The originality of Gorky's journalism and memoirs. Journalism of M. Gorky (“Untimely Thoughts”) and A. Blok (“Intellectuals and Revolution”) - presentation

HISTORY OF JOURNALISM HISTORY

UDC 070(470)(09) DOI 10.17150/2308-6203.2017.6(1).59-67

Manokhin Igor Viktorovich

Candidate of Historical Sciences, acting Rector, Moscow State linguistic university, 119034, Russian Federation, Moscow, Ostozhenka 38, building 1, e-mail: [email protected]

Igor V. Manokhin

Dr. Acting Rector, Moscow State Linguistic University, 38 Ostozhenka St., 119034, Moscow, Russian Federation, e-mail: [email protected]

Satsyuk Irina Georgievna

candidate philological sciences, associate professor, Baikal state university, 664003, Russian Federation, Irkutsk, st. Lenina, 11, e-mail: [email protected]

Irina G. Satsyuk

PhD in Philology, Associate Professor, Baikal State University, 11 Lenin St., 664003, Irkutsk, Russian Federation, e-mail: [email protected]

LATE PUBLICISTICS OF M. GORKY

Annotation. The article examines the journalism of Maxim Gorky in the 1920s and 30s. If the early journalistic activity of the writer of the first stage of creativity (time of work in the Samara Gazeta, in reports from the Nizhny Novgorod art and industrial exhibition), as well as the period October Revolution(“Untimely Thoughts”) has been widely researched, but his late journalism is still not sufficiently comprehended and studied. 1920-30s - a complex and controversial period in the work of Maxim Gorky, a writer and publicist. The article draws attention to two major problems of the late journalism of Maxim Gorky. One of them is the attitude towards the peasantry and the “peasant question” in new social conditions. At the same time, the change in Maxim Gorky’s ideas about the Russian peasantry during the period of dispossession and collectivization is traced. From the harsh characteristics of the “peasant” (in the 1922 article “On the Russian Peasantry”) - to the notes and letters of the 1930s, which expressed the writer’s faith in positive moral, ethical and social changes in the peasant masses. Another problem that always acutely worried Maxim Gorky was the problem of culture. In his later journalism, the writer reflects on the formation of a new socialist culture and its character. In this regard, the writer considered working with young writers among his most important tasks. Maxim Gorky not only edited the works of novice authors, but also conducted serious correspondence with them, expressing specific comments and giving practical advice. At the same time, Maxim

© I. V. Manokhin, I. G. Satsyuk, 2017

Gorky not only talks about the need for topical issues in prose and poetry, but also demands that young writers carefully “work on the word” and the style of their works, saying that this requires a certain level of culture of the authors. To understand the writer’s position on these issues, his letters from those years and the memoirs of his contemporaries are used as objective evidence. Studying this issue will help to more deeply and objectively understand the features of the writer’s late journalism and the nature of the evolution of his worldview and creativity.

Key words. Journalism, peasantry, culture, literature, socialist construction, evolution of views.

Information about the article. Date of admission: January 10, 2017; date of acceptance for publication: January 23, 2017; date of online posting January 31, 2017

LATE JOURNALISM OF M. GORKY

Abstract. The article considers M. Gorky"s journalism in the 1920s and 1930s. M. Gorky"s early journalism i.e. his work for Samarskaya Gazeta and his reports about Nizhny Novgorod arts and industry exhibition as well as his work during the October Revolution (Untimely Thoughts) are studied well enough, whereas his late journalism still has not been given enough thought to and considered properly. The 1920 and 1930s are a complicated and contradictory period for M. Gorky, both as a writer and a journalist. The article focuses on two main issues of M. Gorky's journalism. One of them is his attitude to the peasantry and problems of peasants in the framework of a new social environment. At the same time one can observe how M. Gorky's ideas of Russian peasants are changing during the period of defarming and collectivization. In the article On Russian Peasantry published in 1922 he characterizes the Russian peasant in a rather unfavorable way whereas in his notes to the letters written in the 1930s M. Gorky expresses his belief in positive moral and ethical and social changes among the peasantry. The other problem, Gorky was always concerned about, is the problem of culture. In his late journalism he speculates about a new social culture developing as well as its nature. That is why one of Gorky"s priorities was working with beginning writers. Maxim Gorky not only edited beginning writers" pieces of work but was also in correspondence with them, criticizing their work and giving them practical advice. M. Gorky emphasized that it was vital for the problems expressed in prose and poetry to be of current concern. He also demanded proper language and style from beginning writers, adding that this requires a certain cultural context the writers need to be in. To understand M. Gorky's viewpoint on these issues his 1920s-1930s letters and his contemporaries" memoirs are analyzed. Studying this problem will contribute to understanding the special aspects of M. Gorky's late journalism and the peculiarities of the evolution of his views and literary work.

Keywords. Journalism, peasantry, culture, literature, building socialism, evolution of views.

Article info. Received January 10, 2017; accepted January 23, 2017; available online January 31, 2017.

The late journalism of Maxim Gorky has not yet been fully studied. This is determined primarily by the fact that M. Gorky in the second half of his work experienced

there was an internal tragic discord between the “writer-artist” and the “publicist”. On the one hand, he writes (but never finishes) the epic novel “The Life of Klim Sam-

Gina" about the fate of an intellectual, a "reluctant revolutionary" who cannot find his place in modern life and feels like a “victim of history.” On the other hand, Gorky the publicist reflects on completely different, diverse and current problems, feeling like a person called upon to comprehend and evaluate the events he witnessed.

Traditionally, in M. Gorky’s journalism, three periods are distinguished, due not only to changes historical context, but also the evolution of the writer’s worldview. This is early journalism from the period of work in the Samara Newspaper, Nizhny Novgorod Listok (in particular, his materials about the Nizhny Novgorod Industrial and Art Exhibition of 1896), journalism from the period of the revolution (the cycle “Untimely Thoughts”), as well as journalism from the 1920s and 30s gg. And if the first two periods of Gorky’s work as a publicist have been described and widely studied, the latter still needs a more thorough examination, which will help to better understand the nature of the evolution of the writer’s journalistic and publicistic activities.

