MAXIM GORKY: A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY TOVAH YEDLIN PRAEGER MAXIM GORKY MAXIM GORKY A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY TOVAH YEDLIN Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yedlin, Tova. Maxim Gorky : a political biography / Tovah Yedlin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–275–96605–4 (alk. paper) 1. Gorky, Maksim, 1868–1936—Political and social views. 2. Gorky, Maksim, 1868–1936. 3. Authors, Russian—20th century Biography. 4. Communism and literature—Soviet Union. I. Title. PG3465.Z9P699 1999 891.78'309—dc21 [B] 99–14383 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright ᭧ 1999 by Tovah Yedlin All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99–14383 ISBN: 0–275–96605–4 First published in 1999 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America TM The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10987654321 Copyright Acknowledgments The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission for use of the following material: From ‘‘The Letters of Maksim Gor’kij to V. F. Xodasevicˇ, 1922–1925,’’ translated and edited by Hugh McLean in Harvard Slavic Studies, vol. I. Copyright ᭧ 1953 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press. TO MISHA in loving memory. CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi Chapter 1. Gorky—The Formative Years 1 Chapter 2. The Successful Writer and the Fledgling Revolutionary 25 Chapter 3. Gorky and the Revolution of 1905 45 Chapter 4. Gorky’s Mission to the United States 67 Chapter 5. Capri 83 Chapter 6. War and Revolution 103 Chapter 7. Gorky, 1921–1928 147 Chapter 8. Gorky, 1928–1936: The Last Years 177 Chapter 9. Gorky: For and Against 227 Glossary and Abbreviations 233 Chronology of Gorky’s Life 237 Selected Bibliography 241 Index 249 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Having been involved for many years in the study of Gorky and his political career, I can no longer recall all the people who helped me find sources, gave advice, and answered questions concerning one or another event of Gorky’s life and actions. The work in many libraries and archives where I searched for materials was in each case made possible by the kind and helpful attitude of the staff. Of particular importance for the present study were the materials found in the Library of Congress; the Helsinki Library in Finland; the Columbia University Library; the Bakhmetev Archive in New York; the Hoover In- stitution in Stanford, California; the Slavic Studies Library at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana; the Slavonic Department of the New York Public Library; and, last but not least, the M. Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow. In the last few years I have become indebted to the following people for their help and assistance in the work on the political biography of Gorky: my late colleague and friend R. H. McNeal and V. S. Barakhov, M. V. Dmitriev, R. C. Elwood, K. Holden, A. Hornjatkevycˇ, L. V. Kuzmitcheva, M. Mote, J. Ould, H. Solomon, L. A. Spiridonova, J. Willman, and A. Zelnikov. To M. Carter and to A. Tulchinsky and V. Ourdeva, graduate students in the Division of Slavic Studies of the University of Alberta, many thanks for their technical help. I owe a special word of thanks to G. Olson and D. Rees for their invaluable help in the work of editing the manuscript. I am very grateful to two members of the Greenwood Publishing Group, Ms. L. Robinson, copyeditor, and Ms. H. Straight, production editor, for their superb work in preparing the manuscript for publication. Of course, any errors or omissions are entirely my responsibility. INTRODUCTION Maxim Gorky was and remains a hard man to know. After more than a quarter of a century of studying his works and his pronouncements and trying to understand the different roads he traveled during the crucial pe- riod in Russian history, one is left with many questions. Gorky’s life spanned two centuries. He was born during the reign of Alexander II, known as the Tsar Liberator, seven years after the aboliton of serfdom. He died in a totalitarian Soviet Union, with Stalin at its helm. Gorky is also that rarity, a famous writer without a biography. Although millions of copies of his works, literary and publicist, including a volumi- nous correspondence have been published and some unpublished sources have been available, a comprehensive biography of Gorky has never been written. How shall we explain that no attempts have been made, either in the Soviet Union or in the West to write an honest Gorky biography, com- prehensive and free from political bias? Some important pieces of evidence were buried during the Stalin era, and the published essays, correspondence, and his allegedly complete works were censored by the removal of unwanted evidence. Paragraphs have been de- leted or altered, and dates and names have often been omitted. All this made such a biography impossible to write. The inability of Soviet scholars to un- dertake the rather difficult task may be traced to the creation of a ‘‘Gorky myth.’’ The myth took its beginning with the writer’s first return to Russia from his second exile in 1928. In that myth, Gorky was hailed as ‘‘the first proletarian writer,’’ as an unwavering friend of Lenin, and later as the faithful follower of Stalin and his policies. It was acknowledged that the xii INTRODUCTION author of the Pesnia o burevestnike (The Song of the Stormy Petrel) who in his writing issued the call for revolution had erred in October 1917, when he first rejected the Revolution, but had later recanted. It was within the framework of the myth that one was permitted to write about Gorky’s life and work as if the man were subsumed in the story. In examining the Soviet record of works on Gorky we will find that his literary legacy was discussed, albeit within the framework allowed. As to Gorky’s revolution- ary path and involvement in the political life of tsarist Russia and then of the Soviet Union, little of substance was written. The exception was the book Gor’kii-revoliutsioner (Gorky the Revolutionary), authored by V. A. Bazarov (Rudnev) and published in 1929. Rudnev was purged in 1931, in the trial of the Mensheviks; his work, considered not politically correct, was buried in the archives. Therein appeared a number of one-volume bi- ographies of Gorky, written within the permitted limits. These portrayals of Gorky were rather superficial or simply not true. Gorky lived in the West and travelled widely. He had maintained close contact with many of the left-leaning intellectual e´lite, and as a result some of his writings and correspondence found its way to archives, university libraries, and private collections brought west by Russian e´migre´s. Until the period of glasnost’ (1985–1991), these sources were unavailable to scholars in the Soviet Union, given the controls imposed by the state. Today we know more about Gorky than we did a few years ago, as a result of revelations and debates that have been taking place since the pe- riod of glasnost’. Essays and articles began appearing in periodicals and newspapers in Russia; major works authored by writers and literary critics also were published. Among works recently published in the West on Gorky is Nikolaus Katzer’s Maksim Gorkijs Weg in die russische Sozialdemokratie, a scholarly political biography of Gorky to the year 1907. But by and large the new works published in the West in recent years are written by literary critics, often with an emphasis on the philosophical and psychological elements of Gorky the writer and the thinker. The present study is a political biography of Gorky. Much of the material used consists of Gorky’s works, mainly literary and publicistic, his rich epistolary legacy, published for the first time and important for our under- standing of Gorky in the prelude and postlude of the Revolution. Only recently released was the Gorky-Stalin correspondence for the period 1929– 1931. Similarly, the contacts with G. Yagoda, head of the infamous Unified State Political Administration (OGPU) have been documented in letters from 1928 to 1935. The material is arranged in chronological order. The work consists of nine chapters. In Chapters 1 and 2 Gorky’s early life and his introduction to the ideologies of populism and Marxism are discussed. Chapter 3, entitled ‘‘Gorky and The Revolution of 1905,’’ describes Gorky’s active participation in the events and emphasizes his genuinely INTRODUCTION xiii revolutionary spirit. The chapter ends with Gorky’s leaving the country in the face of imminent arrest in December 1905. Gorky’s unsuccessful mis- sion to the United States aimed at collecting funds for the revolution, which he believed was to continue, and at winning the sympathy of the Americans for his cause is the theme of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 is devoted to describing the details of Gorky’s life on the island of Capri. Unable to return to Russia, Gorky settled on the island of Capri where he spent the years of 1906 to 1913. The Capri period was an im- portant milestone in Gorky’s life. It was during that period that Gorky became for a while an ally of Lenin, the high point of that friendly asso- ciation being Gorky’s attendance, with a consultative voice, at the Fifth Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDWP) in 1907.