]'' (1902). While briefly imprisoned in [[Peter and Paul Fortress]] during the abortive [[1905 Russian Revolution]], Gorky wrote the play ''[[Children of the Sun (play)|Children of the Sun]]'', nominally set during an 1862 [[cholera]] epidemic, but universally understood to relate to present-day events. He was released from the prison after a European-wide campaign, which was supported by [[Marie Curie]], [[Auguste Rodin]] and [[Anatole France]], amongst others.<ref>Figes, p. 181</ref>

Gorky assisted the [[Moscow uprising of 1905]], and after its suppression his apartment was raided by the [[Black Hundreds]]. He subsequently fled to [[Saimaa|Lake Saimaa]], [[Grand Duchy of Finland|Finland]].<ref name=":0">Figes, pp. 200–202</ref> In 1906, the Bolsheviks sent him on a fund-raising trip to the United States with [[Ivan Narodny]]. When visiting the [[Adirondack Mountains]], Gorky wrote ''[[Mother (novel)|Mother]]'', his probably most famous novel of revolutionary conversion and struggle; despite its success and political impact, various critics and Gorky himself were harsh of the book's value as of a work of art.<ref name="mother"/> His experiences in the United States—which included a scandal over his travelling with his lover (the actress [[Maria Fyodorovna Andreyeva|Maria Andreyeva]]) rather than his wife—deepened his contempt for the "bourgeois soul".

===Capri years===
[[File:Villa Behring on Capri.jpg|thumb|Between 1909–1911 Gorky lived on the island of Capri in the burgundy-coloured "Villa [[Emil Adolf von Behring|Behring]]".]]
From 1906 to 1913, Gorky lived on the island of [[Capri]] in [[southern Italy]], partly for health reasons and partly to escape the increasingly repressive atmosphere in Russia.<ref name="kirjasto" /> He continued to support the work of Russian social-democracy, especially the Bolsheviks and invited [[Anatoly Lunacharsky]] to stay with him on Capri. The two men had worked together on ''Literaturny Raspad'' which appeared in 1908. It was during this period that Gorky, along with Lunacharsky, [[Alexander Bogdanov|Bogdanov]] and [[Vladimir Bazarov]] developed the idea of an ''Encyclopedia of Russian History'' as a socialist version of [[Denis Diderot|Diderot]]'s ''[[Encyclopédie]]''.

In 1906, Maxim Gorky visited New York City at the invitation of [[Mark Twain]] and other writers.   An invitation to the [[White House]] by President [[Theodore Roosevelt]] was withdrawn after the ''[[New York World]]'' reported that the woman accompanying Gorky was not his wife.<ref>Sorel, New York Times 5 March 2021</ref> After this was revealed all of the hotels in [[Manhattan]] refused to house the couple, and they had to stay at an apartment in [[Staten Island]].<ref name=":0" />

During a visit to Switzerland, Gorky met Lenin, who he charged spent an inordinate amount of his time feuding with other revolutionaries, writing: "He looked awful. Even his tongue seemed to have turned grey".{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=117}} Despite his [[atheism]],<ref>{{cite book|title=Political Economy of Socialist Realism|year=2007|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-12280-0|page=76|author=Evgeniĭ Aleksandrovich Dobrenko|quote=Gorky hated religion with all the passion of a former God-builder. Probably no other Russian writer (unless one considers Dem'ian Bednyi a writer) expressed so many angry words about God, religion, and the church. But Gorky's atheism always fed on that same hatred of nature. He wrote about God and about nature in the very same terms.}}</ref> Gorky was not a materialist.<ref>{{cite book|title=Maxim Gorky: A Political Biography|year=1999|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-275-96605-8|page=86|author=Tova Yedlin|quote=Gorky had long rejected all organized religions. Yet he was not a materialist, and thus he could not be satisfied with Marx's ideas on religion. When asked to express his views about religion in a questionnaire sent by the French journal Mercure de France on April 15, 1907, Gorky replied that he was opposed to the existing religions of Moses, Christ, and Mohammed. He defined religious feeling as an awareness of a harmonious link that joins man to the universe and as an aspiration for synthesis, inherent in every individual.}}</ref> Most controversially, he articulated, along with a few other maverick Bolsheviks, a philosophy he called "[[God-Building]]" (богостроительство, ''bogostroitel'stvo''),<ref name="kirjasto" /> which sought to recapture the power of myth for the revolution and to create religious atheism that placed collective humanity where God had been and was imbued with passion, wonderment, moral certainty, and the promise of deliverance from evil, suffering, and even death. Though 'God-Building' was ridiculed by Lenin, Gorky retained his belief that "culture"—the moral and spiritual awareness of the value and potential of the human self—would be more critical to the revolution's success than political or economic arrangements.

