Editing Maxim Gorky (section)

== Legacy ==
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In the Soviet Union, the complexities in Gorky's life and outlook and literary work were reduced to an iconic image (echoed in heroic pictures and statues dotting the countryside): Gorky as a great Soviet writer who emerged from the common people, a loyal friend of the Bolsheviks, and the founder of the increasingly canonical "[[Socialist Realism]]".<ref name="Ellis, Andrew 2012, p. 22">Ellis, Andrew. ''Socialist Realisms: Soviet Painting 1920–1970''. Skira Editore S.p.A., 2012, p. 22</ref> At the same time, such treatment of Gorky as a "state poet" and a Socialist Realism writer and his political career greatly compromised his reputation and his literary legacy, especially in the West: [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] later would call him "an apologist for executioners," although later scholars wrote about his contradictory relationship with the Bolsheviks and such points as his condemnation of the Red Terror and complicated relationships with Stalin (see above); the German scholar of Gorky Armin Knigge has concluded that Gorky "was never a Stalinist." In regards to his literary legacy, Knigge stated that Gorky is "not a classical writer like Fyodor Dostoevsky, but a representative of world literature" and a "rigorous observer on a level comparable to German writer [[Thomas Mann]]."<ref name="dw"/> In the West, out of his dramatical works, ''[[The Lower Depths]]'' (1902) has been the only play to retain a significant position in theatre, and only few of his early short stories had been influential;<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I3sBAwAAQBAJ | isbn=978-1-317-74060-5 | title=The 20th Century Go-N: Dictionary of World Biography, Volume 8 | date=5 March 2014 | publisher=Routledge }}</ref> in the last years, some of Gorky's works written before the Revolution, like the play ''[[Children of the Sun (play)|Children of the Sun]]'' (1905), and the early short stories, have been staged and republished.<ref name="dw">{{cite web | url=https://www.dw.com/en/russian-writer-maxim-gorky-still-courting-controversy-on-his-150th-birthday/a-43157389 | title=A portrait of Russian writer Maxim Gorky – DW – 03/28/2018 | website=[[Deutsche Welle]] }}</ref> Richard Freeborn writes that although his reputation suffered because of his political career, "nowadays his achievement as the creator of many vivid portraits, as a brilliant memoirist and autobiographer and successor to Chekhov as a dramatist is undeniable."<ref name="corn"/> At the same time, even his best-known works, such as ''The Lower Depths'' and the novel ''[[Mother (novel)|Mother]]'' (1906) are hardly available in the West, and his other works, including the post-revolutionary novels ''[[The Artamonov Business]]'' (1925) and ''[[The Life of Klim Samgin]]'' which have received positive acclaim among critics (see below) have not been republished for a long time; according to Aaron Lake Smith (''[[Lapham's Quarterly]]''), "Gorky's work is so unavailable that it’s almost suspicious, as if there might still be a wizened Cold Warrior clanking away in a basement office somewhere in Washington..." In Russia, his figure is better known because of his former state-sponsored cult, but "his legacy has been overtaken by a kind of fog, widely depoliticized and misunderstood."<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/genius-and-laborer | title=The Genius and the Laborer | date=16 November 2016 }}</ref>