M. Gorky

Problem of "Untimely Thoughts"

Gorky puts forward a number of problems that he is trying to comprehend and solve. One of the most significant among them is the historical fate of the Russian people.

Relying on all his previous experience and on his many deeds, a confirmed reputation as a defender of the enslaved and humiliated, Gorky declares: “I have the right to speak the hurtful and bitter truth about the people, and I am convinced that it will be better for the people if I tell this truth about them. first, and not those enemies of the people who are now silent and accumulate revenge and anger in order ... to spit anger in the face of the people ... "

The difference in views on the people between Gorky and the Bolsheviks is fundamental. Gorky refuses to "half-adore the people", he argues with those who, out of the best, democratic motives, earnestly believed "in the exceptional qualities of our Karataevs."

Beginning his book with the message that the revolution gave freedom to speech, Gorky proclaims to his people "pure truth", that is, one that is above personal and group preferences. He believes that he illuminates the horrors and absurdities of the time so that the people see themselves from the outside and try to change for the better. In his opinion, the people themselves are to blame for their plight.

Gorky accuses the people of being passively involved in the state development of the country. Everyone is to blame: in war, people kill each other; fighting, they destroy what is built; in battles, people become bitter, go berserk, lowering the level of culture: theft, lynching, and debauchery are becoming more frequent. According to the writer, Russia is not threatened by class danger, but by the possibility of savagery, lack of culture. Everyone blames each other, Gorky notes with bitterness, instead of "resisting the storm of emotions with the power of reason." Looking at his people, Gorky notes that "he is passive, but cruel when power falls into his hands, that the glorified kindness of his soul is Karamaz sentimentalism, that he is terribly immune to the suggestions of humanism and culture."

Let us analyze the article devoted to the "July 4 drama" - the dispersal of the demonstration in Petrograd. In the center of the article, a picture of the demonstration itself and its dispersal is reproduced (exactly reproduced, not retold). And then the author's reflection on what he saw with his own eyes follows, ending with a final generalization. The credibility of the reportage and the immediacy of the author's impressions serve as the basis for the emotional impact on the reader. And what happened, and reflections - everything happens as if in front of the reader's eyes, therefore, obviously, the conclusions sound so convincing, as if they were born not only in the author's brain, but also in our consciousness. We see the participants in the July demonstration: armed and unarmed people, a "truck-car" closely packed with motley representatives of the "revolutionary army" that rushes "like a mad pig." (Further, the image of a truck evokes no less expressive associations: "a thundering monster", "an absurd cart.") But then the "crowd panic" begins, frightened "of itself", although a minute before the first shot it "renounced the old world" and " shook his ashes from her feet. " Before the eyes of the observer, a "disgusting picture of madness" appears: the crowd, at the sound of chaotic shots, behaved like a "herd of sheep", turned into "heaps of meat, mad with fear."

Gorky is looking for the cause of what happened. Unlike the absolute majority, who blamed "Leninists", Germans or outright counterrevolutionaries for everything, he calls the main reason for the misfortune "grievous Russian stupidity", "lack of culture, lack of historical flair."

A.M. Gorky writes: “While blaming our people for their tendency towards anarchism, their dislike for work, for all their savagery and ignorance, I remember: it could not have been otherwise. The conditions in which he lived could not instill in him either respect for the individual, or consciousness of the rights of a citizen, or a sense of justice — these were conditions of complete lawlessness, oppression of man, shameless lies and brutal cruelty. "

Another issue that attracts Gorky's close attention is the proletariat as the creator of revolution and culture.

The writer in his very first essays warns the working class, "that miracles do not really happen, that hunger awaits it, complete breakdown of industry, destruction of transport, prolonged bloody anarchy ... because you cannot make 85% of the country's peasant population socialist by the pike."

Gorky invites the proletariat to carefully check its attitude to the government, to treat its activities with caution: “My opinion is this: People's Commissars are destroying and destroying the working class of Russia, they terribly and absurdly complicate the labor movement, create irresistibly difficult conditions for the all the progress of the country ”.