1920-30s are the most controversial in the artistic and journalistic work of Maxim Gorky. Questions arise about his political position in these years, his relationship with Stalin, his judgments about the post-revolutionary situation of the people. Even around the death of the writer, there are many myths that make it difficult to objectively assess the position of Gorky - a writer, publicist and citizen - who returned from abroad in a completely new country, which by that time should have turned into Gorky’s dream

about an ideal socialist state.

The themes of Gorky's late journalism are varied. We will focus on two problems that particularly worried the writer during these years: his thoughts about the peasantry and the fate of culture.

It is known that M. Gorky was quite critical of the peasantry: he saw “darkness and chaos” in the village, “stupidity of peasant peasants”, “servility and passivity”. These qualities of the peasantry, so sharply outlined by the writer, were not consistent with his ideas about building a socialist state - a state of active, intellectually and creatively developed people.

In 1922, M. Gorky’s pamphlet “On the Russian Peasantry” was published in Berlin, in which he sharply characterizes the “barbarity and backwardness of the peasant masses,” prone to “sophisticated cruelty, indifferent to the suffering of others” and sanctimonious ostentatious religiosity, noting at the same time, that these qualities can only be eradicated by extreme measures.

Maxim Gorky writes that “ villager"is passive and not interested in changing his position: "He has almost no - at least very poorly developed - fighting desire to gain a foothold at a chosen point and influence environment in his own interests, but if he decides to do this, a difficult and fruitless struggle awaits him. Those who try to bring something of themselves, something new into the life of the village, the village meets with distrust, hostility and quickly squeezes them out or throws them out of their midst.” However, according to M. Gorky, in a socialist state the personal interest of everyone must be subordinated to collective

interests. The very name “workers’ and peasants’ state” suggests that city and countryside must unite. At the same time, the writer recalls the following: “In 1919, a dear village resident calmly stripped, stripped and generally robbed a city dweller, exchanging everything that the village needed and did not need for bread and potatoes. I don’t want to talk about the rudely mocking, vindictive mockery with which the village greeted the hungry people of the city. Always winning in an exchange, the peasants - for the most part - tried and knew how to give the exchange the humiliating character of alms, which they - reluctantly - give to the master who “lived for the revolution” ... the village well understood the city’s dependence on it, until that moment it felt only its own dependence on the city."

At the same time, M. Gorky seeks to debunk the myth of the “nobility, gentleness and decency” of the Russian peasant, which exists in the imagination of Russian writers of the last century (Turgenev, Nekrasov, Grigorovich, etc.) “But where - finally - is that good-natured, thoughtful Russian peasant, a tireless seeker of truth and justice, about whom the Russian so convincingly and beautifully told the world literature XIX V.?

In my youth, I searched intensely for such a person in the villages of Russia and did not find him. I met there a stern realist and a cunning man, who, when it suits him, perfectly knows how to show himself to be a simpleton. By nature he is not stupid and he himself knows this well. He created many sad songs, rude and cruel tales, created thousands of proverbs that embody the experience of his difficult life. He knows that “a man is not stupid, but the world is a fool” and that “the world

strong as water, but stupid as a pig.” He says: “Don’t be afraid of devils, be afraid of people.” “Beat your own - strangers will be afraid.”

M. Gorky also talks about the cruelty that has persisted in the modern village, despite radical changes in life, about the callousness of a man, and the servility of a woman. “I think that nowhere are women beaten so mercilessly and terribly as in the Russian village, and, probably, in no other country there are such proverbs and advice: “Hit your wife with a butt, come down and sniff - is she breathing?” - he’s fooling, he still wants.” “A wife is twice sweet: when she is taken into the house, and when she is carried to the grave.” “There is no justice for women or cattle.” “The more you beat the woman, the tastier the cabbage soup is.” Hundreds of such aphorisms - they contain the wisdom of the people acquired over centuries - are circulated in the villages, these pieces of advice are heard, and children are brought up on them.” At the same time, M. Gorky makes the following conclusion: “I explain the cruelty of the forms of the revolution by the exceptional cruelty of the Russian people” [ibid.].

However, as if anticipating the future, the publicist hopefully says the following: “Like the Jews, brought out of the slavery of Egypt by Moses, the semi-wild, stupid, heavy people of Russian villages and hamlets will die out - all those almost terrible people mentioned above, and they will be replaced by a new a tribe of literate, intelligent, cheerful people."

In the mid-1920s, probably under the influence of numerous letters about changes in the village, Gorky gradually softened his attitude towards it. So, on December 30, 1925, in a letter to D.A. He writes to Lutokhin: “Ivan Volny writes to me: “It’s especially joyful to look at the village, which I painfully love with all its wildness and

rudeness. The old is over, the old is dying angrily. That’s where he belongs.” These statements about the end of the old come from a wide variety of observers of life: from Vyach. Shishkova, M.M. Prishvina, Akulshina, Klychkova, etc. I don’t really believe it, but I can’t help but rejoice.”

In the 1930s Maxim Gorky diametrically changes his position in relation to the village. In the article “13 Years” he writes: “The most important and most significant thing that happened over the past year was the geological upheaval that the village experienced. One might think that the backbone of the fist, the “world-eater,” is incurably broken.” The writer calls collectivization, which changed the life of the Russian peasant, a “geological shake-up.” These were essentially the same “drastic measures” that M. Gorky wrote about in the 1920s.

And in a letter to R. Rolland in 1931, the writer notes that “the peasantry understands very well that real liberation from hard labor on depleted pieces of land gives them a collective economy, armed with machines.” And this meant that the worst enemy, which M. Gorky is now calling to fight, is the opponent of collectivization, the peasant who does not want to get rid of individual labor. “Inside the country, the most cunning enemies are organizing a food famine against us, the kulaks are terrorizing collectivist peasants with murders, arson, and various villainies - everything that has outlived its time allotted to it by history is against us, and this gives us the right to consider ourselves still in a state of civil war . The conclusion follows from this: if the enemy does not surrender, he is exterminated.”