=== World War I and the Russian Revolution ===
An amnesty granted for the [[300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty]] allowed Gorky to return to Russia in 1914, where he continued his social criticism, mentored other writers from the common people, and wrote a series of important cultural memoirs, including the first part of his autobiography.<ref name="kirjasto" /><ref>{{Cite news|last=Times|first=Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph To the New York|date=19 January 1914|title=GORKY BACK IN RUSSIA.; Amnesty Permits His Return – Is Still In Ill Health. (Published 1914)|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1914/01/19/archives/gorky-back-in-russia-amnesty-permits-his-return-is-still-in-ill.html|access-date=16 January 2021|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> On returning to Russia, he wrote that his main impression was that "everyone is so crushed and devoid of God's image." The only solution, he repeatedly declared, was "culture".

With Russia entering [[World War I]] in 1914 and the outburst of patriotism Gorky became devastated;  shortly after the destruction of the [[Rheims Cathedral]], Gorky wrote Andreeva: "All this is so terrible that I am unable to express even one one-hundredth of my heavy feelings, which are perhaps best described in words such as world catastrophe, the downfall of European culture." At first, Gorky along with the other writers signed a protest against the "barbarism of the Germans", blaming them for the war, "the despicable paper of the Russian liberals" in Lenin's words; later he wrote a series of anti-war publications, but succeeded in publishing only one of them, in which he appealed to feelings of international brotherhood and cooperation; one of the articles was confiscated by the censor, and another was condemned and led the journal being confiscated after being published. While not being a strong "[[defeatism|defeatist]]" like Lenin, Gorky supported "a speedy end of the war and for peace without annexation or indemnities." In 1915, he launched the publishing house ''Parus'' and the magazine ''[[Letopis]]'' to spread anti-war stance and "defend the idea of international culture against all manifestations of nationalism and imperialism"; among its prominent writers were the poets [[Sergei Yesenin]], [[Aleksandr Blok]] and [[Vladimir Mayakovsky]]. Lenin was critical of Gorky's position: "In politics Gorky is always weak-willed and subject to emotions and moods." Gorky's best-known publication of the period were concerning [[antisemitism]], written in response to the severe Tsarist repressions against the Jews, and an essay "Two Souls", which contrasted "the passive East" with "the active West" and promoted the values of European culture and progress and urged Russia to break free from the "Eastern-Asiatic" "soul" and encouraged the Russian bourgeoisie to participate "in the work of reform". Although the [[Okhrana]], the secret police, had failed to find a legal pretext to close the journal, the government decided to do it in January 1917, but these plans failed because of the [[February Revolution]]. Gorky distrusted it at first, but in Spring became cautiously optimist about it. In Summer, Gorky's publishing house published one of Lenin's most famous writings, ''[[Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism]]'', with Lenin's criticisms of [[Karl Kautsky|Kautsky]] removed from the text.<ref name="yedlin"/><ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FOtOEAAAQBAJ | isbn=978-1-84467-714-6 | title=Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin from 1917 | date=August 2011 | publisher=Verso Books }}</ref>

After the February Revolution, Gorky visited the headquarters of the Okhrana on Kronversky Prospekt together with [[Nikolai Sukhanov]] and Vladimir Zenisinov.{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=91 & 95}} Gorky described the former Okhrana headquarters, where he sought literary inspiration, as derelict, with windows broken, and papers lying all over the floor.{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=91}} Having dinner with Sukhanov later the same day, Gorky grimly predicted that the revolution would end in "Asiatic savagery".{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=95}} Initially a supporter of the Socialist-Revolutionary [[Alexander Kerensky]], Gorky switched over to the Bolsheviks after the [[Kornilov affair]].{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=246}} In July 1917, Gorky wrote his own experiences of the Russian working class had been sufficient to dispel any "notions that Russian workers are the incarnation of spiritual beauty and kindness".{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=201}} Gorky admitted to feeling attracted to Bolshevism, but admitted to concerns about a creed that made the entire working class "sweet and reasonable – I had never known people who were really like this".{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=202}} Gorky wrote that he knew the poor, the "carpenters, stevedores, bricklayers", in a way that the intellectual Lenin never did, and he frankly distrusted them.{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=202}}