To the opponent's objections that workers are included in the government, Gorky replies: "From the fact that the working class prevails in the government, it does not yet follow that the working class understands everything that the government is doing." According to Gorky, "People's Commissars treat Russia as a material for experience, the Russian people for them is the horse that bacteriologists inoculate with typhus so that the horse develops anti-typhoid serum in its blood." "Bolshevik demagoguery, heating up the peasant's egoistic instincts, extinguishes the embryos of his social conscience, so the Soviet government spends its energy on inciting anger, hatred and malevolence."

In Gorky's deep conviction, the proletariat must avoid contributing to the crushing mission of the Bolsheviks, its purpose is different: it must become "the aristocracy among democracy in our peasant country."

“The best thing that the revolution has created,” Gorky believes, “is a class-conscious, revolutionary-minded worker. And if the Bolsheviks carry him away with robbery, he will die, which will cause a long and gloomy reaction in Russia. "

The salvation of the proletariat, according to Gorky, lies in its unity with the "class of the working intelligentsia", for "the working intelligentsia is one of the detachments of the great class of the modern proletariat, one of the members of the great working-class family." Gorky appeals to the reason and conscience of the workers' intelligentsia, hoping that their union will contribute to the development of Russian culture.

"The proletariat is the creator of a new culture, - these words contain a wonderful dream of the triumph of justice, reason and beauty." The task of the proletarian intelligentsia is to unite all the intellectual forces of the country on the basis of cultural work. "But for the success of this work, one should abandon party sectarianism," the writer reflects. "Politics alone cannot bring up a" new man "; by converting methods into dogmas, we do not serve the truth, but we increase the number of pernicious delusions."

The third problematic link of "Untimely Thoughts", closely related to the first two, were articles on the relationship between revolution and culture. This is the core problem of Gorky's journalism of 1917-1918. It is no coincidence that, publishing his "Untimely Thoughts" as a separate book, the writer gave the subtitle "Notes on Revolution and Culture."

For the sake of the wonderful results of the revolution, Gorky is ready to endure the cruel days of 1917: “We, Russians, are a people who have not yet worked freely, who have not had time to develop all their strength, all abilities, and when I think that the revolution will give us the opportunity to work freely, all-round creativity, my heart is filled with great hope and joy even in these accursed days, bathed in blood and wine. "

He welcomes the revolution because "it is better to burn out in the fire of the revolution than slowly rot in the garbage dump of the monarchy." In these days, according to Gorky's conviction, a new Man is being born, who will finally throw off the accumulated dirt of our life for centuries, kill our Slavic laziness, and enter the universal work of organizing our planet as a bold, talented Worker. The publicist calls on everyone to bring into the revolution “all the best that is in our hearts”, or at least to reduce the cruelty and anger that intoxicate and defame the revolutionary worker.

These romantic motives are interrupted in a cycle by biting truthful fragments: “Our revolution gave full scope to all bad and atrocious instincts ... we see starve to death, sell newspapers on the streets. " "The half-starved beggars deceive and rob each other - this is the filling of the current day." Gorky warns the working class that the revolutionary working class will be responsible for all the atrocities, filth, meanness, blood: "The working class will have to pay for the mistakes and crimes of its leaders - with thousands of lives, streams of blood."

According to Gorky, one of the most paramount tasks of the social revolution is to purify human souls - to get rid of "the painful oppression of hatred", "soften cruelty", "re-create morals", "ennoble relations." To accomplish this task, there is only one way - the way of cultural education.

What is the main idea behind Untimely Thoughts? Gorky's main idea is still very topical today: he is convinced that only by learning to work with love, only by understanding the paramount importance of labor for the development of culture, the people will be able to really create their own history.

He calls for the healing of the swamps of ignorance, because a new culture will not take root on the rotten soil. Gorky offers, in his opinion, an effective way of transformations: “We relate to labor, as if it is the curse of our life, because we do not understand the great meaning of labor, we cannot love it. It is possible to lighten working conditions, reduce its quantity, make work easy and enjoyable only with the help of science ... Only in the love of work will we achieve the great goal of life. "

The writer sees the highest manifestation of historical creativity in overcoming the elements of nature, in the ability to control nature with the help of science: “Let us believe that a person will feel the cultural significance of labor and will love it. Labor done with love becomes creativity. "

According to Gorky, science will help to facilitate human labor, to make it happy: “We, Russians, especially need to organize our highest mind - science. The broader and deeper the tasks of science, the more abundant are the practical fruits of its research. "

He sees a way out of crisis situations in a careful attitude towards the cultural heritage of the country and the people, in the rallying of workers in science and culture in the development of industry, in the spiritual re-education of the masses.