R. Rolland in one of his letters asked Gorky about the actions

Is it really possible that difficulties with food have arisen in the country of the Soviets, to which Gorky replies: “The heroic, amazingly rich in results, activity of the workers is not understood by the old, kulak spirit of the peasantry. The kulaks are still the leaders of the village, and they teach it: demand everything you want from the city, and don’t give it bread!” . Therefore, the writer now considers the fight against the kulaks to be the most important task.

In the changes taking place in the country, M. Gorky sees the way to deliver the peasant from ignorance, philistinism, cruelty and lack of education. In the article “Answer to an Intellectual,” written in 1931, he writes the following: “In the Union of Soviets, the peasant, switching to collective labor, gradually loses that specific psyche of a slave of the land, an eternal captive of miserable property.” The writer notes that the modern village is gradually enriched with clubs, schools, and libraries. In this M. Gorky sees shining example victories of the new ideology and public policy of the new government.

In 1930, M. Gorky wrote to I.V. Stalin: “After the party so decisively puts the village on the rails of collectivism, the social revolution takes on a truly socialist character. This is an almost geological revolution and it is greater, immeasurably greater than anything that has been done by the party. A system of life that has existed for millennia is being destroyed, a system that created a man who is extremely ugly and unique and capable of terrifying with his animal conservatism, his instinct of ownership.”

Thus, we see how M. Gorky’s perception of the peasantry gradually changed. If

until the mid-1920s. he saw the village as one of the main reasons slowing down the revolution and the construction of a new state, then in the 1930s. he claims that the peasantry, thanks to the collectivization carried out in the country, has risen to the right way development. However, it is obvious that, intentionally or not, the publicist saw only the external results of the changes, not to mention at all the cost of “breaking the backbone” of the old way of life, and the pain it reflected on individual human destinies.

Another problem that worried M. Gorky throughout his life was the problem of the current state of culture, including literature. Culture, in Gorky’s understanding, was the basis for building a successful workers’ and peasants’ state. The writer did not pay so much attention to either economic growth or international prestige. close attention, as art, literature and science. Thus, in the article “The Goals of Our Journal,” published in 1930 in the newspaper Izvestia, Gorky defines the meaning of the word “culture” as follows: “The main content of culture, its essence and meaning - science, technology, art. And in art, the most accessible to the understanding of the masses and therefore the most powerful as a means of cultural education is fiction.” But since literature is still closest to the “man of the masses” (most of whom are still illiterate), this means that the greatest responsibility and the most difficult task are faced by writers. And the fact that the majority of the worker-peasant mass “has not yet succeeded in cultural growth,” M. Gorky admits: “Here we have to say that in the field of culture the worker is not yet the master.

In this area he is still not as close to the point as in the production of material assets. This means that the first task is to concentrate attention on the cultural development of the creators of the future.” Therefore, Maxim Gorky paid great attention to the new generation of writers.

From the correspondence of M. Gorky over the years with young writers, we see how he strove to teach precise mastery of words and shared his personal experience. And in letters of the 1920-30s. we read how Gorky was attentive to the manuscripts sent to him by his younger colleagues. He answered them personally, criticized or praised young talents. Among his correspondents were many names: B. Polevoy, S. Akhrem, A. Peregudov, N. Chertova, A. Rummer and many others. But main advice, which M. Gorky gave to young writers - to study, hone the expressiveness of writing, study their native language and use it skillfully, and also raise pressing problems of their time. This is exactly how a new Soviet proletarian literature can be created. “The revolution brought to life thousands of young people who are tormented by the desire to write and write: poems, stories, novels; writes, in the vast majority of cases, technically illiterate and unsuccessfully, even when in the poems and stories of the young writer one senses knowledge of reality, the ability to observe, and a peculiar attitude towards people, towards the phenomena of life.”

M. Gorky was especially concerned about the work of young writers with words. Due to the lack of education, due to a sharp leap from the “class of farm laborers to the class of creators,” arose serious problem ignorance of the native language, lack of erudition and definitely

th level of culture, despite the fact that new writers “passionately strive to create literature for the benefit of socialism.” “Young writers are in a dramatic situation - they want to learn, they need to know the techniques of verbal creativity. There is no one to teach them." Therefore, M. Gorky believed that all cultural development, and in particular literary development, must be put at the service of the workers' and peasants' state. “In the Country of Soviets, the goal of collective work is the development of culture, the development of reason and the will to live, the creation of an exemplary state of cultural workers” [Ibid., p. 67]. It would seem how far the concepts of collective labor and creativity are from each other, but in the socialist state under construction, the writer puts an equal sign between them. “The work of our writers is a difficult, complex matter. It is not limited to criticism of the old reality, to exposing the contagiousness of its vices. Their task is to study, design, depict and thereby affirm a new reality.” Thus, Gorky believed, literature, and therefore journalism and the press, should be subordinated primarily to the interests of the party and the new socialist ideology. And from this will “flow artistry,” without which it is difficult to imagine real literary creativity. In a letter to Yu. Chibisov in 1927, M. Gorky writes: “In my opinion, the army of worker correspondents and rural correspondents is the future most significant force of our country, all of these are candidates for intellectuals.”

Maxim Gorky supported not only young writers, but also journalism, especially provincial journalism. There is a known episode when the writer asked R. Rolland for support.

to reap the kind words of the editors of the new magazine “Siberian Lights,” which was very important for Gorky as evidence of the success of the common cause of “cultivating” the most remote regions.

The writer has always welcomed the massive nature of cultural growth in the country as a noticeable sign of the “recovery” of the population: “Our culture is built by amazingly talented and daring people: former farm laborers, farm laborers, laborers, working women, now masters of their craft. They are flesh and bone of their class, they are not renegades, they are organically connected with their class. Working in his interests, they do not see their fathers as their enemies and are already teachers of their fathers, for fathers see that children, having inherited revolutionary energy, know how to sharpen and strengthen it with science, philosophy, technology, and that more and more thousands of cultural workers are included in this work ". In his numerous letters, M. Gorky noted that the population began to read so actively that a paper crisis, unknown to this day, even developed. “With much more right than before, one can and should speak of the current literature of the Union of Soviets as a collective work. And never before has a writer been so interesting, so close to the mass of readers, as he is close and interesting in our days, here in the Union of Soviets, he has never been so highly valued by the literate masses, and this assessment is natural, because the masses see how she herself creates writers and how she is reflected in their books.”