During World War I, his apartment in [[Saint Petersburg|Petrograd]] was turned into a [[Bolshevik]] staff room, and his politics remained close to the Bolsheviks throughout the [[Russian Revolution|revolutionary period of 1917]]. On the day after the [[October Revolution|October Revolution of 7 November 1917]], Gorky observed a gardener working the Alexander Park who had cleared snow during the February Revolution while ignoring the shots in the background, asked people during the [[July Days]] not to trample the grass and was now chopping off branches, leading Gorky to write that he was "stubborn as a mole, and apparently as blind as one too".{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=318}} Gorky's relations with the Bolsheviks became strained, however, after the [[October Revolution]]. One contemporary recalled how Gorky would turn "dark and black and grim" at the mere mention of Lenin.{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=330}} Gorky wrote that Vladimir Lenin together with [[Leon Trotsky]] "have become poisoned with the filthy venom of power", crushing the rights of the individual to achieve their revolutionary dreams.{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=330}} Gorky wrote that Lenin was a "cold-blooded trickster who spares neither the honor nor the life of the proletariat. ... He does not know the popular masses, he has not lived with them".{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=330}} Gorky went on to compare Lenin to a chemist experimenting in a laboratory with the only difference being the chemist experimented with inanimate matter to improve life while Lenin was experimenting on the "living flesh of Russia".{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=330}} A further strain on Gorky's relations with the Bolsheviks occurred when his newspaper ''[[Novaya Zhizn (Mensheviks)|Novaya Zhizn]]'' (''New Life'') fell prey to Bolshevik censorship during the ensuing civil war, around which time Gorky published a collection of essays critical of the Bolsheviks called ''Untimely Thoughts'' in 1918, which would not be republished in Russia until after the [[Perestroika]]. The essays call Lenin a tyrant for his senseless arrests and repression of free discourse, and an anarchist for his conspiratorial tactics; Gorky compares Lenin to both the Tsar and [[Sergey Nechayev|Nechayev]].<ref>Maxim Gorky, Untimely Thoughts: Essays on Revolution, Culture and the Bolsheviks, 1917–1918, ed. Mark D. Steinberg, trans. Herman Ermolaev, rev. ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995).</ref>

:"Lenin and his associates", Gorky wrote, "consider it possible to commit all kinds of crimes ... the abolition of free speech and senseless arrests."<ref>Harrison E. Salisbury, ''Black Night, White Snow'', New York, 1978, p. 540.</ref>

He was a member of the Committee for the Struggle against Antisemitism within the Soviet government.<ref>Brendan McGeever. Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution. — Cambridge University Press, 2019. — p.p. 247.</ref>

In 1921, he hired a secretary, [[Moura Budberg]], who later became his mistress. In August 1921, the poet [[Nikolay Gumilev]] was arrested by the Petrograd [[Cheka]] for his [[monarchist]] views. There is a story that Gorky hurried to Moscow, obtained an order to release Gumilev from Lenin personally, but upon his return to Petrograd he found out that Gumilev had already been shot – but [[Nadezhda Mandelstam]], a close friend of Gumilev's widow, [[Anna Akhmatova]] wrote that: "It is true that people asked him to intervene. ... Gorky had a strong dislike of Gumilev, but he nevertheless promised to do something. He could not keep his promise because the sentence of death was announced and carried out with unexpected haste, before Gorky had got round to doing anything."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mandelstam |first1=Nadezhda |title=Hope Against Hope, a Memoir |date=1971 |publisher=Collins & Harvill |location=London |isbn=0-00-262501-6 |page=[https://archive.org/details/hopeagainsthopem00mand/page/110 110] |url=https://archive.org/details/hopeagainsthopem00mand/page/110 }}</ref> In October, Gorky returned to Italy on health grounds: he had [[tuberculosis]].

In July 1921, Gorky published an appeal to the outside world, saying that millions of lives were menaced by crop failure. He also proposed the establishment of the [[Pomgol]] and joined the organization to relieve the famine. While most members of the organization were later arrested by the Soviet authorities for 'counterrevolutionary crimes', Gorky left Soviet Russia earlier and managed to avoid the arrest.<ref name="rp94">{{cite book |last1=Pipes |first1=Richard |title=Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime |date=March 15, 1994 |publisher=Knopf |isbn=0394502426 |chapter=Chapter 8}}</ref> The [[Russian famine of 1921–22]], also known as [[Volga region|Povolzhye]] famine, killed an estimated 5 million, primarily affecting the Volga and Ural River regions.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/stream/TheBlackBookofCommunism10/the-black-book-of-communism-jean-louis-margolin-1999-communism#page/n71/|title=The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression|last1=Courtois|first1=Stéphane|last2=Werth|first2=Nicolas|last3=Panné|first3=Jean-Louis|last4=Paczkowski|first4=Andrzej|last5=Bartošek|first5=Karel|last6=Margolin|first6=Jean-Louis|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=1999|isbn=9780674076082|pages=123}}</ref>

===Second exile===
Gorky left Russia in September 1921, for Berlin. There he heard about the impending [[1922 Moscow Trial of Socialist Revolutionaries|Moscow Trial of 12 Socialist Revolutionaries]], which hardened his opposition to the Bolshevik regime. He wrote to [[Anatole France]] denouncing the trial as a "cynical and public preparation for the murder" of people who had fought for the freedom of the Russian people. He also wrote to the Soviet vice-premier, [[Alexei Rykov]] asking him to tell [[Leon Trotsky]] that any death sentences carried out on the defendants would be "premeditated and foul murder."{{sfn |McSmith |2015 |p=86}} This provoked a contemptuous reaction from Lenin, who described Gorky as "always supremely spineless in politics", and Trotsky, who dismissed Gorky as an "artist whom no-one takes seriously".{{sfn |McSmith |2015 |p=82}} He was denied permission by Italy's fascist government to return to Capri, but was permitted to settle in Sorrento, where he lived from 1922 to 1932, with an extended household that included Moura Budberg, his ex-wife Andreyeva, her lover, [[Pyotr Kryuchkov]], who acted as Gorky's secretary (initially a spy for Yagoda) for the remainder of his life, Gorky's son Max Peshkov, Max's wife, Timosha, and their two young daughters.

