Unknown facts from the life of Gorky. Russia Day: The mysterious death of Maxim Gorky

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Maxim Gorky - the literary pseudonym of Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov, the incorrect use of the writer's real name in combination with the pseudonym - Alexei Maksimovich Gorky, (March 16 (28), 1868, Nizhny Novgorod, is also well-established, Russian empire- June 18, 1936, Gorki, Moscow region, USSR) - Russian writer, prose writer, playwright. One of the most significant and famous Russian writers and thinkers in the world. On the turn of XIX and XX centuries, he became famous as the author of works with a revolutionary tendency, personally close to the Social Democrats and in opposition to the tsarist regime.

Initially, Gorky was skeptical about the October Revolution. However, after several years of cultural work in Soviet Russia(in Petrograd he headed the publishing house " world literature”, petitioned the Bolsheviks for those arrested) and life abroad in the 1920s (Berlin, Marienbad, Sorrento), returned to the USSR, where in last years life received official recognition as the founder of socialist realism.

Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov was born in Nizhny Novgorod, in the family of a carpenter (according to another version, the manager of the Astrakhan shipping company I. S. Kolchin) - Maxim Savvatevich Peshkov (1840-1871), who was the son of a soldier demoted from officers. M. S. Peshkov in the last years of his life worked as a manager of a steamship office, died of cholera. Mother - Varvara Vasilievna, nee Kashirina (1842-1879) - from a bourgeois family; widowed early, remarried, died of consumption. Gorky's grandfather Savvaty Peshkov rose to the rank of officer, but was demoted and exiled to Siberia "for cruel treatment with the lower ranks, ”after which he enrolled in the tradesmen. His son Maxim ran away from his father five times and left home forever at the age of 17. Orphaned early, Gorky spent his childhood in the house of his grandfather Kashirin. From the age of 11, he was forced to go “to the people”: he worked as a “boy” at a store, as a buffet utensil on a steamer, as a baker, studied at an icon-painting workshop, etc.

In 1884 he tried to enter Kazan University. He got acquainted with Marxist literature and propaganda work.
In 1888 he was arrested for his connection with the circle of N. E. Fedoseev. He was under constant police surveillance. In October 1888 he entered as a watchman at the Dobrinka Gryaz-Tsaritsynskaya station. railway. Impressions from staying in Dobrinka will serve as the basis for the autobiographical story "The Watchman" and the story "For the sake of boredom".
In January 1889, by personal request (a complaint in verse), he was transferred to the Borisoglebsk station, then as a weigher to the Krutaya station.
In the spring of 1891 he went on a wandering and soon reached the Caucasus.

Literary and social activities

In 1892 he first appeared in print with the story "Makar Chudra". Returning to Nizhny Novgorod, he publishes reviews and feuilletons in the Volzhsky Vestnik, Samarskaya Gazeta, Nizhny Novgorod Leaflet, and others.
1895 - "Chelkash", "Old Woman Izergil".
1896 - Gorky writes a response to the first cinematic session in Nizhny Novgorod:

And suddenly something clicks, everything disappears, and a train of the railway appears on the screen. He rushes with an arrow straight at you - beware! It seems that he is about to rush into the darkness in which you sit, and turn you into a torn bag of skin, full of crumpled meat and crushed bones, and destroy, turn into rubble and dust this hall and this building, where there is so much wine. , women, music and vice.

1897 - " former people"," Orlov's Spouses "," Malva "," Konovalov ".
From October 1897 to mid-January 1898, he lived in the village of Kamenka (now the city of Kuvshinovo, Tver Region) in the apartment of his friend Nikolai Zakharovich Vasiliev, who worked at the Kamensk paper factory and led an illegal working Marxist circle. Subsequently, the life impressions of this period served as material for the writer's novel "The Life of Klim Samgin".
1898 - The publishing house of Dorovatsky and A.P. Charushnikov published the first volume of Gorky's works. In those years, the circulation of the young author's first book rarely exceeded 1,000 copies. AI Bogdanovich advised to publish the first two volumes of "Essays and Stories" by M. Gorky, 1200 copies each. Publishers "took a chance" and released more. The first volume of the 1st edition of Essays and Stories was published in 3,000 copies.
1899 - the novel "Foma Gordeev", a poem in prose "The Song of the Falcon".
1900-1901 - the novel "Three", a personal acquaintance with Chekhov, Tolstoy.

1900-1913 - participates in the work of the publishing house "Knowledge".
March 1901 - "Song of the Petrel" was created by M. Gorky in Nizhny Novgorod. Participation in the Marxist workers' circles of Nizhny Novgorod, Sormov, St. Petersburg; wrote a proclamation calling for a fight against the autocracy. Arrested and expelled from Nizhny Novgorod.

In 1901, M. Gorky turned to dramaturgy. Creates the plays "Petty Bourgeois" (1901), "At the bottom" (1902). In 1902, he became the godfather and adoptive father of the Jew Zinovy ​​Sverdlov, who took the surname Peshkov and converted to Orthodoxy. This was necessary in order for Zinovy ​​to receive the right to live in Moscow.
February 21 - the election of M. Gorky to the honorary academicians of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of fine literature.

In 1902 Gorky was elected an honorary member Imperial Academy Sciences ... But before Gorky could exercise his new rights, his election was annulled by the government, since the newly elected academician "was under police surveillance." In this regard, Chekhov and Korolenko refused membership in the Academy

1904-1905 - writes the plays "Summer Residents", "Children of the Sun", "Barbarians". Meets Lenin. For the revolutionary proclamation and in connection with the execution on January 9, he was arrested and imprisoned in Peter and Paul Fortress. Famous artists G. Hauptman, A. France, O. Rodin, T. Hardy, J. Meredith, Italian writers G. Deledda, M. Rapisardi, E. de Amicis, composer G. Puccini, philosopher B. Croce and other representatives of creative and scientific world from Germany, France, England. Student demonstrations took place in Rome. On February 14, 1905, under public pressure, he was released on bail. Member of the revolution 1905-1907. In November 1905 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.

1906, February - Gorky and Maria Andreeva set off through Europe to America. Abroad, the writer creates satirical pamphlets about the "bourgeois" culture of France and the United States ("My Interviews", "In America"). He writes the play "Enemies", creates the novel "Mother". Because of tuberculosis, he settled in Italy on the island of Capri, where he lived for 7 years (from 1906 to 1913). He settled in the prestigious hotel Quisisana. From March 1909 to February 1911 he lived at the Spinola villa (now Bering), stayed at the villas (they have commemorative plaques about his stay) Blasius (from 1906 to 1909) and Serfina (now Pierina) ). On Capri, Gorky wrote "Confession" (1908), where his philosophical differences with Lenin and rapprochement with the god-builders Lunacharsky and Bogdanov were clearly identified.

1907 - a delegate with an advisory vote to the V Congress of the RSDLP.
1908 - the play "The Last", the story "The Life of an Unnecessary Man".
1909 - the novels "The Town of Okurov", "The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin".
1913 - Gorky edits the Bolshevik newspapers Zvezda and Pravda, art department Bolshevik journal Enlightenment, publishes the first collection of proletarian writers. Writes Tales of Italy.
At the end of December 1913, after the announcement of a general amnesty on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanovs, Gorky returned to Russia and settled in St. Petersburg.