In 1931, Gorky wrote in a letter to G.I. Bakalov: “Our young reader is very greedy; this greed is explained by his passionate desire for knowledge; he reads everything to him

give. And, wasting paper on books whose political and technical pedagogy is extremely questionable, due to lack of paper, he is not given books written by classics of Russian and European literature. I am sure that it is my duty to object to this kind of activity of our publishing houses...”

1920-30s marked active publishing activities Maxim Gorky himself. He did a lot to create a publishing base in the USSR, to print the best works of world classics and popular science literature. But it is also obvious that M. Gorky’s publishing work was mostly propaganda and subordinated to the interests of the party and a certain ideology.

Tamara Dubinskaya-Dzhalilova, who published the result of her study of the correspondence between Gorky and Stalin, to which there was no access for a long time, writes the following: “Stalin introduced Gorky to the principles of Soviet cultural policy back in the summer of 1929, sending him his “Reply to Bill-Belotserkovsky” and “Answer to Communist Writers from RAPP” (they were published many years later). We learned about this only now, as well as the fact that the “party’s view of fiction” delighted the writer Maxim Gorky. Let us briefly list the main principles set forth by Stalin. Firstly, to lead the “most complex front of the Soviet fiction"The communists must. Secondly, “polemics” are not needed, but “single and inseparable literary front" Thirdly, one should “operate in fiction with concepts of class order or even with the concepts of “Soviet”, “anti-Soviet”, “revolutionary”, “anti-revolutionary”.

volitional." These are the principles in cultural policy and Gorky conducted. However, at the end of the “discussion about language,” he, according to Stalin, lost his attention to the main criterion for the Bolsheviks in evaluating a work of art. However, this incident did not prevent them from making plans for the further “organization of an army of writers and the reorganization of literary publishing houses.” Methods of “improving literature” were proposed by Gorky in “Note to I.V. Stalin.” The leader was interested in them, although “certain details” caused him “some doubts,” which he invited the writer to discuss during a “personal meeting.” But they did not have time to discuss the details: upon returning to Moscow from Crimea, Gorky immediately fell ill, and soon died. Stalin subsequently implemented one of Gorky’s proposals - internal reviewing was introduced in publishing houses.”

Indeed, the views expressed by Stalin on the nature of literature corresponded to the propagated ideas of Gorky, reflected in his letters and journalism of the 1830s. And again, as in his attitude towards the peasantry, which changed in accordance with the direction of the party’s course, M. Gorky considers issues of culture and literature from the perspective of the ideology of the new state and socialist construction. And if during the revolution culture (in the broad sense of the word) for the writer is the basis on which a new society should be built and grow, now the party itself directed modern culture, and Maxim Gorky was an active ideologist and guide new culture. In this in late period In his activities, he sincerely saw his mission as a writer and publicist.

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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTICLE

Manokhin I.V. Late journalism of M. Gorky / I.V. Manokhin, I.G. Satsyuk // Questions of theory and practice of journalism. - 2017. - T. 6, No. 1. - P. 59-67. - DOI: 10.17150/2308-6203.2017.6(1).59-67.

Introduction 3
Chapter 1. Journalism as a type of literary creativity 5
1.1 The concepts of “journalism”, “journalistic style” 5
1.2 Genres of journalism 9
Chapter 2. Features of M. Gorky’s journalism in the 30s. XX century 15
2.1 Soviet journalism of the 1930s. 15
2.2 The originality of M. Gorky’s journalistic creativity 16
in the 1930s 16
Conclusion 25
References 27

Introduction

The relevance of the topic of the course work is due to the fact that studying the journalistic work of M. Gorky will help to understand not only his social program, but also his philosophy. His journalistic articles directly express many of the thoughts that permeate all of his artistic work. Gorky's journalism of the 1930s. was due to spiritual and historical events revolutionary era (world wars, the dream of a socialist superman, the collapse of humanism, the Bolshevik utopian ideas about building “heaven on earth”). Therefore, an analysis of Gorky’s interpretation will allow us to better understand the creative individuality of the writer, who had a great influence on all subsequent literature of the twentieth century.
In fact, the ideas expressed by Gorky in his journalistic articles formed the basis of the method of socialist realism. However, Gorky's concept of humanism is still analyzed based on the material of his pre-October work.
The object of study of the course work is the journalistic work of M. Gorky in the 1930s.
The subject of the study is the ideological and thematic content and genre features of M. Gorky’s journalistic creativity in the 1930s.
Degree of knowledge. Gorky studies have been a priority area of ​​research in Soviet literary studies for many years. But Gorky’s work at that time was presented in a somewhat simplified, one-sided way, and was often reduced to a set of ideas that became the basis of the method of socialist realism. For many decades, Gorky's journalism did not receive proper coverage. Soviet literature began to be rethought in the last two decades. Gorky's journalism of the 1930s. became the object of research in the works of M. Agursky, P. Basinsky, H. Gunter, S. Kormilov, R. Pevtsova, N. Primochkina, B. Rosenthal, S. Semenova, S. Sukhikh and others.
The purpose of the course work is to analyze the main provisions of M. Gorky’s journalism in the 1930s.
This goal involves solving the following tasks:
1. consider the concepts of “journalism” and “journalistic style”;
2. highlight genres of journalism;
3. identify the features of Soviet journalism of the 1930s;
4. identify the originality of M. Gorky’s journalistic creativity in the 1930s.
The chronological scope of the study is limited to the 1930s.
The theoretical and methodological basis of the study was made up of the works of researchers of the literature of socialist realism (I. Weinberg, I. Kuzmichev, L. Reznikov, etc.) and leading Gorkov scholars (K. Muratova, L. Spiridonova, N. Primochkina, etc.).
The empirical basis of the study was made up of M. Gorky’s journalistic articles of the 1930s: “If the enemy does not surrender, he is destroyed,” “Marx and culture,” “Conversation with the young,” “Generation of Heroes.”
The following research methods were used in the work: systems method, analysis and synthesis, genetic method.
The structure of the course work. The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.