He wrote several successful books while there,<ref>{{cite book|author=Tova Yedlin|title=Maxim Gorky: A Political Biography|publisher=Praeger |page=229|year=1999}}</ref> but by 1928 he was having difficulty earning enough to keep his large household, and began to seek an accommodation with the communist regime. The General Secretary of the Communist Party [[Joseph Stalin]] was equally keen to entice Gorky back to the USSR. He paid his first visit in May 1928 – at the very time when the regime was staging its first show trial since 1922, the so-called [[Shakhty Trial]] of 53 engineers employed in the coal industry, one of whom, Pyotr Osadchy, had visited Gorky in [[Sorrento]]. In contrast to his attitude to the trial of the [[Socialist Revolutionary Party|Socialist Revolutionaries]], Gorky accepted without question that the engineers were guilty, and expressed regret that in the past he had intervened on behalf of professionals who were being persecuted by the regime. During the visit, he struck up friendships with [[Genrikh Yagoda]] (deputy head of the [[OGPU]]) who vested interest in spying on Gorky, and two other OGPU officers, [[Semyon Firin]] and [[Matvei Pogrebinsky]], who held high office in the [[Gulag]]. Pogrebinsky was Gorky's guest in Sorrento for four weeks in 1930. The following year, Yagoda sent his brother-in-law, [[Leopold Averbakh]] to Sorrento, with instructions to induce Gorky to return to Russia permanently.{{sfn |McSmith |2015 |pp=84–88}}

===Return to Russia===
[[File:Avel Enukidze Joseph Stalin and Maxim Gorky Red Square 1931.jpg|right|thumb|[[Avel Enukidze]], [[Joseph Stalin]] and Maxim Gorky celebrate the 10th anniversary of [[Red Sport International|Sportintern]]. Red Square, Moscow USSR. August 1931]]

Gorky's return from [[Kingdom of Italy#Fascist regime (1922–1943)|Fascist Italy]] was a major propaganda victory for the Soviets. He was decorated with the [[Order of Lenin]] and given a mansion (formerly belonging to the millionaire [[Pavel Ryabushinsky]], which was for many years the [[Gorky Museum]]) in Moscow and a [[dacha]] in the suburbs. The city of Nizhny Novgorod, and the surrounding province were renamed Gorky.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ireland |first=Corydon |date=2008-05-15 |title=Reminiscences of Maxim Gorky |url=https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/05/reminiscences-of-maxim-gorky/ |access-date=2025-03-01 |website=Harvard Gazette |language=en-US}}</ref> [[Gorky Park (Moscow)|Moscow's main park]], and one of the central Moscow streets, Tverskaya, were renamed in his honour, as was the [[Moscow Art Theatre]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ireland |first=Corydon |date=2008-05-15 |title=Reminiscences of Maxim Gorky |url=https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/05/reminiscences-of-maxim-gorky/ |access-date=2025-03-01 |website=Harvard Gazette |language=en-US}}</ref> The largest fixed-wing aircraft in the world in the mid-1930s, the [[Tupolev ANT-20]] was named ''Maxim Gorky'' in his honour.

He was also appointed President of the [[Union of Soviet Writers]], founded in 1932, to coincide with his return to the USSR. On 11 October 1931 Gorky read his fairy tale poem "[[A Girl and Death]]" (which he wrote in 1892) to his visitors [[Joseph Stalin]], [[Kliment Voroshilov]] and [[Vyacheslav Molotov]], an event that was later depicted by {{ill|Anatoly Yar-Kravchenko|ru|Яр-Кравченко, Анатолий Никифорович}} in his painting. On that same day Stalin left his autograph on the last page of this work by Gorky: "This piece is stronger than [[Goethe's Faust|Goethe's ''Faust'']] (love defeats death)".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.maximgorkiy.narod.ru/PHOTOS/6/stalin.jpg |title=Scan of the page from "A Girl And Death" with autograph by Stalin |access-date=21 July 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120907055526/http://www.maximgorkiy.narod.ru/PHOTOS/6/stalin.jpg |archive-date=7 September 2012 }}</ref> Voroshilov also left a "resolution": "I am illiterate, but I think that Comrade Stalin more than correctly defined the meaning of A. Gorky's poems. On my own behalf, I will say: I love M. Gorky as my and my class of writer, who correctly defined our forward movement."{{cn|date=March 2025}}