1914 - founded the Chronicle magazine and the Parus publishing house.
1912-1916 - M. Gorky creates a series of stories and essays that compiled the collection "In Russia", autobiographical novels "Childhood", "In People". In 1916, the Parus publishing house published autobiographical story"In people" and a series of essays "Across Russia". The last part of the My Universities trilogy was written in 1923.
1917-1919 - M. Gorky does a lot of public and political work, criticizes the methods of the Bolsheviks, condemns their attitude towards the old intelligentsia, saves a number of its representatives from the repressions of the Bolsheviks and hunger.

Emigration

1921 - M. Gorky's departure abroad. official reason departure was the resumption of his illness and the need, at the insistence of Lenin, to be treated abroad. According to another version, Gorky was forced to leave due to the aggravation of ideological differences with the established government. In 1921-1923. lived in Helsingfors (Helsinki), Berlin, Prague.
Since 1924 he lived in Italy, in Sorrento. Published memoirs about Lenin.
1925 - the novel "The Artamonov Case".

1928 - at the invitation of the Soviet government and Stalin personally, he makes a trip around the country, during which Gorky is shown the achievements of the USSR, which are reflected in the cycle of essays "On the Soviet Union".
1929 - Gorky visits the Solovetsky camp special purpose and writes a laudatory review of his regime. A fragment of the work of A. I. Solzhenitsyn "The Gulag Archipelago" is devoted to this fact.

Return to the USSR

(From November 1935 to June 1936)

1932 - Gorky returns to Soviet Union. The government provided him with the former Ryabushinsky mansion on Spiridonovka, dachas in Gorki and Teselli (Crimea). Here he receives an order from Stalin - to prepare the ground for the 1st Congress Soviet writers, and for this to carry out preparatory work among them.
Gorky created many newspapers and magazines: the book series "History of Factories and Plants", "History civil war”, “Poet’s Library”, “History young man 19th century”, the journal “Literary Studies”, he writes the plays “Egor Bulychev and Others” (1932), “Dostigaev and Others” (1933).

1934 - Gorky holds the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, speaks at it with the main report.
1934 - co-editor of the book "Stalin's Channel".
In 1925-1936 he wrote the novel "The Life of Klim Samgin", which remained unfinished.
On May 11, 1934, Gorky's son, Maxim Peshkov, unexpectedly dies. M. Gorky died on June 18, 1936 in Gorki, having outlived his son by a little more than two years.
After his death, he was cremated, the ashes were placed in an urn in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow.

The circumstances of the death of Maxim Gorky and his son are considered by many to be "suspicious", there were rumors of poisoning, which, however, were not confirmed. At the funeral, among others, the coffin with the body of Gorky was carried by Molotov and Stalin. Interestingly, among other accusations of Genrikh Yagoda at the Third Moscow Trial in 1938, there was an accusation of poisoning Gorky's son. According to Yagoda's interrogations, Maxim Gorky was killed on the orders of Trotsky, and the murder of Gorky's son, Maxim Peshkov, was his personal initiative. Some publications blame Stalin for Gorky's death. An important precedent for the medical side of the accusations in the "doctors' case" was the Third Moscow Trial (1938), where among the defendants were three doctors (Kazakov, Levin and Pletnev), who were accused of murdering Gorky and others.

“Medicine is innocent here ...” This is exactly what the doctors Levin and Pletnev, who treated the writer in recent months of his life, and later brought in as defendants in the process of the "Right-Trotsky bloc". Soon, however, they "recognized" the deliberately wrong treatment...
and even "showed" that their accomplices were nurses who gave the patient up to 40 injections of camphor per day. But as it was in fact, there is no consensus.
The historian L. Fleischlan directly writes: "The fact of Gorky's murder can be considered irrevocably established." V. Khodasevich, on the contrary, believes in the natural cause of the death of a proletarian writer.

On the night when Maxim Gorky was dying, a terrible thunderstorm broke out at the government dacha in Gorki-10.

The autopsy was carried out right here, in the bedroom, on the table. The doctors were in a hurry. “When he died,” Gorky’s secretary Pyotr Kryuchkov recalled, “the attitude of the doctors towards him changed. He became just a corpse for them ...

They treated him horribly. The orderly began to change his clothes and turned him from side to side, like a log. The autopsy began ... Then they began to wash the insides. The incision was sewn up somehow with a simple twine. The brain was put in a bucket ... "

This bucket, intended for the Institute of the Brain, Kryuchkov personally carried to the car.

In Kryuchkov's memoirs there is a strange entry: "Alexey Maksimovich died on the 8th."

Ekaterina Peshkova, the writer's widow, recalls: "June 8, 6 pm. Alexei Maksimovich's condition worsened so much that the doctors, who had lost hope, warned us that the near end was inevitable ... Alexei Maksimovich - in a chair with eyes closed, with his head bowed, leaning now on one, then on the other hand, pressed to his temple and resting his elbow on the arm of the chair.

The pulse was barely noticeable, uneven, breathing weakened, the face and ears and limbs of the hands turned blue. After a while, as we entered, hiccups began, restless movements of his hands, with which he seemed to be pushing something away or filming something ... "

And suddenly the mise-en-scene changes... New faces appear. They were waiting in the living room. Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov enter with a cheerful gait to the resurrected Gorky. They had already been informed that Gorky was dying. They came to say goodbye. Behind the scenes - the head of the NKVD Heinrich Yagoda. He arrived before Stalin. The leader didn't like it.

"And why is this one hanging out here? So that he wouldn't be here."

Stalin behaves in the house in a businesslike way. Shuganul Genrikh, scared Kryuchkov. "Why so many people? Who is responsible for this? Do you know what we can do to you?"

The "owner" has arrived... The leading party is his! All relatives and friends become only a corps de ballet.

When Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov entered the bedroom, Gorky came to his senses so much that they started talking about literature. Gorky began to praise women writers, mentioned Karavaeva - and how many of them, how many more will appear, and everyone needs to be supported ... Stalin jokingly besieged Gorky: "We'll talk about business when you get better.
Thinking of getting sick, get better soon. Or maybe there is wine in the house, we would drink a glass to your health.

They brought wine... They all drank... As they left, at the door, Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov waved their hands. When they left, Gorky seemed to say: "What good guys! How much strength they have ..."

But how much can one trust these memoirs of Peshkova? In 1964, when asked by the American journalist Isaac Levin about Gorky's death, she replied: "Don't ask me about it! I won't be able to sleep for three days..."

The second time Stalin and his comrades came to the terminally ill Gorky on June 10 at two in the morning. But why? Gorky was asleep. No matter how afraid the doctors were, they did not let Stalin in. Stalin's third visit took place on 12 June. Gorky did not sleep. The doctors gave ten minutes to talk. What were they talking about? About Bolotnikov's peasant uprising... We moved on to the position of the French peasantry.

