Biography
Maxim Gorky, born Alexei Maximovich Peshkov in Nizhny Novgorod in 1868, was orphaned early and, after many odd jobs, spent years wandering across the Russian Empire. In 1892 he published his first story under the name Gorky, and the collection “Sketches and Stories” (1898) made him known throughout the country. Konstantin Stanislavski staged his play “The Lower Depths” at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1902; it was performed in Berlin as early as January 1903 and established his international reputation. Further plays followed, among them “Summerfolk” (1904), “Children of the Sun” (1905), “Vassa Zheleznova” (1910, revised 1935) and “Yegor Bulychov” (1932), along with the novel “Mother” (1906) and an autobiographical trilogy. He lived on Capri from 1906 to 1913, left Russia again in 1921 and spent most of the time until 1932 in Sorrento before settling back in the Soviet Union; at the first congress of the Soviet writers’ union in 1934 he helped establish socialist realism as the official doctrine. Gorky died near Moscow in 1936.
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