Maxim Gorky
Overview
 
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n and Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 author, a founder of the Socialist Realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...

 literary method and a political activist.
Gorky was born in Nizhny Novgorod
Nizhny Novgorod
Nizhny Novgorod , colloquially shortened to Nizhny, is, with the population of 1,250,615, the fifth largest city in Russia, ranking after Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and Yekaterinburg...

 and became an orphan at the age of nine. In 1880, at the age of twelve, he ran away from home in an effort to find his grandmother. Gorky was brought up by his grandmother. Her death deeply affected him, and after an attempt at suicide in December 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing.

As a journalist working for provincial newspapers, he wrote under the pseudonym (Jehudiel Khlamida).
Quotations

Everybody, my friend, everybody lives for something better to come. That's why we want to be considerate of every man— Who knows what's in him, why he was born and what he can do?

The Lower Depths (1902)

One has to be able to count, if only so that at fifty one doesn't marry a girl of twenty.

The Zykovs (1914)

Processing the human raw material is naturally more complicated than processing lumber.

Belomorkanal|The I.V.Stalin White Sea - Baltic Sea Canal, 1934

There's a little book I'm thinking of writing - 'Swan Song' is what I shall call it. The song of the dying. And my book will be incense burnt at the deathbed of this society, damned with the damnation of its own impotence." - Foma Gordeyev. The English music group Led Zeppelin would later name their record label "Swan Song".

 
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