These are the ideas that form a single book "Untimely Thoughts", a book of topical problems of revolution and culture.

Conclusion

"Untimely thoughts" evoke mixed feelings, probably, as did the Russian revolution itself and the days that followed. This is also the recognition of Gorky's timeliness and talented expressiveness. He possessed great sincerity, insight, and civic courage. M. Gorky's unkind look at the history of the country helps our contemporaries to evaluate in a new way the works of writers of the 1920s and 1930s, the truth of their images, details, historical events, and bitter forebodings.

The book "Untimely Thoughts" has remained a monument to its time. She captured the judgments of Gorky, which he expressed at the very beginning of the revolution and which turned out to be prophetic. And regardless of how the views of their author subsequently changed, these thoughts turned out to be extremely timely for everyone who had a chance to survive hopes and disappointments in a series of upheavals that befell Russia in the 20th century.

The title of the book by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).

In Russia, the expression became widely known thanks to the writer Maxim Gorky, who also named a series of his publicistic articles written in the first months after the October coup of 1917 and published in the newspaper Novaya Zhizn (December 1917 - July 1918). In the summer of 1918, the newspaper was closed by the new authorities. Gorky's "Untimely Thoughts" were published in 1919 as a separate edition and were no longer reprinted in the USSR, until 1990. In his articles, the writer condemned the "socialist revolution" undertaken by the Bolsheviks:

“Our revolution gave scope to all the evil and brutal instincts that had accumulated under the leaden roof of the monarchy, and, at the same time, it threw aside from itself all the intellectual forces of democracy, all the moral energy of the country ... People's Commissars treat Russia as a material for experience ...

The reformers from Smolny do not care about Russia, they coolly condemn it to their dream of a world or European revolution. "

Jokingly ironically about an opinion that was expressed inappropriately, not at the time when the society (audience) is not yet ready to perceive and appreciate it.

Maksim Gorky

"Untimely Thoughts" is the name of the cycle of cultural short stories by Friedrich Nietzsche, written in 1873-1876. In one of them, entitled “On the Benefits and Harmfulness of History for Life,” the German philosopher reflects on how heavy a burden the memory of the past is for a person: “Look at the herd that grazes near you: it does not know that such yesterday, what is today, it jumps, chews grass, rests, digests food, jumps again, and so from morning to night and day after day, closely tied in its joy and in its suffering to the pillar of the moment and therefore does not know melancholy, no satiety. This is very painful for a human being, since he is proud of the animal that he is human, and at the same time with a jealous eye looks at his happiness - for he, like an animal, wants only one thing: to live without knowing anything. satiety, no pain, but strives for this recklessly, because he wants it not like an animal. A person can, perhaps, ask an animal: "Why don't you tell me anything about your happiness, but just look at me?" The animal is not averse to answering and saying: "This is because I immediately forget what I want to say," but immediately it forgets this answer and is silent, which surprises a person a lot. But man is also surprised at himself, that he cannot learn to forget and that he is forever chained to the past; no matter how far and no matter how fast he runs, the chain runs with him. "

A little over thirty years will pass, and in another country, under different circumstances, in a different historical situation, there will be a person who also wants to express his “untimely thoughts” to contemporaries and again draw a parallel between man and animal. This man is Maxim Gorky. A series of 58 of his articles under the same title will appear in print in April 1917-June 1918.

For Gorky, these fourteen months were a time of great hopes and terrible disappointments. The son of a cabinet-maker and a petty bourgeois woman who has gone through the harsh "universities" of life; a genius self-taught person, who traveled a lot, lived "at the bottom" among tramps, earning a living as a day job; a writer who knew fame at home, in Europe and America; A "petrel of revolution" who had been repeatedly arrested for political activity, after February 1917, he seemed to see the fulfillment of his cherished aspirations: Russia's turn towards a new, free life. This is how the newspaper founded by him began to be called "New Life". But very soon an understanding came: life was developing differently than it had been imagined before. It was then that “Untimely Thoughts” appeared on the newspaper pages.