It turns out that on June 8, the main concern of the Secretary General and Gorky, who returned from the other world, were writers, and on the 12th, French peasants became. All this is somehow very strange.

The visits of the leader seemed to magically enliven Gorky. It was as if he did not dare to die without Stalin's permission. It's unbelievable, but Budberg will be blunt about it:
"He died, in fact, on the 8th, and if not for a visit to Stalin, he would hardly have returned to life."

Stalin was not a member of the Gorky family. So the nighttime intrusion attempt was driven by necessity. And on the 8th, and the 10th, and the 12th, Stalin needed or straight Talk with Gorky, or steely confidence that such a frank conversation would not take place with someone else. For example, with Louis Aragon, who was traveling from France. What would Gorky say, what statement could he make?

After Gorky's death, Kryuchkov was accused of having "killed" Gorky's son Maxim Peshkov, along with doctors Levin and Pletnev, on Yagoda's instructions, using "wrecking methods of treatment". But why?

If we follow the testimony of other defendants, the "customers" - Bukharin, Rykov and Zinoviev - had a political calculation. In this way, they allegedly wanted to hasten the death of Gorky himself, fulfilling the task of their "leader" Trotsky. Nevertheless, even at this trial, it was not about the direct murder of Gorky. This version would be too incredible, because the patient was surrounded by 17 (!) Doctors.

One of the first to talk about the poisoning of Gorky was the revolutionary émigré B.I. Nikolaevsky. Allegedly, Gorky was presented with a bonbonniere with poisoned sweets. But the candy version doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Gorky did not like sweets, but he loved to treat them to guests, orderlies and, finally, his beloved granddaughters. Thus, anyone around Gorky could be poisoned with sweets, except for himself. Only an idiot would think of such a murder. Neither Stalin nor Yagoda were idiots.

There is no evidence of the murder of Gorky and his son Maxim. Meanwhile, tyrants also have the right to the presumption of innocence. Stalin committed enough crimes to hang on him one more - unproven.

The reality is this: on June 18, 1936, the great Russian writer Maxim Gorky died. His body, contrary to the will to bury him next to his son in the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent, was cremated by order of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the urn with the ashes was placed in the Kremlin wall.

Softmixer.com›2011/06/blog-post_18.html

The purpose of this article is to find out true reason the death of the Russian writer ALEKSEY MAXIMOVICH PESHKOV according to his FULL NAME code.

Watch in advance "Logicology - about the fate of man".

Consider the FULL NAME code tables. \If there is a shift in numbers and letters on your screen, adjust the image scale\.

16 22 47 58 73 76 77 89 95 106 124 130 140 153 154 165 183 193 206 221 224 234 258
P ESH K OVA A L E K S E Y M A K S I M O V I C
258 242 236 211 200 185 182 181 169 163 152 134 128 118 105 104 93 75 65 52 37 34 24

1 13 19 30 48 54 64 77 78 89 107 117 130 145 148 158 182 198 204 229 240 255 258
ALEKSEY M A K S I M O V I CH P E SH K O V
258 257 245 239 228 210 204 194 181 180 169 151 141 128 113 110 100 76 60 54 29 18 3

PESHKOV ALEXEY MAKSIMOVICH \u003d 258 \u003d NATURAL DEATH.

258 \u003d 77-LACK OF \ Oxygen \ + 181- LACK OF OXYGEN.

258 = OXYGEN STARVATION MYO \ karda \.

258 \u003d 165-MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION\ a\ + 93-INFARCTION.

258 \u003d 58-FROM IN \\ infarction ... \ + 200-FROM MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION \ a \.

258 = HYPOXIA OF THE MYOCARDIAL HEART \ a \.

258 \u003d 228-LIDING TO DEATH HEART + 30- ... CT (the end of the word coming towards the HEART).

Let's check this statement:

10 24 45 46 63 74 93
I N F A R C T
93 83 69 48 47 30 19

We see the numbers 19, 30, 48, 93

Let's decrypt individual columns:

89 = DEATH
_____
181 = 77-SHORT + 104-OXYGEN

198 = SUDDEN DEATH
_____________________________
76 = LACK OF Oxygen \

145 = DEAD
___________________________________________________
128 \u003d FROM HYPOXIA \u003d MYOCARDIA WITHOUT CIS / LORD \ \u003d FROM INFARCTION

140 \u003d MYOCARDIA WITHOUT ACID / OROD \
__________________________________
128 \u003d MYOCARDIA WITHOUT KIS\ loroda \

193 = MYOCARDIA WITHOUT OXYGEN
__________________________________
75 = HEART

73 = MYOCARDIA
___________________________________
200 = FROM MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION \ a \

154 = MYOCARDIAL FASTING \ a \
________________________________
105 = FASTING MI\okarda\

165 = NOT ENOUGH
_______________________
104 = OXYGEN

Reference:

Myocardial hypoxia is a condition in which the heart muscle, and the myocardium is the muscle of the heart, does not receive the right amount oxygen.
ddhealth.ru›bolezni-i-lechenie/1190…miocarda

DATE OF DEATH code: 06/18/1936. This is \u003d 18 + 06 + 19 + 36 \u003d 79 \u003d FROM HYPO \ xii \ = FROM INF \ arcta \.

258 = 79 + 179- THE END HAS COME.

Code of the full DATE OF DEATH = JUNE 226-EIGHTEENTH + 55-\ 19 + 36 \-\ code of the YEAR OF DEATH \-DIES = 281.

281 = 75-HEART + 206-OXYGEN HUNGER = HEART ENDED.

281 - 258-\ FULL NAME code \ \u003d 23 \u003d MI \ ocard \.

Number code full YEARS LIFE = 177-SIXTY + 84-EIGHT = 261 = SUDDEN MYOCAR INFARCTION \ yes \.

Let's look at the column:

89 = DEATH
______________________________
180 = SIXTY B \ eight \

180 - 89 = 91 = DYING.