As [[Vyacheslav Ivanov (philologist)|Vyacheslav Ivanov]] remembers, Gorky was very upset:
{{blockquote|They wrote their resolution on his fairy tale "A Girl and Death". [[Vsevolod Ivanov|My father]], who spoke about this episode with Gorky, insisted emphatically that Gorky was offended. Stalin and Voroshilov were drunk and fooling around.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Горький: страсти по Максиму|last=Basinsky|first=Pavel|publisher=АСТ}}</ref>
}}

=== Visits to Gulag camps ===
[[File:Ryabushinsky House 01 by shakko.jpg|right|thumb|On his definitive return to the Soviet Union in 1932, Maxim Gorky received the Ryabushinsky Mansion, designed in 1900 by [[Fyodor Schechtel]] for the Ryabushinsky family. The mansion today houses a museum about Gorky.]]
In 1933, Gorky co-edited, with Averbakh and Firin, an infamous book about the [[White Sea–Baltic Canal]], presented as an example of "successful rehabilitation of the former enemies of proletariat". For other writers, he urged that one obtained realism by extracting the basic idea from reality, but by adding the potential and desirable to it, one added romanticism with deep revolutionary potential.<ref>R. H. Stacy, ''Russian Literary Criticism'' p188 {{ISBN|0-8156-0108-5}}</ref> For himself, Gorky avoided realism. His denials that even a single prisoner died during the construction of the aforementioned canal was refuted by [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] who claimed thousands of prisoners froze to death not only in the evenings from the lack of adequate shelter and food, but even in the middle of the day. Most tellingly, Solzhenitsyn and [[Dmitry Likhachov]] document a visit, on 20 June 1929 to [[Solovki prison camp|Solovki]], the "original" forced labour camp, and the model upon which thousands of others were constructed. Given Gorky's reputation, (both to the authorities and to the prisoners), the camp was transformed from one where prisoners (Zeks) were worked to death to one befitting the official Soviet idea of "transformation through labour". Gorky did not notice the relocation of thousands of prisoners to ease the overcrowding, the new clothes on the prisoners (used to labouring in their underwear), or even the hiding of prisoners under tarpaulins, and the removal of the torture rooms. The deception was exposed when Gorky was presented with children "model prisoners", one of who challenged Gorky if he "wanted to know the truth". On the affirmative, the room was cleared and the 14-year-old boy recounted the truth – starvation, men worked to death, and of the pole torture, of using men instead of horses, of the summary executions, of rolling prisoners, bound to a heavy pole down stairs with hundreds of steps, of spending the night, in underwear, in the snow. Gorky never wrote about the boy, or even asked to take the boy with him. The boy was executed after Gorky left.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Воспоминания|last=Likhachov|first=Dmitry|publisher=Logos|year=1995|pages=183–188}}</ref> Gorky left the room in tears, and wrote in the visitor book "I am not in a state of mind to express my impressions in just a few words. I wouldn't want, yes, and I would likewise be ashamed to permit myself the banal praise of the remarkable energy of people who, while remaining vigilant and tireless sentinels of the Revolution, are able, at the same time, to be remarkably bold creators of culture".<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Gulag Archepelago|last=Solzhenitsyn|first=Alexander|publisher=Harper Perennial|year=2007 |pages=199–205}}</ref>

In a collection of academic papers about Gorky by the [[Gorky Institute of World Literature|World Literature Institute]] of the [[Russian Academy of Sciences]] published in 1995 it was noted that the story about the boy was first told by [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] in ''[[The Gulag Archipelago]]'' and there was no other testimonies in support of it, that there were never details given about the boy's identity, and that the story isn't supported by documents: "In the Solovki Museum... information about the real boy was not found; this story is considered to be a legend."<ref>https://biblio.imli.ru/images/abook/russliteratura/Barahov_V.S._red._-_Neizvestnyj_Gorkij_M._Gorkij._Materialy_i_issledovaniya._Vyp._4_._-_1995_1_.pdf {{Bare URL PDF|date=August 2024}}</ref> [[Dmitry Bykov]] in his biography of Gorky wrote that whether or not did the boy exist, "mass consciousness is structured in such a way that the boy is needed, and it is no longer possible to erase him from Gorky's biography";<ref>{{Cite book|title=Был ли Горький?|author=Дмитрий Быков|year=2009|pages=199–205|publisher=Litres |isbn=9785457159662}}</ref> Gorky's biographer [[Pavel Basinsky]] makes a similar statement that such "legends" represent "the essence of reality", but if the boy existed, it would be impossible for Gorky to "take the boy with him" even with his reputation of a "great proletarian writer": for example, Gorky had to spend over 2 years to free [[Julia Danzas]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Basinsky|first=Pavel|date=18 February 2018|title=Басинский: Правда истории не совпадает с нашими представлениями о ней|url=https://rg.ru/2018/02/18/basinskij-pravda-istorii-ne-sovpadaet-s-nashimi-predstavleniiami-o-nej.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220124013932/https://rg.ru/2018/02/18/basinskij-pravda-istorii-ne-sovpadaet-s-nashimi-predstavleniiami-o-nej.html|archive-date=24 January 2022|website=[[Rossiyskaya Gazeta|Российская газета]]|language=ru}}</ref>

