Maxim Gorky

In 1891 Gorky moved to Tiflis (later Tbilisi), working as a railway painter, and published his first short story the following year. His story “Makar Chudra” was published under his newly chosen pseudonym Maxim Gorky — Maxim the Bitter — a reflection of the bitter truth he presented. Seeing literature as an agent of political change, Gorky’s work became popular among leftists. He joined in the 1905 Revolution, after which he was arrested and charged with incitement. He continued writing in prison and, after public outcry demanded his release, he was deported from Russia.

Gorky lived in exile on Capri from 1906 to 1913 and continued to support the revolutionary cause. He returned to Russia in 1914 and established the political-literary journal Летопись (Chronicle) the following year. He also helped establish the Russian Society for the Study of the Life of the Jews, an organization that protested anti-Jewish persecution. In 1917, he founded the journal, New Life, in which he also published his critical ideas about the new Bolshevik government after the revolution. While his popularity gave him a certain amount of political protection, his disillusionment with the fledgling Soviet government precipitated his self-exile back in Italy. Eventually persuaded to return to the Soviet Union in 1931, he became head of the Soviet Writers Union and gave the speech at its first congress.

Gorky died suddenly in his country home near Moscow on June 18, 1936, although rumors persist that he was a victim of Stalin’s Great Terror.