Reviews

Are you sure that he is a great Russian??? Very doubtful...
Maxim Gorky (real name and surname - Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov; 1868-1936) thanks to his pre-revolutionary writings, enjoyed a reputation as a friend of the poor, a fighter for social justice. Meanwhile, sympathy for the people of the social “bottom” merged in these works with arguments that all Russian life is a continuous “lead abomination” (“Okurov Town”, “The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin”, etc.). Gorky argued that the Russian soul is by its very nature "cowardly" and "morbidly evil" (he considered the disgusting old voluptuary Fyodor Karamazov from Dostoevsky's novel to be the most successful portrait of it). He wrote about the "sadistic cruelty inherent in the Russian people" (an afterword to S. Gusev-Orenburgsky's book on Jewish pogroms in Ukraine, 1923). Perhaps not a single publicist wrote with such hostility about any nation - except perhaps Hitler's ideologists about the Jews. Such accusations as expressed by Gorky in the work "On the Russian Peasantry" are presented only to those whom it is decided to destroy.
And Gorky accepted in this destruction direct participation. In 1905 he joined the RSDLP. In 1917, having parted with the Bolsheviks on the issue of the timeliness of their coup, he formally remained outside the party. He was rich, could afford from 1906 to 1914 to live in a villa on about. Capri and donate large sums to the party fund. He financed the Leninist newspapers Iskra and Vperyod. During the December rebellion of 1905, his Moscow apartment, guarded by the Caucasian squad, became a workshop where bombs were made; where they brought weapons for the militants. In 1906, Gorky went on a tour of America, collected about 10 thousand dollars for the Bolsheviks. After the newspapers printed his appeal "Don't give money to the Russian government", the US refused to give Russia a loan of half a billion dollars. Gorky thanked America by describing it as a gloomy "country of the yellow devil."
After 1917, Gorky continued to cooperate with the Bolsheviks. In words, often criticizing their policies (with their full permission), he actually took part in their actions. For example, in 1919, on behalf of the Bolsheviks, he formed an expert Commission, the conclusions of which served as the basis for the export of many works of art abroad. This ruined the largest art repositories in Russia.
Although Gorky understood that "the commissars treat Russia as a material for experiment" and that "Bolshevism is a national misfortune", he continued to be on friendly terms with new government and with its leader whom in the essay “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” (1920; not to be confused with the later “V. I. Lenin”) he equated with the saints (I. A. Bunin called this article “a shameless akathist”).
From 1921 to 1931 Gorky lived abroad, mainly in Italy. Even from abroad, the proletarian writer consecrated with his authority death sentences handed down on absurd charges. Returning to the USSR, he energetically joined in the all-out hunt for imaginary "enemies" and "spies." In 1929–1931 Gorky regularly published articles in Pravda, which later compiled the collection Let's Be on Guard! They urge readers to look around for the wreckers who have secretly betrayed the cause of communism. The most famous of these articles is "If the enemy does not surrender, he is destroyed" (1930); its title has become a kind of motto of the whole Soviet policy. At the same time, Gorky, like the punitive organs that admired him, did not need any evidence to attach the label “enemy”. The worst enemies, in his opinion, are those against whom there is no evidence. "Gorky not only sings in the choir of accusers - he writes music for this choir," states the Swiss researcher J. Niva.
The language of these articles by the "humanist writer" is striking: people here are constantly referred to as flies, tapeworms, parasites, semi-human beings, degenerates. “There are traitors, traitors, spies among the masses of the workers of the Union of Soviets… It is quite natural that the workers’ and peasants’ power beats its enemies like a louse.” At the same time, Gorky praised the "historically and scientifically substantiated, truly universal, proletarian humanism of Marx - Lenin - Stalin" (article "Proletarian Humanism"); admired “how simple and accessible the wise comrade Stalin” (“Letter to the delegates of the All-Union Congress of Collective Farm Shock Workers”). Preserving his long-standing hatred of the peasantry, Gorky reminded that “muzhik strength is a socially unhealthy force and that the cultural-political, consistent work of Lenin-Stalin is aimed precisely at eradicating this ‘strength’ from the consciousness of the peasant, for this strength is ... the instinct of a small owner, expressed, as we know, in the forms of zoological brutality ”(“ An open letter to A. S. Serafimovich ”, 1934). Recall that this was published in the years when the most industrious and economic peasants ("kulaks") were shot or evicted to the permafrost zone.
In support of the “case of the Industrial Party” fabricated by the OGPU, Gorky wrote the play “Somov and Others” (1930). In accordance with this absurd process, wrecking engineers are bred in it, who, in spite of the people, slow down production. In the finale, “just retribution” comes in the person of OGPU agents, who arrest not only engineers, but also a former singing teacher (his crime is that he “poisoned” Soviet youth with talk about the soul and early music). In the articles "To the Workers and Peasants" and "Humanists" Gorky supports an equally ridiculous accusation against Professor Ryazanov and his "accomplices" who were shot for "organizing a food famine."
Gorky did not necessarily approve of all repressions. The arrests of the old Bolsheviks, fighters against "damned tsarism," worried him. In 1932, he even expressed his bewilderment at the arrest of L. Kamenev to the head of the Chekists, G. Yagoda. But the fate of millions of ordinary people sentenced to death did not cause such bewilderment in him. In 1929 Gorky visited the Solovetsky camp. One of the juvenile prisoners, seeing in him a defender of the oppressed, ventured to tell him about the monstrous conditions of life in this camp. Gorky shed a tear, but after talking with the boy (almost immediately shot) in the Book of Reviews of the Solovetsky camp, he left enthusiastic praises for the jailers.
In 1934, under the editorship of Gorky, the collection "The White Sea-Baltic Canal named after Stalin" was published. The book supports all the delusional accusations of those years: that engineers, for example, poison workers with arsenic in factory canteens, and secretly break machine tools. The concentration camp is depicted as a beacon of progress; it is claimed that no one dies in it (in reality, at least 100,000 prisoners died during the construction of the White Sea Canal). Speaking to the builders of the canal on August 25, 1933, Gorky admired “how the OGPU re-educates people,” and spoke with tears of emotion about the excessive modesty of the Chekists. According to A. I. Solzhenitsyn, given by him in The Gulag Archipelago, in the book The White Sea-Baltic Canal named after Stalin, Gorky for the first time in Russian literature glorified slave labor.
Regardless of whether Gorky's talent is considered top-notch or overblown by the press; whether to believe in his sincerity or in the fact that in his heart he did not approve of Stalin's policy; Regardless of whether to trust the version that the 68-year-old writer, who had been treated for a long time from consumption, died not from the disease, but from poison given by order from the Kremlin, the fact remains: Gorky contributed to the organized murder of millions of innocent people.

Alexei Maksimovich Gorky (Peshkov) died on June 18, 1936 at the age of sixty-eight. Among the people, Gorky enjoyed the well-deserved fame of the great writer, and the not-quite-deserved fame people's protector. Rumors immediately spread throughout the country that Aleksei Maksimovich had been poisoned. Additional "fuel to the fire" was added by the obviously premature death in 1934 of the son of the great writer, thirty-seven-year-old Maxim Peshkov.

“Medicine is innocent here…” This is exactly what the doctors Levin and Pletnev, who treated the writer in the last months of his life, and later brought in as defendants in the process of the “right-wing Trotskyist bloc” at first claimed. Soon, however, they "admitted" the deliberately wrong treatment and even "revealed" that their accomplices were nurses who gave the patient up to 40 injections of camphor per day. But as it was in fact - there is no consensus. The historian L. Fleischlan directly writes: "The fact of Gorky's murder can be considered irrevocably established." V. Khodasevich, on the contrary, believes in the natural cause of the death of a proletarian writer.

It was officially reported that on June 1, Gorky caught an elementary flu, which caused serious complications. Bulletins about the writer's health were published on the front pages of Pravda and Izvestia - a fact unprecedented even for famous writer. The impression was that readers were being "prepared" for the worst, although there seemed to be no reason for this.

There were two periods of improvement in the patient's condition. The first refers to the time after the June 8 visit to Gorky by Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov. As the Kolkhoznik magazine wrote in those days, “Gorky literally got up from the grave ...”

The second time the patient suddenly felt better from 14 to 16 June. Gorky then got out of bed and, according to eyewitnesses, said: “Enough lying around! I have to work, answer letters!” He shaved, cleaned himself up, sat down at his desk...