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7. Gorky M. Conversation with young people // M. Gorky. Collected works: in 30 volumes - T. 27. Articles, reports, speeches, greetings (1933-1936). – M.: GIHL, 1953.
8. Gorky M. If the enemy does not surrender, he is destroyed // M. Gorky. Collected works: in 30 volumes - T. 27. Articles, reports, speeches, greetings (1933-1936). – M.: GIHL, 1953.
9. Gorky M. Marx and culture // M. Gorky. Collected works: in 30 volumes - T. 27. Articles, reports, speeches, greetings (1933-1936). – M.: GIHL, 1953.
10. Gorky M. Generation of heroes // M. Gorky. Collected works: in 30 volumes - T. 27. Articles, reports, speeches, greetings (1933-1936). – M.: GIHL, 1953.
11. Kozhina M.N. Stylistics of the Russian language. – 4th ed. reworked and additional – M.: FLINTA, 2011. – 464 p.
12. Literary encyclopedia of terms and concepts / Ch. ed. Nikolyukin A.N. – M., 2001. – 1600 p.
13. Lukov V.A. Genres and genre generalizations // Knowledge. Understanding. Skill. – 2006. – No. 1. – pp. 141-148.
14. Makhonina S.Ya. History of Russian journalism of the early 20th century. – M.: Flinta: Nauka, 2011. – 240 p.
15. Nakoryakova K.M. Literary editing. – M.: IKAR, 2009. – 432 p.
16. Hovsepyan R.P. History of modern domestic journalism. – M.: Nauka, 2005. – 352 p.
17. Fundamentals of journalistic activity: a textbook for bachelors / Ed. S.G. Korkonosenko. – 2nd ed., revised. and additional – M.: Yurayt, 2014. – 332 p.
18. Prokhorov E.P. Introduction to the theory of journalism: a textbook for university students. – 8th ed., rev. – M.: Aspect Press, 2011. – 351 p.
19. Romanova N.N., Filippov A.V. Stylistics and styles. Study guide. Dictionary. – 2nd ed., erased. – M.: Flinta: MPSI, 2012. – 416 p.

Total volume: 27

Year: 2016

The series of my articles is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Russian writer, playwright and public figure A.M. Gorky.

The life-and-death war over the interpretation of HIS LEGACY and the theory of the newest method in world literature - SOCIALIST REALISM - has been going on since the mid-1930s.

Maxim Gorky’s contribution to the literature and aesthetics of Russian civilization and world literature is great.

Henri Barbusse, Heinrich Mann, Martin Andersen Nexe, Leonard Frank, Upton Sinclair, John Galsworthy, Bernhard Kellermann, Knut Hamsun, Theodor Dreiser, Georges Duhamel, Jacob Wasserman, Thomas Mann, Arthur Schnitzler, Selma Lagerlöf, Sherwood Anderson, Louis Aragon, John Steinbeck, Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and others wrote about Maxim Gorky. Even those who were far from him ideologically and creatively wrote about him as a great artist and/or as the first proletarian writer.

CONFERENCES and MONUMENTS...

The interest of Gorky scholars in the work of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century in world literature does not wane. At the end of March 2016, the XXXVII International Conference “M. Gorky - artist and thinker" in Nizhny Novgorod. A collection of her materials has already been published. It contains more than 50 scientific reports.

In 2017, the AST publishing house published a new book, “The Mystery of Gorky’s Death: Documents, Facts, Versions,” prepared by the Gorky sector of the IMLI. The editor-in-chief is the leading modern liberal-leaning Gorky scholar Lidiya Spiridonova. The topic is completely, in my opinion, not relevant. Moreover, it is provocative. But one should not expect a different approach to the work of M. Gorky from such specialists.

The “dreamers,” very similar to the liar Solzhenitsyn, offer their childish, if not more precisely, stupid, version: that Stalin ordered the removal of M. Gorky. For the reason that he did not agree to write an essay about Stalin. Why then did the Leader almost tearfully beg the writer to return to his homeland? If he doesn’t want to, well, let him live in Italy.

No, there was another good reason. He asked to come because, surrounded by Russian-speaking Trotskyists and writers, he could not entrust anyone other than Gorky with the preparation, organization and holding of the founding congress Soviet writers. Gorky coped with the task brilliantly.

Therefore, only the Trotskyists could eliminate it. They removed Kirov in 1934?! And in 1937 they were preparing a coup d'etat. But the plot was discovered. The culprits were shot. That is why their grandchildren still write on this topic. By hook or by crook, remove all suspicion from your grandfathers. Prove that this is not so!!! But one should not expect a different approach to the work of M. Gorky from such specialists.

Literary scholars of the bourgeois-liberal school are looking for the killers of either Yesenin or Mayakovsky. They are trying to accuse the great Russian writer M. Sholokhov of plagiarism, but at the same time they are constantly and shamelessly glorifying Judas and the liar Solzhenitsyn. Unfortunately, among the Russian national intelligentsia today there are much more chicks from Judas’s nest than chicks from M. Gorky’s nest....

The International scientific conference“THE WORLD SIGNIFICANCE OF M. GORKY.” Gorky scholars will deal with the issues of studying and popularizing the work of M. Gorky in Russia and abroad. We can confidently predict: scientists from the Institute of World Literature named after. M. Gorky will be given guidelines about the key in which the significance of the work of the proletarian writer should be interpreted by scientists from Russia, neighboring countries, as well as Italy, Germany, China, Japan, Poland, the Czech Republic, the USA, Israel and other countries. It is clear that this key is anti-Soviet. It is diametrically opposed to the interpretation adopted in Marxist literary criticism....

On the night of July 31, 2017, the monument to Maxim Gorky, dismantled by the Moscow authorities 10 years ago, was returned to Tverskaya Zastava Square near the Belorussky Station...