Gorky also helped other political prisoners (not without the influence of his wife, [[Yekaterina Peshkova]]). For example, because of Gorky's interference [[Mikhail Bakhtin]]'s initial verdict (5 years of Solovki) was changed to 6 years of exile.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Беседы В. Д. Дувакина с М. М. Бахтиным|publisher=Прогресс|year=1996|pages=113–114; 298}}</ref>

=== 1930s ===
[[File:Maxim Gorky 1930s.jpg|thumb|1930s photo portrait]]
During the 1930s, the relationship of Gorky with Stalin's regime became rather ambiguous: while Gorky publicly supported it, this period was marked by certain conflicts with the official policies. 

Gorky was a strong and sincere supporter of such Stalinist policies as usage of forced labour, collectivization and "[[dekulakization]]" and the show trials against the saboteurs of the Plan, but being a propagandist for such policies wasn't his main role; he was regarded as an "ideological asset" to personify the myth of the "proletarian culture" and bring literature, as Tovah Yedlin writes, under the control of the party,<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q2dl-pAlVzAC | isbn=978-1-61149-352-8 | title=Fiction of the New Statesman, 1913-1939 | date=2011 | publisher=Lexington Books }}</ref> becoming officially praised as "the founder of [[Socialist Realism]] in literature".{{citation needed|date=April 2025}} More to it, Gorky strongly supported efforts in getting a law passed in 1934, [[Criminalization of homosexuality|making homosexuality a criminal offense]], his attitude coloured by the fact that some members of the Nazi ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'' were homosexuals. The phrase "exterminate all homosexuals and fascism will vanish" is often attributed to him.{{sfn |McSmith |2015 |p=160}}<ref name="Lingiardi 2002 p. 89">{{cite book |last=Lingiardi |first=Vittorio |author-link= Vittorio Lingiardi |translator-last1=Hopcke |translator-first1=Robert H. |translator-last2=Schwartz |translator-first2=Paul |title=Men in Love: Male Homosexualities from Ganymede to Batman |year=2002 |publisher=Open Court |publication-place=Chicago, US |isbn=9780812695151 |oclc=49421786 |page=89 |chapter=6. The Führer's Eagle |chapter-url={{Google books |id=xBLpFqlrczwC |pg=PA89 |plainurl=yes}}}}</ref> In ''[[Pravda]]'', he wrote: "There is already a sarcastic saying: Destroy homosexuality and fascism will disappear."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Steakley|first=James|title=Gay Men and the Sexual History of the Political Left, Volume 29|pages=170}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last1=Ginsberg|first1=Terri|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GPUWPW3BRAUC&q=gorky+sarcastic&pg=PA60|title=A Companion to German Cinema|last2=Mensch|first2=Andrea|date=13 February 2012|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=978-1-4051-9436-5}}</ref>

However, in her political biography of Gorky, Yedlin also describes his various conflicts with the official cultural policies and the increasing pressure on him towards the end of his life;<ref name="yedlin"/> during his last years, he supported friendly relations with [[Lev Kamenev]] and [[Nikolai Bukharin]], the leaders of the opposition which were executed after Gorky's death, and he could be sympathetic to the centrist and [[Right Opposition]] in general; both Bukharin and Kamenev had been friends with Gorky since 1920s.<ref name="gla"/><ref name="imli"/><ref name="cioni"/> Paola Cioni noted that although there are traits of a conflict in the relations between Stalin and the state and Gorky, it is uncertain when this conflict was provoked by psychological motives, and when it was provoked by his political position.<ref name="cioni">{{Cite book|author=Паола Чони|title=Горький-политик|date=2019|publisher=Litres |isbn=9785041745813}}</ref> It is certain, however, that Gorky intervened on behalf of such politically persecuted individuals as the historian [[Yevgeny Tarle]] and the literary critic, [[Mikhail Bakhtin]], succeeded in making possible for the writers [[Yevgeny Zamyatin]] and [[Victor Serge]] to leave the country, tried to intercede on behalf of [[Karl Radek]] and Bukharin, and made Kamenev appointed as director of the publishing house ''[[Academia (Soviet publishing house)|Academia]]''; Gorky also made efforts to support the literary "[[fellow traveller]]s" and writers who had troubles with their works being published for ideological or artistic reasons or were disapproved by the official critic.