Little is known about what happened in the next two days, but the fact remains: Gorky's health deteriorated sharply, and on June 18 at 11.10 in the morning he died ...

In 1938, the process of the "right-wing Trotskyist bloc" already mentioned above took place, in which doctor Pletnev appeared among other "enemies of the people". For the "deliberately incorrect treatment" of the great proletarian writer, Pletnev received a solid sentence and was sent to the Vorkuta camps. There, in 1948, he told the German communist B. Hermand that sharp deterioration Gorky's state of health on June 17 was due to the fact that he tried the sweets given to him by Stalin! As you know, Yagoda had a special laboratory that produced various poisons.

By the way, the report on the autopsy of Gorky's body does not mention "testing for poisoning." The testimony of a certain A. Novikov, a former captain of the NKVD, has been preserved. According to M. Brown, a member of the French Resistance, he said: “You don't understand anything! The autopsy report was drawn up before death Gorky!"

At the trial, G. Yagoda admitted his participation in the poisoning of Maxim Peshkov and A.M. Gorky, explaining this by a passion for Maxim's wife and a desire to cohabit with her. It is difficult to judge where the self-incrimination is, where the truth is, but Yagoda was a member of the Gorky family and still cohabited with Peshkov's widow.

Trotskyists were blamed for Gorky's death. Lev Davidovich, of course, could not remain silent.

“Maxim Gorky was neither a conspirator nor a politician. He was a compassionate old man, an intercessor for the offended, a sentimental Protestant ... In this atmosphere, Gorky was a serious danger. He was in correspondence with European writers, foreigners visited him, the offended complained to him, he formed public opinion. There was no way to keep him silent. It was even less possible to arrest him, deport him, let alone shoot him. The idea to speed up the liquidation of the sick Gorky “without shedding blood” through Yagoda should have presented itself under these conditions to the owner of the Kremlin as the only way out ... ”he writes.

The version of the deliberate murder of Gorky, by order of Stalin, does not hold up well to criticism. The writer supported the policy of the “leader of the peoples”, approved the process of the “Industrial Party” in 1930, spoke very positively about “forced labor in the name of reforging” - he is talking about the Gulag. Although, on the other hand, it was Gorky who never wrote a biography of Stalin, although he was given such a “party assignment” and provided everything for this necessary materials. The writer disobeyed the leader, and this was never forgiven to anyone.

The assassination of Gorky by the Trotskyists also seems unlikely to me - he did not interfere with them at all.

Most likely, the writer died of natural causes.

Witnesses to Gorky's autopsy say: “It turned out that his pleura had grown like a corset. And when it was torn off, it broke, before it was calcified.

P.P. KRYUCHKOV testifies: “The doctors were even delighted that the condition of the lungs turned out to be in such a bad condition. All responsibility was removed from them.

However, the Stalinists took advantage of his death to speak out against Trotsky, and the Trotskyists were not averse to using it against Stalin. A living writer of this level was not needed by either one or the other.

Eighty years ago, the great Russian writer and public figure Maxim Gorky died. The circumstances of his death are still in doubt.

Text: Pavel Basinsky
Photo courtesy aif.ru

Did he die due to illness, due to old age (but Gorky was not yet old - 68 years old), or was he killed by Stalin?

Before going to the state dacha in Gorki on May 28, 1936, he demanded to turn to the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent. He has not yet seen the monument by Vera Mukhina to her son Maxim, who died of pneumonia two years ago. Having examined the grave of his son, he wished to look at the monument to Stalin's wife, Alliluyeva, who had committed suicide.
In the memoirs of Secretary Kryuchkov there is a strange entry: “ A.M. died on the 8th". But Gorky died on June 18!

The widow Ekaterina Peshkova recalls: “ 8/VI 6 pm ... A. M. - in an armchair with closed eyes, with his head bowed, leaning now on one, then on the other hand, pressed to his temple and leaning with his elbow on the arm of the chair. The pulse was barely noticeable, uneven, breathing weakened, the face and ears and limbs of the hands turned blue. After a while, as we entered, hiccups began, restless movements of his hands, with which he seemed to be pushing something away or filming something ...»

"We" are the closest members of Gorky big family: Ekaterina Peshkova, Maria Budberg, Nadezhda Peshkova (Gorky's daughter-in-law), nurse Lipa Chertkova, Pyotr Kryuchkov, Ivan Rakitsky (an artist who has lived in the "family" since the revolution).

Budberg: " His hands and ears turned black. Was dying. And dying, he weakly moved his hand, as they say goodbye at parting».
But suddenly… " After a long pause, A. M. opened his eyes, the expression of which was absent and distant, slowly looked around everyone, stopping for a long time at each of us, and with difficulty, muffled, but separately, in some strangely alien voice, said: “I was so far away, it's so hard to come back from there"».

He was brought back from the other world by Chertkova, who persuaded the doctors to allow him to inject twenty cubes of camphor. After the first injection was the second. Gorky did not immediately agree. Peshkova: A. M. shook his head negatively and said very firmly: “Don’t, you have to stop.” Kryuchkov recalled that Gorky "did not complain", but sometimes asked him to "let go", "pointed to the ceiling and doors, as if wanting to escape from the room."

But there are new faces. Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov came to Gorky. They had already been informed that Gorky was dying. Budberg: " Politburo members who were informed that Gorky was dying entered the room and expected to find the dying man, were surprised by his cheerful appearance.».
Why was he given a second injection of camphor? Stalin is coming! Budberg: " At this time, P. P. Kryuchkov, who had left before, came in and said: “They just called on the phone - Stalin is inquiring, can he and Molotov come to you? A smile flashed across A.M.’s face, he replied: “Let them go, if they still have time.” Then A. D. Speransky (one of the doctors who treated Gorky. - P. B.) entered with the words: “Well, A. M., Stalin and Molotov have already left, but it seems that Voroshilov is with them. Now I insist on an injection of camphor, because without this you will not have enough strength to talk with them.».

Peshkova: " When they entered, A. M. had already come to his senses so much that he immediately started talking about literature. talking about a new French literature, about the literature of nationalities. He began to praise our female writers, mentioned Anna Karavaeva - and how many of them, how many more of these we will have, and we all need to be supported ... They brought wine ... Everyone drank ... Voroshilov kissed Al. M. arm or shoulder. Al. M. smiled happily, looked at them lovingly. They left quickly. As they left, they waved at him at the door. When they left, A.M. said: “What good guys! How much power they have ... "»

This was recorded in 1936. In 1964, when asked by journalist Isaac Don Levin about the circumstances of Gorky's death, Peshkova said something else: “ Don't ask me about it! I won't be able to sleep for three days if I talk to you about this.».

Stalin came a second time on June 10 at two o'clock in the morning. Gorky was asleep. Stalin was not allowed. A visit at two in the morning to a terminally ill patient is difficult to understand normal person. The third - and last - visit took place on 12 June. Gorky did not sleep. However, the doctors, no matter how they trembled before Stalin, gave ten minutes to talk. What were they talking about? About the peasant uprising Bolotnikov. Then they moved on to the position of the French peasantry.