These events indicate the enormous importance of studying and interpreting the work and heritage of the great Russian proletarian writer for the literature of Russian civilization. One can hope for the speedy publication of a detailed article on the global significance of M. Gorky’s work from a critic posing as the leader of Russian bourgeois literary criticism, Vladimir Bondarenko, as well as from fighters of the liberal front falling out of the nest of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

While we are watching how the bourgeois-liberal regime is preparing for the Year of Solzhenitsyn. The Kremlin gave the command to the Ministry of Culture to help, and it restored the monument to M. Gorky. Otherwise it could have turned out somehow inconvenient. All progressive humanity is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great proletarian writer, the petrel of Russian revolutions. And in Russia, at the state level, they are either opening the Wall of Sorrow or celebrating the centenary of the birth of the world-famous anti-Soviet Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It would be indecent in the Year of Solzhenitsyn to throw M. Gorky out of the memory of the Russian people.

Those in power would very much like ordinary citizens not to forget that the current regime in the Russian Federation is the “most democratic” in the thousand-year history of Russia.

Conferences are conferences, but I didn’t disdain to look into the Russian-language Wikipedia. I have never read so much Freudian chatter and nasty stuff about Gorky about the writer’s mistresses and even about his abnormal mental state. The stupidity of literary henchmen and Vlasovites and their hostility towards the great proletarian writer is off the charts.

And this circumstance is quite normal for the anti-Soviet regime. It would be funny if the newly-embourgeoisized degenerates and Russian-speaking mercenaries of world capital, who by deception and violence took away power from the councils of workers and collective farmers and plundered their public property, allowed us to preserve the foundations of socialist literature and culture, which are the highest achievement of mankind in the 20th century.

The literary semi-literate oligarchs hold neither the storm petrels of the socialist revolution, nor the Pavka Korchagins, nor the Young Guards in high esteem. For those of them who have not yet forgotten how to read and have not lost interest in culture, give books about modern Gobseks and Ostap Benders. About Harry Potter and strawberries...

BUREVESTNIK OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS

M. Gorky is a great Russian proletarian writer. The first - in world literature. He openly wrote and spoke publicly about his political orientation: for the revolution, for socialism, for the proletariat - against the bourgeoisie, aristocracy, nobility, tsarist autocracy, clericalism and corrupt bureaucracy. He condemned the anti-people policy of the tsarist government, which used violence against strikers and the people. He did not hide the fact that he sponsored the Bolshevik Party and supported its revolutionary struggle for people's happiness.

Therefore, history and all progressive humanity honors the memory of this amazing artist of words and fighter for the progressive development of humanity.

I am writing not only to remember our great Russian writer, whose works we have read since childhood and learned the “Song of the Petrel” by heart at school. I cannot imagine Soviet and Russian literature without Gorky, Yesenin, Sholokhov, Proskurin.

I am writing to ask a few questions to myself and my readers:

Are there proletarian writers, proletarian critics and proletarian literary critics among young Russian writers today?

What does it mean to be a proletarian and not a bourgeois writer in our days?

Can M. Gorky serve as an example of a fighter for people's happiness to young writers?

Do they remember the petrel of the Russian socialist revolution, which changed the world and humanity for all future centuries?

These questions and other topics are the subject of this series of my notes on the journalism of the founder of a new fiction in the universal history of mankind - PROLETARIAN. It is he who plays the role of the discoverer of a new method of depicting reality. He laid the first concrete block in the foundation of the new world eternal socialist fiction. LITERATURES OF SOCIALIST REALISM. This great event occurred during the transition period from capitalist to socialist civilization, not only in Russia, but in all countries of the world.

M. Gorky's journalism is extremely rich in themes and ideas. We will get to know some of them in this series of articles.

________________________

Literary scholars and critics were more interested in the artistic works of M. Gorky than in his historical and political essays and articles. Since they were written from a clear class perspective in their time, they received less attention from the reading public in Soviet times. Then all citizens were taught internationalism and a class approach to all events in the country and the world.

Now the situation has changed so much that it is Gorky’s journalism that should interest us most of all. Because it is precisely this that the ruling regime fears. Because so many lies and myths have been made up about the years of revolutions, Civil War and foreign intervention, the first years of industrialization, collectivization, and the cultural revolution. So much - that it requires an appeal to the primary sources of those years, written by the first proletarian chroniclers, and not by the White Guard and emigrant enemies of Soviet workers and Russian-speaking anti-communists posing as liberals.

The relevance of the topic is dictated not only by the lies of Russian-speaking liberals, but also by the widely spread lies composed by the reactionary circles of Russian nationalists - the Vlasov and White Guard spill. There are quite a few of them divorced. Especially in circles close to the Russian Orthodox Church. The ranks of anti-Soviet clergy of the Gundyaev caste are also growing. In this environment, the ideology of the liar and Judas A. Solzhenitsyn is especially popular.

I was amazed by the interviews of the most “outstanding” Russian nationalists, heard on Orthodox radio and then published in the collection “Faith. Power. People: Russian thought of the late 20th - early 21st centuries / Editor-in-chief O. A. Platonov. - M.: Institute of Russian Civilization, 2016. - 1200. (The collection can be downloaded from the website of the Institute of Russian Civilization. We will need it when discussing issues related to the ideology of terry Russian nationalists - anti-communists and anti-Sovietists.)

M. Gorky sharply opposed the White Guards as the notorious enemies of the Soviet power of workers and collective farmers constantly.

ABOUT THE REVOLUTION OF 1905 AND ABOUT THE ROYAL AUTOCRASH.

Just over a hundred years have passed since the Russian Revolution of 1905. Is it a lot or a little? For the history of mankind, this is one moment.

How many events happened in the 20th century?! The Great October Russian Revolution. Civil and two world wars. More than a hundred million dead and twice as many maimed. You will not find a family that has not suffered from these events of unprecedented cruelty.

Gorky in Tsarist Russia made a choice - to work for the people, to liberate the working people from noble-bourgeois oppression, to fight for the people's happiness. What did he pay for for supporting the revolutionary proletariat in 1901-6... with the reputation of an “unreliable” writer?

In 1898, M. Gorky published two volumes of Essays and Stories, and the third volume the following year.

Turns to dramaturgy: the plays “The Bourgeois” (1901), “At the Lower Depths” (1902). He is already the author of six volumes literary works. About 50 of his works have been translated and published in 16 foreign languages.