At first, they were devoted to problems of evil, everyday, but still customary for any state experiencing a political cataclysm: the ethics of inter-party struggle, freedom of speech, the need to achieve public agreement. But every week their tonality changed: more and more reports began to appear about massacres, about widespread robberies, robberies, pogroms, about the impoverishment and brutality of entire cities and provinces, about lynching, about the systematic violation of human dignity. ... And the criticism of the Bolsheviks and their leaders sounded louder and louder. Gorky wrote: “The People's Commissars regard Russia as a material for experience, the Russian people for them is the horse that bacteriologists inoculate typhus in so that the horse develops anti-typhoid serum in its blood. This is such a cruel and doomed to failure experiment the commissars are making over the Russian people, not thinking that an exhausted, half-hungry horse can die. The reformers from Smolny do not care about Russia: they cold-bloodedly condemn it to their dream of a world or European revolution. " The answer was not long in coming: "Pravda" accused the writer of turning from a "petrel" into a "loon, which does not have the happiness of battle," the publication of "Novaya Zhizn" was suspended several times, and on July 16, 1918, the newspaper, with the knowledge and Lenin's approval was finally closed. Four months later, anticipating terrible shocks, on the eve of the first hungry revolutionary winter, Gorky collected his "New Life" publications and published them as a separate book. "Untimely Thoughts" was published by the publishing house "Culture and Freedom", with which the most authoritative figures of the Russian liberal movement - V. N. Figner, G. A. Lopatin, V. I. Zasulich, G. V. Plekhanov and others collaborated. ...

Gorky gave his collection a subtitle: "Notes on the Revolution and Culture", but today, decades later, it could also be called a universal textbook on historical ethics for every Russian (and there is no doubt that this work is deeply national) ... Quotes from it are easily presented on the front pages of most modern Russian periodicals: “We sought freedom of speech in order to be able to speak and write the truth. But telling the truth is an art, the most difficult of all arts, because in its "pure" form, not connected with the interests of individuals, groups, classes, nations, the truth is almost inconvenient for the use of the layman and unacceptable for him ... This is the accursed quality of "pure" truth, but at the same time it is the best and most necessary truth for us ... Conscience has dried up. The sense of justice is aimed at the distribution of material wealth. Where there is too much politics, there is no place for culture ... The destruction of unpleasant publicity organs cannot have the practical consequences desired by the authorities. This act of cowardice cannot hold back the growth of hostile sentiments ... The Russian people, due to the conditions of their historical development, are a huge flabby body, devoid of taste for state building and almost inaccessible to the influence of ideas capable of ennobling acts of will; the Russian intelligentsia is a head painfully swollen from other people's ideas, connected to the body not by a strong bell-ring of the unity of desire and goals, but by some barely discernible thin nerve thread ... The Western world is harsh and distrustful, it is completely devoid of sentimentalism. In this world, the matter of evaluating a person is very simple: do you love, do you know how to work? If so, you are a person necessary for the world, you are exactly the person by whose power everything valuable and beautiful is created. You don’t like, don’t know how to work? Then, with all your other qualities, no matter how excellent they are, you are an extra person in the workshop of the world. And since the Russians do not like to work and do not know how, and the Western European world knows this property very well, it will be very bad for us, worse than we expect ... They are robbed - amazingly, artistically. There is no doubt that history will talk about this process of self-plundering of Russia with the greatest pathos ... And now this weak, dark, organically prone to anarchism people are now called to be the spiritual leader of the world, the Messiah of Europe. Ko-eraser lit, it burns badly, it stinks of Russia, dirty, drunk and cruel. And this unhappy Russia is being dragged and pushed to Golgotha ​​in order to crucify it for the sake of saving the world. Isn't this "messianism" of a hundred horsepower? .. I am especially suspicious, especially distrustful of the Russian man in power - a recent slave, he becomes the most unbridled despot as soon as he acquires the opportunity to be the ruler of his neighbor. And while I can, I will repeat to the Russian proletarian: "You are being led to destruction, you are being used as material for inhuman experience, in the eyes of your leaders you are still not a man!" ... ".