Stalin undoubtedly guarded the dying Gorky. And he was buttoned up with all the buttons. Gorky lived in a "golden cage". L. A. Spiridonova published a secret sheet of household expenses of the 2nd department of the ACS of the NKVD “along the line” of the Gorky family:

“The approximate consumption for 9 months of 1936 is as follows:
a) food rub. 560 000
b) repair expenses and park expenses rub. 210 000
c) the content of the state rub. 180 000
d) different households. expenses rub. 60,000 Total: rub. 1010 000".

An ordinary doctor received at that time about 300 rubles a month. Writer for a book - 3000 rubles. Gorky's "family" cost the state about 130,000 rubles a month.

He understood the falsity of his position. There is evidence that he suffered in recent years. Read The Moscow Diary by Romain Rolland and the memoirs of the writer Ilya Shkapa. But Gorky died stoically, like a very strong man.

And let's not forget that his sins are not our sins. Gorky sinned a lot because he did a lot. Behind him is not only his literature, but also the political struggle, and newspapers, and magazines, and entire publishing houses (before the revolution and Soviet), scientific institutions, institutes, the Writers' Union. And yes! Solovki and Belomorkanal. Behind him not only him writer's biography, but also a biography of the entire pre-revolutionary Russia and the first twenty years of Soviet power.

Mighty, great man! Let's change him.

Mosaic at the Moscow metro station "Park Kultury", opened on May 15, 1935, i.e. a year before the death of Maxim Gorky

We now turn to one of the most controversial and confusing topics in Gorky's biography - deliberately confusing, but in fact very simple. We are talking about the murder first of his son Maxim, who worked in the NKVD, and then Gorky himself. Both of these versions, which turn reality into a bloody Shakespearean drama, have no basis in fact, despite the fact that fans of bloody plots have expressed countless times.

For the trial of the Trotskyist-Zinoviev bloc, Stalin needed a version about the murder of Burevestnik by doctors who had treated him incorrectly. Stalin's whistleblowers needed a version about the murder of Gorky by Stalin - of course, with the help of a terrible Chekist poison. There is also a version that, on the orders of Stalin, Gorky was poisoned by Maria Budberg, with whom the writer had had clean relations since 1934. friendly relations, but in the USSR she continued to run into and managed to visit the dying writer. It was she who, left alone with him for forty minutes, allegedly gave him either a poisoned candy or a poisonous pill.

All these versions are innumerable, and it is a pity that people who have never really read Gorky and know nothing about him are only interested in this aspect of his rich biography.

Here's what happened. On the May holidays of 1934, at Gorky's dacha in Gorki, where he usually spent time from May to September, a lot of people gathered, including the "red professor", the Soviet philosopher, diamat specialist and organizing secretary of the Writers' Union Pavel Yudin, part-time athlete, a walrus, a lover of strong drinks and a great friend of Maxim Peshkov (their sports hobbies, cars and the drinks mentioned were brought together). With a bottle of cognac, they went to the Moscow River, they drank this bottle there and fell asleep right on the ground. Yudin woke up, Peshkov did not wake up and went upstairs, and Maxim slept for another hour on the cold ground and the next day came down with pneumonia. Perhaps he could have been saved if professors Pletnev and Speransky, who regularly visited Gorky’s house, had not been at enmity with each other: Maxim asked to call Speransky, Pletnev continued to treat according to his own method, and when in last night After all, Maxim was sent for Speransky and asked to make a blockade according to his method, he said that it was too late.

On Maxim's last night, from May 10 to May 11, 1934, Gorky was sitting downstairs, on the ground floor of the dacha in Gorki, and talked with Speransky about the Institute of Experimental Medicine, about what needs to be done to support it, about the problem of immortality. We didn't talk about Max.

When at three o'clock in the morning they came down to Gorky to say that Maxim had died, he drummed his fingers on the table, said: "This is no longer a topic," and continued to talk about immortality. You can call it a sign of iron purposefulness and greatness, you can call it spiritual deafness, or you can call it panic confusion in the face of tragedy.

Pavel Basinsky recalls that, having learned in America in 1906 about the death of his daughter Katya from meningitis, Gorky writes a letter to his abandoned wife, in which he demands to take care of his son and quotes his own novel “Mother”, which was being written at the same time, that one should not leave one’s children, their blood. This is already a blatant moral deafness - to console a grieving mother, who, in addition, was abandoned by him for the sake of a new wife, with a quote from his own composition. However, there will always be people to whom deafness just seems to be a sign of true greatness, focus on the only important thing to the detriment of the personal and transient.

The death of Maxim, however, knocked Gorky down - this was his second closest relative named Maxim, whose cause of death he felt himself to be, and not without reason. First, he infected his father with cholera - and this guilt without guilt became the curse of his whole life, for he was destined to destroy people around him in the future. Almost all of his entourage also died after his death, and almost all people close to him were accused of his death. Now, two years before his death, in his old age, he became the cause of death own son, also Maxim, and also without guilt: formally, Maxim was ruined by an accident, but in fact, almost from birth, he was a hostage of his father's glory and his father's way of life.

He visited Gorky in Capri, constantly lived with him in Sorrento in the twenties, and in the thirties, having been married for a long time, he never settled into a separate house. (There was an extremely unflattering version for Gorky that the writer had a secret affair with Maxim's wife Nadia Vvedenskaya, known by her home nickname Timosha; this version, apparently, goes back to Gorky's story "On Rafts." Novels with an extremely charming and frivolous Timosha was attributed to many people from Gorky's entourage - in particular, Yagoda.) Maxim was always in the shadow of his father's glory: having inherited charm and artistry from his father, he, according to Khodasevich, remained an eternal child, was superficial, frivolous, infantile, had an instinct for self-preservation he was reduced - he had many accidents in a Gorky car, adoring driving at top speed - and, in general, Gorky did not systematically deal with his education or upbringing. He jokingly threatened to restore order in the house, but all this remained talk. He felt responsible for the dissolute life and the accidental, stupid death of Max - but in it he seemed to be a harbinger of his own death. Father Maxim and son Maxim left? he remained, the main Maxim, who took this name in honor of the first and gave it to the second, the main maximalist of Russian literature.

And two years later, also in the spring, upon returning to Moscow from the Crimean dacha (in Tessel, near Miskhor, where Leo Tolstoy had almost died of pneumonia), he fell ill with a severe flu - there is a version according to which he caught a cold on the grave son, visiting her immediately upon returning to Moscow, before leaving for Gorki.

This flu led to pneumonia, and by 1936 Gorky's lungs were in such a state that Professor Pletnev found only ten to fifteen percent of all lung tissue viable. It was amazing how Gorky retained the ability to travel, work, meet countless visitors, burn his favorite fires in Gorki and Tessel (he was a pyromaniac, loved to look at the fire), answer hundreds of letters, read and edit thousands of manuscripts - he was seriously ill all recent years, and only a person who did not know or did not want to know about it could talk about his poisoning.

