MAXIM GORKY, the pseudonym of Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (1868-1936) , was a Soviet short-story writer, novelist and dramatist, a political activist, and founder of the socialist realism literary method.
After a grim childhood and some years of wandering Gorky began to write stories and by his thirties had become famous both for fiction and plays, naturalistic and sympathetic stories of tramps and social outcasts. His reputation grew as a unique literary voice from the bottom strata of society and as a fervent advocate of Russia's social, political, and cultural transformation. He became involved in revolutionary activity against the tsarist regime in Russia and had a confused, difficult relationship with the Soviet dictatorship, partly living abroad and yet becoming the USSR's most feted and widely read author. He died in 1936 under suspicious circumstances and Stalin and Molotov were among the bearers of his coffin.
At the heart of all his work was a belief in the inherent worth and potential of the human person. In his writing, he counterposed individuals, aware of their natural dignity, and inspired by energy and will, with people who succumb to the degrading conditions of life around them. Both his writings and his letters reveal a "restless man" (a frequent self-description) struggling to resolve contradictory feelings of faith and scepticism, love of life and disgust at the vulgarity and pettiness of the human world. Gorky was the only Soviet writer whose work embraced the pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary period so exhaustively, and, though he by no means stands with Chekhov, Tolstoy, and others in the front rank of Russian writers, he remains one of the more important literary figures of his age.
The following books are in PDF format unless otherwise noted:
== ANTHOLOGIES ==
* Collected Works (Delphi Classics, 2014). Various translators. -- ePUB
== FICTION ==
* Artamonovs, The [Collected Works VIII] (Progress, 1982). Helen Altschuler, trans.
* Chelkash and Other Stories (Dover, 1999). Fineberg and B. Isaacs, trans. -- ePUB
* Collected Short Stories (Citadel, 1988). Avram Yarmolinsky and Moura Budberg, eds.
* Foma Gordeyev [Collected Works II] (Progress, 1980). Margaret Wettlin, trans.
* Life of a Useless Man, The (Carroll & Graf, 1990). Moura Budberg, trans.
* Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin, The [Collected Works V] (Progress, 1980). Margaret Wettlin, trans.
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