Innocent hobbies, passionate novels and three big loves of the "singer of the revolution" Maxim Gorky

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

- probably many remember these words of the legendary cult writer of the Soviet period Maxim Gorky. And isn't that why his personal life was full of numerous hobbies and novels besides love for his wives … And was it not because it was as bright as his dizzying writing career?

It is difficult to remember which of the writers, besides Gorky, achieved such world recognition and fame during his lifetime. Cities, streets, educational institutions were named in his honor. The Russian prose writer was nominated for the Nobel Prize five times (but never was awarded). In the Soviet Union, he was the most published author, ranked among the main creators of Russian literary art. Only the publication of works by Pushkin and Tolstoy competed with the publication of his creations.

In addition, the famous writer, despite the severe form of pulmonary tuberculosis, had unique characteristics of the body: he practically did not experience pain, had an amazing intellect, was unusually physically hardy and was able to work almost until the last days of his life.

However, today we will talk about something else - about Gorky's relations with women.

Fleeting hobbies in the fate of the writer

The personal life of our hero was rather stormy, because he was a passionate, impulsive, addicted person. This is evidenced by both eyewitness accounts and the multitude of his novels, fleeting connections and hobbies.

At a young age, Gorky (Alexei Peshkov) was disgusted with physical relationships, since more than once he had to witness drunken orgies. It seemed to him then that physical relationships cannot exist without a spiritual connection. According to some of his biographers, the writer's hypersexuality, which manifested itself later, will be associated with the story of the loss of innocence by Peshkov. He described this episode in one of his autobiographical stories, the 17-year-old hero of which spends a night of love with a prostitute under an overturned boat, hiding from the rain.

His subsequent passion for a girl almost cost our hero his life. At the age of nineteen, the young man attempted suicide by shooting himself in the chest. However, he missed - instead of a heart he punched a lung, which subsequently led to a chronic lung disease, and later tuberculosis. The reason was partly unrequited love for Maria Derenkova, which led our hero into a deep depression, which was complicated by unsuccessful attempts to come to terms with the outside world and circumstances. The suicide note stated the following: "For my death, I ask you to blame Heinrich Heine, who invented a toothache in the heart." In the hospital, a few days later, Alexey repeated his suicide attempt, but this time he was rescued by doctors.

Psychiatrists immediately identified Peshkov as a mentally unbalanced person with a whole list of diseases:. And most likely, they were right … For even in his school years, having fallen ill with smallpox, Alyoshka threw himself out of the window and lay for a long time in the snow. And at ten years old, he lay down on a bet under the train. Once, having quarreled with his stepfather, he attacked him with a knife, threatening to kill him first, and then himself.

Later, working as a weigher at a railway station, our hero fell in love with the daughter of his boss - Maria Basargin … The 21-year-old boy even asked for her hand in marriage, but the girl's father, despite the good attitude towards Alexei, refused the guy. Basargin, knowing about the revolutionary moods of the future writer, kindly advised him to find a wife with an appropriate worldview. Peshkov soon quit his job and left, but he always retained the warmest memories of Maria. Moreover, according to her younger sister, until the end of his life he financially helped the entire Basargin family.

In 1893, 25-year-old Maxim Gorky began to cohabit with Olga Kaminskaya, a divorced woman ten years older than him. Olga was a midwife by profession, was fond of portrait painting and sewing women's hats. However, their life together was not long. The abandoned husband made constant attempts to return Olga, which infuriated the writer. And then a misunderstanding arose, which more and more alienated them from each other. The last straw was that Olga fell asleep during the author's reading of the story "The Old Woman Izergil" just written by Gorky. They separated. - Gorky wrote to Olga in a farewell note.

First official wife and only

For the first and only time, our hero officially married at the age of 28 Ekaterina Volzhina, which he met in the publishing house of "Samarskaya Gazeta", where he published. She worked there as a proofreader. By the way, she also corrected Gorky's works, since by the age of thirty he still continued to write with grammatical errors. They got married in 1897, and a year later, Catherine gave birth to a son, Maxim, and in 1901, a daughter, Katya.

As often happens in the life of creative personalities, love for his wife dissipated like a fog, and Gorky began to feel burdened by family ties. Their marriage union with Ekaterina Volzhina for some time turned into a parental union: they began to live together only because of the children. And when trouble suddenly came to their house, taking the life of a little daughter who fell ill with meningitis, the ghostly family relationship completely disappeared. The couple finally parted by mutual agreement.

However, Maxim Gorky and his wife remained good friends and maintained a correspondence until the end of their lives. By the way, they never divorced, and Ekaterina Pavlovna remained the official wife of the famous writer until her death. And besides, in the official biography, written in Soviet times, there was not a word about his subsequent common-law wives.

Great love of Maxim Gorky

After parting with his wife, the writer had a new love - an actress Maria Andreeva, with whom Gorky began to live in a civil marriage. Under the influence of Andreeva, with whom he lived for about 16 years, the writer actively began to participate in revolutionary activities, for which he was arrested in 1905. After his release, he joined the ranks of the RSDLP and met Lenin.

It was because of Maria that Gorky left Russia before the revolution, living now in America, now in Italy. And when they returned to their homeland, disagreements began to arise between the spouses on political grounds. As you know, Gorky was not particularly imbued with revolutionary ideas, while Andreeva, carried away by party work, began to move away from her husband, and in 1919 their relationship came to an end. It was rumored that the reason was partly due to the fact that Alexei Maksimovich started an affair on the side with a married woman who gave birth to a daughter from him, incredibly similar to the writer. This was the last straw for the breakdown of their relationship.

Read more about the story of this love of Gorky: Maxim Gorky and Maria Andreeva: the story of an idealist writer and actress who was worshiped by bohemians.

The last love of the Petrel of the Revolution

But be that as it may, the fat point in relations with Andreeva was put by Gorky himself, saying that he was leaving for Maria Budberg, former baroness and concurrently his secretary. The writer lived with this woman for 13 years also in a civil marriage. Maria was 24 years younger than the writer, and it was rumored that she was "spinning novels" behind the back of the no longer young Alexei Maksimovich. One of her lovers was the famous English science fiction writer Herbert Wells. It was to him that she moved immediately after the death of Gorky. There were also rumors that Maria Budberg, who had a reputation as an adventurer, was associated not only with the NKVD, but could well have been a double agent working for British intelligence.

You can read more about Gorky's last alliance in the review: Red Mata Hari, or "iron woman": Maria Budberg is a double intelligence agent and the last love of Maxim Gorky.

Mysterious circumstances of death

After returning to Russia in 1932, Maxim Gorky worked a lot in publishing houses of newspapers and magazines, organized and held the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. Full of vitality and energy after the unexpected death of his son due to pneumonia, the writer wilted. At the next visit to the grave of Maxim, he caught a bad cold. For three weeks Gorky had a fever that led to his death in the early summer of 1936. The body of the Soviet writer was cremated, and the ashes were placed in the Kremlin wall on Red Square. Stalin himself carried an urn with ashes to the burial place. By the way, during the funeral procession, the first legal wife, Ekaterina Peshkova, and the second civilian, Maria Andreeva, walked side by side.

Later, the question was raised more than once that the legendary writer and his son could have been poisoned. The People's Commissar Genrikh Yagoda, who was the lover of the wife of Maxim Peshkov, the son of Alexei Maksimovich, was involved in this case. For some time, the involvement of Leon Trotsky and even Joseph Stalin himself was suspected. But they failed to clarify the situation.