Twice the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers and Composers awarded Gorky the Griboedov Prize for the plays “Philistines” and “At the Lower Depths” and became the leading playwright at the Art Theater (MAT). His new plays “Summer Residents”, “Children of the Sun”, “Barbarians” are staged in theaters. He meets with many famous artists, writers and poets. Among them were L. N. Tolstoy, A. Chekhov, I. Repin, K. Stanislavsky and singer Fyodor Chaliapin. Not every young writer achieves such fame six years after entering the literary arena.

His "Song of the Petrel" (1901) was regarded as anti-government propaganda, as a call for the violent overthrow of the existing system. After a month's imprisonment in a Nizhny Novgorod prison, he was transferred to house arrest. For protesting against the shooting of a peaceful demonstration of workers on January 9, 1905, M. Gorky was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The arrest of the famous writer caused outrage not only in Russia, but also in Europe. The authorities had to release him a month later...

He wrote about the bourgeois intelligentsia of that time: “... it seems to the intellectuals that they are defending “democracy”, although it has already proven and continues to prove its powerlessness; they are defending “personal freedom”, although it is squeezed into the cage of ideas that limit its intellectual growth; defend “freedom of speech,” although the press has been captured by the capitalists and can only serve their anarchic, inhuman, criminal interests. The intellectual works for his enemy, because the owner has always been and is the enemy of the worker, and the idea of ​​“class cooperation” is as naive nonsense as friendship. wolves with rams." (volume 26 of the 30-volume collected works)

Both in Tsarist Russia and in Soviet Russia, Gorky occupied a clear class position. As a native of the people, who during his wanderings around Rus' saw a lot of poverty and misery, ugly situations of lack of rights of ordinary people, he, unlike some modern intellectuals, who came from Soviet families and now serve the oligarchic comprador class, stood in defense of the interests of the oppressed masses.

When I read articles by people who were born either before the Great Patriotic War or after it, writing, for example, about the revolutionary events of 1905 and proving that Russian workers and peasants lived better under Nicholas II than in the USSR, I always ask myself: did they themselves live in those days? No, they didn't live. This means they are taking information from some unverified or deceitful source. Or they suck information out of their own fingers.

As a historian, I know what a reliable source is. In addition to the archives, there are notes and articles preserved in the works of great writers. What happened in January 1905 in Moscow? We take a volume of articles by M. Gorky, written by him in the revolutionary year nine hundred and five, and read his articles of that time.

We read not materials written by someone unknown, hired and paid, or an honest person, but the works of a classic of world literature. He described what he saw with his own eyes. He himself was a participant.

What did Gorky see in Russia before the revolution of 1905 and in what events did he take part? What did he write about them in the Russian and world progressive press?

About Russia, the one that modern monarchists lick, he wrote:

“We live in a country where people are whipped to this day, whipped with whips, beaten to death with sticks, where ribs are broken, hit in the face for fun, where there is no limit to violence against people, where the forms of torture are varied to the point of disgust, to the point of insane shame. A people brought up in a school so similar to a popular print depicting the torments of hell, a people brought up with fists, rods and whips, cannot be soft-hearted. A person who was trampled underfoot in the police station becomes capable of trampling underfoot someone like himself. In a country where lawlessness has reigned for so long, it is difficult for the people to immediately recognize the power of law; it is impossible to demand justice from them, unfamiliar with it."

Gorky saw with his own eyes the acute class struggle of the masses of the people with a group of nobles and bourgeois led by the monarch, and saw the division of society into antagonistic classes.

Without fear of revenge from the tsarist government, he wrote:

“People are increasingly divided into two irreconcilable camps - a minority armed with everything that can protect them, a majority who have only one weapon - their hands - and one desire - equality. To the right stand impassive, like machines, slaves of capital, chained in iron; they are accustomed to consider themselves masters of life, but in fact they are weak-willed servants of the cold, yellow devil, whose name is gold. To the left, the real masters of all life, the only living force that sets everything in motion, are increasingly merging into an irresistible squad - the working people... their heart burns with confidence in victory, and they see their future - freedom ... "

During the revolutionary events of 1905, the writer openly called on workers to unite and oppose the tsar, whom the current rulers and nationalists of all stripes and shades who supported them hastily ranked among the “saints.”

M. Gorky turned to foreign bankers and asked not to provide loans to the tsar, who ordered the execution of civilians on January 9. The day before, he, as part of a delegation, went to beg the Tsar to come out and talk to the people. The officials did not meet the requests of the people; they sent the Cossacks. They opened fire, as the butcher generals ordered.

And after Bloody Sunday he wrote:

“...everywhere one can see the vile work of a handful of people, maddened by the fear of losing their power over the country - people who strive to pour blood on the brightly flaring fire of the people’s consciousness of their right to be the builder of forms of life... These people are accustomed to power, they feel so good lived when they could, without giving an account of their actions to anyone, control the fate and wealth of our country, the strength and blood of the people: they were accustomed to look at Russia as their estate, they forcibly kept the powerless people in ignorance and filth - in order to weaken the spirit of the people, prevent their energy from growing, make them a blind and dumb slave, obedient to their will."

Do you think the current ruling class in Russia acts differently?

In those revolutionary days, he addressed the workers not only of Russia, but of all countries, published in newspapers: “Comrades! The struggle against the vile oppression of the unfortunate is a struggle for the liberation of the world, yearning for deliverance from a whole network of gross contradictions against which [all of humanity] is being broken, full of feelings of bitterness and powerlessness. You, comrades, are bravely trying to break this network, but your enemies persistently want to return you to even greater restrictions. Your weapon, your sharp sword is TRUTH, but the weapon of your enemies is FALSE. before his power they do not see the great ideals of the unity of all mankind in one big family of free workers. This ideal sparkles like a star and rises higher and shines brighter in the darkness of the storm.