For example, in letters to Stalin he defended [[Mikhail Bulgakov]], and partly because of Gorky, Bulgakov's plays ''[[The Cabal of Hypocrites]]'' and ''[[The Days of the Turbins]]'' were allowed for staging;<ref>{{cite book|title=Полное собрание сочинений. Письма в 24 томах|publisher=[[Nauka (publisher)|Nauka]]|year=2012–2018|volume=Т. 15–20|location=Moscow|language=ru}}</ref> Gorky took [[Andrei Platonov]] to the "writers' brigades" after he was made unable to be published because of his work critical of the collectivization, although Gorky rejected his "pessimistic" texts;<ref>{{Cite journal|date=2011|title=Introduction to Platonov|url=https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii69/articles/andrei-platonov-on-the-first-socialist-tragedy|journal=[[New Left Review]]|volume=69|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190627185811/https://newleftreview.org/issues/II69/articles/andrei-platonov-on-the-first-socialist-tragedy|archive-date=27 June 2019}}</ref> with Gorky's intervention, Bukharin became one of the keynote speakers on the Writers' Congress and proclaimed [[Boris Pasternak]], who was denounced by the Stalinist party critics as "decadent",  to be "first poet" of the USSR.<ref name="gla"/><ref name="imli"/> Gorky was not a supporter of artistic pluralism and diversity among writers and agreed that some censorship had to be inevitable, often being dismissive and rigid of creative experiments; however, Gorky was concerned with the bureaucratization of the Union of Writers and tried to oppose the increasing pressure on writers and attacked the party-sanctioned authors and them achieving the highest ranks in the literary bureaucracy.<ref>https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/1057307/Kondoyanidi_georgetown_0076D_14453.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y {{Bare URL inline|date=August 2024}}</ref> Such Stalin's closest associates as [[Lazar Kaganovich]] opposed Gorky and Bukharin in their efforts against the increasing party control of literature, and Kaganovich in his letters to Stalin wrote about Gorky's ideological faults and the ostensible influence of the Opposition on him. For example, Kaganovich and several Politburo members visited Gorky and demanded his keynote speech for the Congress of Writers to be rewritten, and in his account of the visit, Kaganovich reported that Gorky's "mood [was] apparently not very good", and that the "aftertaste" with which Gorky was critical about some life aspects in the USSR "reminded [him] of [[Nadezhda Krupskaya|Comrade Krupskaya]]", Lenin's wife who supported the [[Right Opposition]], and that Kamenev seemingly had "an important role in shaping" Gorky's "moods"; Kaganovich also proposed to heavily edit Gorky's attack on the members of the Organising Committee and publish it so it wouldn't circulate illegally. Another act which concerned the Politburo was Gorky's support of the members of the [[Russian Association of Proletarian Writers|RAPP]], the former party institution to control literature the members of which fell out of favour after its disbandment; Kaganovich wrote about Gorky supporting the RAPP-led campaign
against Stalin's hand-picked leadership of the Organising Committee of the Union and demands to let [[Leopold Averbakh]], the leader of RAPP who was executed in 1937, speak at the congress.<ref name="gla">https://theses.gla.ac.uk/83675/5/2023allanphd%20final.pdf {{Bare URL PDF|date=August 2024}}</ref>

After his arrest in the beginning of 1935, Kamenev wrote a letter to Gorky: "We didn't talk with you about politics, and when I told you about the feeling of love and respect for Stalin..., about my readiness to sincerely work with him, that all feelings of resentment and anger burned out in me — I told the truth... I loved you from the bottom of my heart"; Gorky's secretary Kryuchkov didn't register the letter in Gorky's correspondence receipt book, but the hand-written copy in the Gorky archives contains the writer's characteristic annotations in red pencil; meanwhile, as Gorky's relationship with Stalin worsened, the latter stopped visiting him and replying to his phone calls, and their formal correspondence was almost entirely maintained by Gorky, with Stalin replying occasionally.<ref name="gla"/> Later Gorky tried to defend an issue of Dostoevsky's ''[[Demons (Dostoevsky novel)|Demons]]'' which was prepared by Kamenev and came out after his arrest; the novel had a reputation of a "counter-revolutionary" work. As the conflict was becoming more visible, Gorky's political and literary positions became weaker. [[Fyodor Panfyorov|Fyodor Panferov]], one of the party-sanctioned leaders of the Socialist Realism writers earlier attacked by Gorky, published an answer to him, in which he dismissed his line of criticizing the officially acclaimed Socialist Realism writers while supporting such ostensible enemies of Communism as [[D. S. Mirsky]]. David Zaslavsky published an ironic response to Gorky's article defending ''Demons'', in which he accused Gorky in connivance in the formation of the "counter-revolutionary ''intelligentsia''" and directly compared his "liberal position" with the ideological enemies, namely Kamenev and [[Grigory Zinoviev|Zinoviev]]: "Next thing you know you'll be calling for publication of White Guard writers", as [[Korney Chukovsky]] summarized in his diary; Gorky's second answer to Zaslavsky was not published.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b5KsAtIjeNQC | isbn=978-0-300-13797-2 | title=Diary, 1901-1969 | date=October 2008 | publisher=Yale University Press }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P-y-DAAAQBAJ | isbn=978-1-349-21447-1 | title=Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 1928-39 | date=27 July 2016 | publisher=Springer }}</ref> During the officially organized [[Muddle Instead of Music|campaign]] against the composer [[Dmitry Shostakovich]], Gorky wrote a letter to Stalin in defense of the composer, demanding a "careful" treatment of him and calling his critics "a bunch of mediocre people, hack-workers" "attack[ing] Shostakovich in every possible way."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NdWfAAAAMAAJ&q=%D0%B2%D1%8B%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B5|title=Дмитрий Шостакович: путешествие|first=Оксана|last=Дворниченко|date=13 August 2006|publisher=Текст|isbn=9785751605919|via=Google Books}}</ref>