The appearance of a separate edition of Untimely Thoughts caused a number of critical articles in the Bolshevik press. Gorky's subsequent relationship with the Soviet regime was ambiguous. In 1921, due to deteriorating health, at the insistence of Lenin, he went abroad for treatment. Ten years later, he returned to his homeland to be proclaimed the main writer of the era. He died under mysterious circumstances. Buried in the Kremlin wall. During his lifetime, "Untimely Thoughts" was not reprinted. Moreover, the book was taken from libraries and destroyed. She only got to the bookstores by mistake. Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko recalled: “In 1960, I was walking along the old Arbat, and suddenly I saw on the street collapse of the book“ Out-of-Life Thoughts ”- this book that was considered to have disappeared completely. It only sold for three rubles. I immediately grabbed it and hid it in my bosom, looking around thiefly. Gorky was then so canonized as a communist saint that only a few knew about the existence of this book. "

Wise thoughts

(March 16 (28), 1868, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Empire - June 18, 1936, Gorki, Moscow region, USSR)

Russian writer, prose writer, playwright. One of the most popular authors at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, famous for portraying a romanticized declassified character ("tramp"), an author of works with a revolutionary tendency, personally close to the Social Democrats, who was in opposition to the tsarist regime, Gorky quickly gained worldwide fame.

Quote: 324 - 340 of 518

I don’t think about * what will happen in a hundred years * the way you do, if I’m serious about it. It seems to me that even not in a hundred years, but much sooner, life will be incomparably more tragic than the one that torments us now. It will be tragic because - as it always happens after social catastrophes - people tired of offensive shocks from the outside are obliged and forced to look into their inner world, to think - once again - about the purpose and meaning of being.

Education is nonsense, talent is the main thing. (Actor, At the Bottom, 1902)

One, if it is large, is still small.

It is always pleasant to fool a person.

You will rub against a good person like a copper penny on silver, and then you will go for a two-kopeck one yourself.

He [a man] - whatever he is - but always worth his price ... (Luke, "At the bottom", 1902)

The most original feature of the Russian person is that at every moment he is sincere. ("Untimely Thoughts", Notes on the Revolution and Culture of 1917-1918)

Originality is also stupidity, only dressed in words arranged in an unusual way.

Autumn is driven by breath,
Slowly from a cold height
Beautiful snowflakes are falling
Small, dead flowers ...

Snowflakes are spinning over the ground
Dirty, tired and sick
Gently covering the dirt of the earth
Affectionate and clean veil ...

Black, brooding birds ...
Dead trees and bushes ...
White silent snowflakes
Fall from cold heights ...

VERSES CALERIA
From the play "Summer Residents"

The main task of all churches was the same: to inspire the poor serfs that for them there is no happiness on earth, it is prepared for them in heaven, and that hard labor for someone else's uncle is a godly thing.

From a woman, like from death, you can't get away!

Love for a woman gave birth to everything beautiful on earth.

From the fusion, the coincidence of the experience of the writer with the experience of the reader, artistic truth is obtained - that special persuasiveness of verbal art, which explains the power of the influence of literature on people.

Only his deeds remain from a person.

Frankness is always a good quality, and it is a pity that it is rarely found among decent people.

One should not at all think that the revolution spiritually healed or enriched Russia. ("Untimely Thoughts", Notes on the Revolution and Culture of 1917-1918)

Mistakes - do not be afraid, you will not live without them.

... She is akin to nature. Woe to those who think to find in the revolution the fulfillment of only their dreams, no matter how lofty and noble they may be. A revolution, like a thunderstorm, like a blizzard, always brings something new and unexpected; she cruelly deceives many; she easily cripples the worthy in her maelstrom; it often brings the unworthy to dry land unharmed; but - these are its particulars, it does not change either the general direction of the stream, or that formidable and deafening rumble that the stream emits. This rumble, all the same, is always about great things.
... With all your body, with all your heart, with all your consciousness - listen to the Revolution.
A.A. Block "Intelligentsia and Revolution"

Gorky comprehends the revolutionary events in the series of articles "Untimely Thoughts". He states that after February Russia got married with freedom, but, according to Gorky, this is external freedom, but internally the people are not free and are bound by the feeling of slavery. Gorky saw the overcoming of slavery in the democratization of knowledge, in the "cultural and historical development": “Knowledge is a necessary instrument of the inter-class struggle, which lies at the basis of the modern world order and is an inevitable, albeit tragic, moment of this period of history, an unavoidable force of cultural and political development ... Knowledge must be democratized, it must be made national, it, and only it, is the source of fruitful work, the basis of culture. And only knowledge will arm us with self-awareness, only it will help us to correctly assess our strengths, the tasks of the moment and will show us a broad path to further victories. The most productive is quiet work. "