It is clear why Stalin needed this version: he had to stage the disclosure of the coup d'état, which Yagoda allegedly prepared. But why this version - however, with another main figure - publicists of the post-Soviet era, is absolutely impossible to understand. There are enough real sins on Stalin. He closely followed Gorky's condition and, perhaps, wished him a speedy death: it is possible that Gorky really began to interfere with him. But here, it seems, it is rather worth agreeing with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who noted that Gorky would have sung the thirty-seventh: not even out of cowardice, but simply because of the lack of other options. He drove himself into a situation from which there is no way out: only to go to the end with Stalinism against fascism, more and more loudly denouncing the bloody shopkeepers and their accomplices. You can respect him at least for consistency.

Stalin came to the sick Gorky three times - on June 8, 10 and 12. There is also a lot of gloomy absurdity here - just like on that night of May 11, 1934, when Gorky, while his son was dying, spoke with Speransky about experimental medicine and immortality. Gorky spoke with Stalin about women writers and their beautiful books, about French literature and the condition of the French peasantry. It all looks like nonsense, yes, maybe he really was delusional. Another question is why Stalin visits him three times, with such an insignificant interval. Hastening death? It does not seem that he had at his disposal a sufficient arsenal of means to speed it up without appearing at Gorky's in person and without incurring suspicion on himself. Hope to keep? It is known that on June 8, his appearance actually saved Gorky - he was suffocating, already turning blue, but when Stalin and Voroshilov appeared, he greatly cheered up. Gorky could still be needed by Stalin - not necessarily for a show trial in which he could be a defendant, but precisely as an intermediary between the Western intellectual elite and Soviet power. A living Gorky was more needed than a dead one, especially since he repeatedly demonstrated his readiness to serve Stalin's tasks and approve his course. True, Stalin showed a certain suspicion - he did not let Gorky go to the Congress of Defenders of Peace in 1935 - but Gorky himself was not eager to go there, he wanted to finish Samgin, realizing that he had little left, and most importantly, he felt very comfortable in the spring of 1935. weak.

It is difficult to judge the true intentions of the “Master”, as he was called more and more often, but to say that Gorky would have prevented the trials of 1937 from taking place is at least strange. Just concern for Gorky's life and health could explain the elimination of Yagoda - that's not enough protection, ruined Maxim - and Gorky would have accepted this version, because it would remove the blame for Maxim from himself.

Stalin's visits did not help. The day before his death, Gorky said to Lipa Chertkova: "And now I was arguing with God - wow, how I argued!" A day later, on June 18, he ended this dispute forever. Or he went to argue personally - that's whoever you like.

Not every writer receives honor and glory during his lifetime the way they came to Maxim Gorky. The date of birth and death of this extraordinary person is of interest to many compatriots. After all, he himself was a witness to the renaming of his hometown, Nizhny Novgorod, in his honor. Then a street in Moscow was named after him, two largest theater, plane, cruiser, ship. AT Soviet years the popularity of Gorky's work was at its peak. Today, not even small streets of his name remain.

Many do not know at all the date of death of Maxim Gorky and its causes. Well, let's go through the main pages of the writer's biography. Let's try to understand the causes of Gorky's death. His death was very mysterious, and creativity causes mixed feelings in readers. And now about everything in order.

Childhood and youth

Dates of life and death of Gorky: March 16, 1868 - June 18, 1936 Russian and Soviet writer, public figure, founder of the style of socialist realism, Maxim Gorky happened to be born in glorious Nizhny Novgorod. Real surname and the name of Maxim Alekseevich is Alexey Peshkov. His family was poor, his father died when the boy was three years old, and after another 8 years his mother died. The fate of the boy was "bitter", perhaps that is why he later took such a pseudonym for himself. Little Alyosha was raised by his maternal grandfather, Kashirin, who owns a dyeing workshop.

In the family of a stingy grandfather, the boy's life was not easy, very early he "went into the people", began to get a job various works. He had to master the profession of a dishwasher, a baker, an assistant to a salesman in a store. He was later able to display all his childhood ordeals in the first part. autobiographical work"Childhood". Alexei's grandmother, unlike his grandfather, showed kindness, care, told him interesting stories. When she died, the young man even tried to commit suicide. He shot himself, and the bullet damaged his lung, causing further health problems.

In 1884, Alexei had an unsuccessful attempt to enter Kazan University. The young man began to visit the Marxist circle of N. Fedoseev, for which he was arrested for a short period. The favorite pastime of the young man was wandering around Russia. Working as a loader, a night watchman, Alexei was engaged in self-education. At the age of 24, he tried himself as a journalist in some small publications. Then he took the pseudonym Yehudiel Khlamida, but then changed it to Maxim Gorky, hinting at a difficult Russian life.

Literary beginnings and first political steps

The year 1892 was marked by the appearance of Gorky's first story, Makar Chudra. Then "Chelkash" and "Old Woman Izergil" appeared. They were followed by "The Song of the Falcon" and "Former People". They noted not so much artistic features as exaggerated pompous pathos, inspired by new political trends in the country. Popularity in radical circles was gaining more and more Marxism. In Gorky's stories, the tramp-lumpen became the main characters, which was very welcomed by society.

In 1898, Alexei Maksimovich published his first collection, Essays and Stories. This served to take off his public and creative career. The writer greatly exaggerated the life of the poor, their difficulties, defended the interests of the working class. His works were endowed with a simulated pathos of "humanity", which was praised by intellectuals and "conscious workers". Despite the ambiguous attitude towards his work, Tolstoy and Chekhov made friends with him. After that, he wrote the novel "Three".

Gorky defended the interests of the Marxist social democracy, hostile to tsarism. Soon his famous revolutionary "Song of the Petrel" came out. The writer was suspected of calling for the overthrow of the autocracy, arrested and forced to leave his native city.

Soon he became friends with many revolutionaries, including Lenin. In 1902, the government annulled Gorky's election as a member of the Imperial Academy in the category of fine literature. Chekhov and Korolenko also resigned in solidarity with the writer.

Starting in 1905, his works become more optimistic. Gorky wrote several plays for public topics. The play "At the Bottom" was very popular not only in Russia, but also in the USA and Europe. The writer was close Political Views opposition. For the publication of the play "Children of the Sun" and participation in the revolution of 1905, he was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. Beloved of Gorky in those years was former actress

Having been released, Alexei Maksimovich continued his writing business, became rich, and began to financially support the Russian Social Democratic Party. "Bloody Sunday" in 1905 made the writer even more radical. On most issues, he shared the opinion of the Bolsheviks and Lenin.

Fleeing from arrest, Gorky hid in Finland and then in the United States. There he raised funds to support the Bolsheviks. This trip prompted him to write the novel "Mother". It was first printed in London on English language. Among the acquaintances of Alexei Maksimovich were Theodore Roosevelt himself and Mark Twain. The "bourgeois spirit" of America, the writer also did not quite like it, he condemned it.

Gorky's stay in Capri

Fearing arrest for participation in the Moscow uprising, Maxim Gorky after America went to the Italian island of Capri. He continued to support the Russian Bolsheviks with his novels and essays. With two more emigrants, Lunacharsky and Bogdanov, he formed a philosophical system called "god-building".