Such sources as [[Romain Rolland]]'s diary demonstrate that because of Gorky's refusal to blindly obey the policies of Stalinism, he had lost the Party's goodwill and spent his last days under unannounced house arrest.<ref name="yedlin">{{Cite book|last=Yedlin|first=Tovah|url=https://archive.org/details/MaximGorkyAPoliticalBiography/|title=Maxim Gorky: A Political Biography|publisher=Praeger Publishers|year=1999|isbn=0-275-96605-4|location=[[Westport, Connecticut]], United States}}</ref>

===Death===
[[File:Kremlin Wall Necropolis - Gorky, Maxim 04.jpg|thumb|Grave of Maxim Gorky in the [[Kremlin Wall Necropolis]]]]
With the increase of [[Stalinism|Stalinist]] repression and especially after the assassination of [[Sergei Kirov]] in December 1934, Gorky was placed under unannounced house arrest in his house near Moscow in [[Gorki{{nbh}}10]] (the name of the place is a completely different word in Russian unrelated to his surname). His long-serving secretary [[Pyotr Kryuchkov]] had been recruited by Yagoda as a paid informer.{{sfn |McSmith |2015 |p=91}} Before his death from a lingering illness in June 1936, he was visited at home by Stalin, Yagoda, and other leading communists, and by [[Moura Budberg]], who had chosen not to return to the USSR with him but was permitted to stay for his funeral.

The sudden death of Gorky's son Maxim Peshkov in May 1934 was followed by the death of Maxim Gorky himself in June 1936 from pneumonia. Speculation has long surrounded the circumstances of his death. Stalin and [[Vyacheslav Molotov|Molotov]] were among those who carried Gorky's urn during the funeral. During the [[Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites"|Bukharin trial in 1938]] (last of the three [[Moscow Trials]]), one of the charges was that Gorky was killed by [[Genrikh Yagoda|Yagoda]]'s [[NKVD]] agents.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Vyshinsky|first=Andrey|date=April 1938|title=The Treason Case Summed Up|url=http://neworleans.media.indypgh.org/uploads/2007/02/the.treason.case.18feb07.pdff4mrvk.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090305141033/http://neworleans.media.indypgh.org/uploads/2007/02/the.treason.case.18feb07.pdff4mrvk.pdf|archive-date=5 March 2009|access-date=10 February 2022|website=neworleans.indymedia.org|quote=From Soviet Russia Today, April 1938 Vol. 7 No. 2. Transcribed by Red Flag Magazine.}}</ref>

According to several historians, Gorky and his son were poisoned by NKVD chief [[Genrikh Yagoda]] on the orders from Stalin and possibly with the assistance of "Kremlin's doctors" [[Dmitry Pletnyov (doctor)|Pletnyov]] and [[Lev Levin]] using substances developed at [[Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services|a special NKVD laboratory in Moscow]].<ref>[[Yuri Felshtinsky]] and [[Vladimir Pribylovsky]], ''The Corporation. Russia and the KGB in the Age of President Putin'', {{ISBN|1-59403-246-7}}, Encounter Books; 25 February 2009, [https://web.archive.org/web/20120225041103/http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/thecorporation/ description], pages 442-443.</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Brackman |first1=Roman |title=The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life |date=23 November 2004 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-75840-0 |page=217 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PY2RAgAAQBAJ&dq=Maxim+Gorky+poisoned+stalin&pg=PA217 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Vaksberg |first1=Arkadi |title=The Murder of Maxim Gorky: A Secret Execution |date=15 December 2006 |publisher=Enigma Books |isbn=978-1-936274-92-5 |pages=300–429 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-IU0ukrgeFgC&dq=maxim+gorky+poisoned+candies&pg=RA1-PT253 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Knight |first1=Amy |title=Orders to Kill: The Putin Regime and Political Murder |date=1 February 2018 |publisher=Biteback Publishing |isbn=978-1-78590-360-1 |pages=1–384 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t5hIDwAAQBAJ&dq=Vaksberg+Gorky+poisoned&pg=PT19 }}</ref>