Gorky feared that in the revolution the destructive element might prevail over the creative one, and the revolution would turn into a merciless revolt: “We have to understand, it's time to understand that the most terrible enemy of freedom and law is within us: this is our stupidity, our cruelty and all that chaos of dark, anarchic feelings that have been brought up in our souls by shameless oppression, the monarchy, its cynical cruelty ... a year and a half ago, I published Two Souls, an article in which I said that the Russian people are organically inclined towards anarchism; that he is passive, but cruel when power falls into his hands. " It follows from these thoughts that Gorky did not accept the actions of the Bolsheviks, fearing that “The working class will suffer, for it is the vanguard of the revolution and he will be the first to be exterminated in the civil war. And if the working class is defeated and destroyed, then the best forces and hopes of the country will be destroyed. So I say, addressing the workers who are aware of their cultural role in the country: the politically literate proletariat must carefully check its attitude towards the government of the people's commissars, must be very careful about their social creativity.
My opinion is this: the people's commissars are destroying and destroying the working class of Russia, they terribly and absurdly complicate the labor movement; directing it beyond the bounds of reason, they create irresistibly difficult conditions for all future work of the proletariat and for all the progress of the country. "

Gorky, comprehending the course of revolutionary events, argues contradictory, weighing all the pros and cons and deduces his definition of socialism, timed to the current historical moment: « We must remember that socialism is a scientific truth that the whole history of human development leads us to it, that it is a completely natural stage in the political and economic evolution of human society, we must be confident in its implementation, confidence will reassure us. The worker should not forget the idealist beginning of socialism - he will only then confidently feel himself both an apostle of a new truth and a powerful fighter for its triumph, when he remembers that socialism is necessary and salvific not for working people alone, but that it liberates all classes, all mankind from the red chains of the old, sick, lying, self-denying culture. "

To resolve the contradictions, Aleksey Maksimovich again turns to historical literature. It is characteristic that he views the victory of the Revolution through the concept of the “time of troubles”. To put an end to the reasoning about Gorky's rejection of the concept "the end justifies the means", I will quote from his letter to R. Rolland on January 25, 1922 (Gorky is already in exile - a business trip abroad, forced exile from the People's Commissariat for Education), where Alexei Maksimovich remains on his own general humanistic, but clearly erroneous, in my opinion, positions in assessing the revolution: “I promoted the need for ethics in struggle from the first days of the revolution in Russia. I was told that this is naive, insignificant, even harmful. Sometimes this was said by people to whom Jesuitism is organically disgusting, but they nevertheless consciously accepted it, accepted it, forcing themselves. "

These mistakes in Novaya Zhizn were repeatedly criticized by the newspaper Pravda and V. I. Lenin: "Gorky is too dear to our social revolution not to believe that he will soon join the ranks of its ideological leaders."

Gorky, in spite of his rejection of the "means" of the revolution, saw in the Bolsheviks an ordering force: “The best of them are excellent people that history will be proud of over time. (But in our time, history is turned upside down, everything is "corrected", everything is twisted (NS) "

The newspaper "New Life" in July 1918 was closed. Making the decision to close the newspaper and understanding the importance of Gorky for the cause of the revolution, Lenin said: "And Gorky is our man ... He will certainly come back to us ... Such political zigzags happen to him ...".

In the end, Gorky admits his mistakes: “I'm tired of the impotent, academic position of Novaya Zhizn; “If Novaya Zhizn had been closed six months earlier, it would have been better for me and for the revolution” ...

And after the attempt on Lenin's life on August 30, 1918, Gorky radically revises his attitude towards October:
“October I did not understand and did not understand until the day of the attempt on the life of Vladimir Ilyich, - recalls Gorky. - The general indignation of the workers by this heinous act showed me that Lenin's idea had penetrated deeply into the consciousness of the working masses ... from the day of the vile attempt on the life of Vladimir Ilyich, I again felt like a "Bolshevik".

To be continued