Editing Maxim Gorky (section)

=== 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>