It was intended to develop in humanity new moral values to get rid of evil, suffering and poverty. Lenin rejected these philosophical searches of the writer. But Gorky believed that spiritual values ​​were still very important for revolutionary success. He put them above political and economic measures. The novel "Confession", written in 1907, is devoted to spiritual values.

Return to Russia

In 1913, Gorky returned to Russia under an amnesty and became an active public and literary figure. He was engaged in the training of young writers from the people. In 1915, the writer became a participant in the publication of the journalistic collection "Shield". His goal was to protect the oppressed Jews in Russia. The Bolsheviks often gathered in Gorky's apartment, but just before the 1917 revolution, the writer changed his attitude towards them. He foresaw that Lenin would conduct a cruel experiment on the Russian people, doomed to failure. After that, the Bolsheviks began to censor Gorky's newspaper " New life". Now in the Bolsheviks he saw talkers and idlers.

In 1918, a series of critical notes on Lenin's power was published. Untimely Thoughts". With these notes in Russia became acquainted only after the collapse of the Soviet Union. There he criticized Lenin for the repression of freedom of thought.

Over the years, the Bolshevik regime grew stronger, and Gorky criticized less. Alexey Maksimovich was very worried when he learned about it in 1918. When he recovered, Gorky even visited him and realized his mistakes. He joined the Society of Bolshevik Writers at the World Literature Publishing House. The best published classical works, but only on a small scale. Here Alexei Maksimovich met and became friends with Maria Benckendorff.

Emigration to Italy

In 1921, a friend of the writer, poet Nikolai Gumilyov (husband of Anna Akhmatova), was shot by Chekists. Gorky personally asked Lenin in writing not to do this. This event prompted Alexei Maksimovich to leave Bolshevik Russia. Living in German resorts, M. Gorky finished writing his autobiography "My Universities". In 1924, the writer moved to Italy for the treatment of tuberculosis. He lived for nine years in the Italian city of Sorrento, visited the Soviet Union several times. In 1932, Stalin personally invited Alexei Maksimovich to move to his homeland. The writer still had sympathy for the Bolsheviks, and he decided to return.

Mature views of the writer

Communist propaganda made extensive use of the writer's departure from fascist Italy. Now they were more like eulogies of the Soviet system. In the style of Leninist-Stalinist propaganda, he wrote an article "Who are you with, masters of culture?". In it, he called on artists, actors, writers to serve the communist movement with their work. Alexei Maksimovich was awarded the Order of Lenin for this and was allowed to dominate the Union of Soviet Writers.

Maxim Gorky was given a luxurious mansion in Moscow and a dacha nearby. All festive demonstrations were not complete without going to the podium of Gorky's mausoleum together with Stalin. The writer's work fully supported Stalin's propaganda. In his writings there were convictions that the Soviet correctional camps were successfully "reforging" the enemies of the proletariat. Only for this lie Alexei Maksimovich paid with considerable mental anguish. Stalin knew about the writer's hesitation. In 1934, after the murder of Alexei Maksimovich Kirov, he was placed under house arrest. Stalin's "Great Terror" began. In 1934, in an incomprehensible situation, the 36-year-old, Gorky's son, dies. The writer then had to live another 2 years.

Gorky's disease is the subject of speculation and controversy

Maxim Gorky's death was unexpected. It all started in May 1936, when he fell ill. He had a high fever, shortness of breath, uneven pulse. Doctors recognized pneumonia, but did not tell the writer about it. The condition was aggravated by hiccups, restless hand movements. One after another, doctors and relatives and friends came into his bedroom. He almost didn't recognize anyone. The doctors announced that they were powerless.

One day Stalin called and said that he, Molotov and Voroshilov would come to visit Alexei Maksimovich. This simply revived the writer, for a meeting with the leader he was injected with a large dose of camphor. The encouraged writer was even able to keep the conversation going during the meeting. That day, he even sipped some wine and talked about the fact that he still had a lot to do.

After the improvement, new seizures began. He was given oxygen bags. The death of M. Gorky overtook in the spring, as he wrote to one of his friends. On his last day, he barely audibly whispered: "Let me go."

Suspicions in the murder of the writer

The year of Gorky's death is 1936. Last days the writer could not even lie down, they lifted him up. Coming to his senses, he said that in delirium he argued with God. Soon pulmonary edema began. Oxygen bags did not have time to be brought to the writer's house by truck. Soon, Alexei Maksimovich began to suffer agony. The date of Gorky's death is June 18, 1936 at 11 am.

Doctors immediately began to do an autopsy. It showed that the lungs were in a terrible state. Thus, suspicion was removed from them. But still they were accused of incompetence, and then of malicious murder. Most of the witnesses were of the opinion that pneumonia was the cause of Gorky's death. This could have been prevented. Therefore, there were suspicions about his poisoning.

Here are some facts about the possibility of poisoning:

• GPU G. G. Yagoda often appeared in the writer's house.
• Physically, Gorky was a hardy man and could cope with pneumonia.
• After the death of the writer, doctors and Yagoda were shot, possibly getting rid of unnecessary witnesses.
• Immediately after his death, the doctors "gutted" Gorky's body. The relatives remained convinced that if the writer had not been treated, he would have survived.
• The government decided to cremate Gorky. Yagoda did not allow even a particle of ashes to be given to his relatives for burial.
• During litigation it was revealed that Yagoda, who was arrested in 1937, had a whole cabinet of poisons, which were developed by a special laboratory.

Conclusions on the causes of death of Maxim Gorky

So, Yagoda, two Soviet ministers and four Kremlin doctors ended up in the dock. Trotsky led the investigation process. It was he who put forward the version of the murder. Trotsky accused Yagoda of poisoning Gorky on his orders. Why did Stalin need to get rid of the "petrel of the proletariat"?

Trotsky saw in Gorky an intercessor for the offended, a sentimental Protestant. Almost everyone protested against the famine of the first and second five-year plans. And Alexei Maksimovich had connections with European writers, he formed public opinion in Russia. It was impossible to force him to remain silent, just as it was impossible to shoot him. The writer tried to escape abroad, Stalin refused to issue him a passport. Therefore, Gorky was eliminated without the shedding of blood. But this is just speculation.

Stalin, along with Molotov, carried the coffin of the writer at the funeral. Then Stalin himself announced that Gorky had been poisoned by "enemies of the people." Former chapter The OGPU and NKVD Genrikh Yagoda were convicted and accused of conspiring with Trotsky.

Evaluation of the creative searches of the writer

Maxim Gorky had different relationships with the Bolshevik leaders different years his life. It was beneficial for the Kremlin to see in him a major Russian writer of his time, a native of the people, true friend Communist Party and the father of "socialist realism". Portraits, statues and monuments to Gorky spread throughout the country.

In Europe, there were fluctuations in the writer's views on the Soviet system and his criticism of the Bolshevik regime. Maxim Gorky in his works not only expressed himself artistically and aesthetically, but also had the goal of morally changing the world. From the literary side, his works are not strong enough, but they give a very realistic picture of Russian life. late XIX century. Such, in brief, is the life and death of Gorky.