“The capitalists, nobles, and autocracy are frightened by the revolutionary uprising of the proletarian masses in Russia. They are fighting the proletariat and using all the means at their disposal in this merciless battle. Seeing the powerful movement of the masses towards freedom and light, they, trembling with horror, vainly console themselves with the hope of defeating justice and resort to the last resort, slander, presenting the proletariat as a crowd of hungry animals, capable only of mercilessly destroying everything that comes their way. They have turned religion and science into weapons of your enslavement. They came up with nationalism and anti-Semitism - this poison with which they want to kill faith in the brotherhood of all people. Their god, however, exists only for the bourgeoisie, in order to guard its property.... Long live the proletariat, boldly striving for the renewal of the world! Long live the workers of all countries, with whose hands the wealth of nations was created and who are now striving to [create] a new life! Long live socialism - the religion of the workers! Hello to the fighters, hello to the workers of all countries, may they always maintain their faith in the victory of truth and justice! Long live humanity, united by the great ideals of equality and freedom!” (Maxim Gorky. Excerpts from articles. Volume 23 of a 30-volume collected works).

This is what it means to be a proletarian writer!!!

M. GORKY IN EXILE

At the beginning of 1906, M. Gorky was forced to leave Russia due to police persecution. He could not return, because arrest and trial awaited him. The progressive press published his articles that were unpleasant for the tsarist government and the Black Hundred circles of the bourgeois and noble intelligentsia.

He went to America to raise funds for the revolutionary movement in Russia. At this time he writes and then publishes the story "Mother". Present at the V Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. Meets with V.I. Lenin in London.

Lenin praised the story: “A very timely book.” For the first time in Russian literature, “the image of the worker appeared as the future master of his country, as the creator of its history.” The story is translated into foreign languages. As A. Lunacharsky wrote, “the workers’ press, mainly German, and partly French and Italian, picked up this story and distributed it in the form of newspaper supplements or feuilletons in literally millions of copies. “Mother” has become a reference book for the European proletariat.”

Then M. Gorky goes to Italy and lives for several years in Capri. There he writes the story “Childhood,” one of Gorky’s most perfect works. (The trilogy “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities” became my reference books during my school years).

While abroad, M. Gorky maintained a lively correspondence with Lenin, publishers, and writers.

Only at the end of 1913 was he finally able to return to his homeland: an amnesty was declared on the occasion of the “tercentenary of the House of Romanov.” “I was greeted by democracy affectionately and touchingly, Moscow alone congratulated me over 70 times.” Greetings came from students, the professional society of workers in the printing arts, from the society of workers in periodicals and literature, from different cities, from newspapers and magazines.

The name of M. Gorky has always been associated with the revolution. Gorky is the “petrel of the revolution”, “the Great Proletarian Artist”. However, the publication of M. Gorky’s book “Untimely Thoughts,” which was banned for more than seventy years, changed ideas about Gorky the thinker.

In the book, Gorky criticizes Lenin, denounces the revolution, Soviet power, and predicts future national disasters. “Our revolution gave full play to all the bad and brutal instincts that had accumulated under the lead roof of the monarchy, and, at the same time, it threw aside all the intellectual forces of democracy, all the moral energy of the country.”

“How does Lenin’s attitude to freedom of speech differ from the same attitude of the Stolypins, Plehve and other half-humans? Isn’t it the same way that Lenin’s power grabs and drags into prison those who do not think according to their opinions, just as the Romanov government did?” “Imagining themselves to be the Napoleons of socialism, the Leninists tear and rush, completing the destruction of Russia - the Russian people will pay for this with lakes of blood.”

For Gorky, the revolution of 1905 was the awakening of a “new, powerful, truly vital force”, the beginning of the struggle of the working class for “the right to be a person, and not a profitable item for the bourgeoisie.” Gorky welcomes the revolution. But in her way “stands a fat man with a paunch, a lover of oysters, women, good poetry... a man who absorbs all the blessings of life like a bottomless bag” - a bourgeois intellectual. According to Gorky at that time, the intelligentsia is the ballast of the nation, which must be gotten rid of.

Gorky and Blok are two key figures of the era who were in the field of view of readers, critics, cultural figures, and politicians. They represented two poles of the life of the nation, two wings of Russian culture at the beginning of the 20th century. Gorky comes from the people, knowing life in its most unsightly, sometimes ugly forms; Blok is a hereditary intellectual, an esthete, brought up in the traditions of Western European humanism, on the highest examples of Russian and world culture. They belong to the same time, they are occupied with the same problems, but they solve them differently.

Blok considered the relationship between the people and the intelligentsia to be dramatic and even tragic. The poet states a “terrible division”: “there are really not only two concepts, but two realities: the people and the intelligentsia; one hundred and fifty million on the one hand and several hundred thousand on the other; people who do not mutually understand each other in the most “basic” way. But Blok is sure that there is a “thin line of agreement” between the people and the intelligentsia, and Gorky is “the last significant phenomenon” on this line.

After the February Revolution, the main thing for Gorky was to defend its gains and fight for the development of culture. However, the first revolutionary events also caused the first disappointments. Gorky’s point of view on the intelligentsia changes under the influence of historical circumstances: “The Russian intelligentsia... must undertake the great work of spiritual healing of the people. Now she can work in conditions of greater freedom...” Now Gorky reacts painfully to the misunderstanding between the people and the intelligentsia, trying to find an explanation for the tragic alienation between them.

Gorky himself rejected the possibility of any “conciliation line”, he believed true meaning revolution “separation” from the philistine intellectuals. Gorky asserts the unconditional priority of mass creativity over individual creativity. The masses create history, realize the creativity of life itself. Gorky was inspired by the idea of ​​​​the advantages of a collective society...

Gorky understands that the revolution turned into anarchy, destruction, violence, rampant cruelty, hatred, and a threat to the existence of culture. In “Untimely Thoughts” it sounds insistently: “Citizens! Culture is in danger!”; “If the revolution is not capable of immediately developing intense cultural construction in the country... then the revolution is fruitless, has no meaning, and we are a people incapable of life”; “I don’t know anything else that can save our country from destruction.” Now Gorky sees the cause of the destruction of personality in collectivism, in the chaos of dark passions and ignorance.

“What new does the revolution give, how does it change the brutal Russian way of life, how much light does it bring into the darkness? folk life? - asks Gorky. And he answers: “During the revolution, there have already been up to 10 thousand “lynchings.” This is how democracy judges its sinners.” He cites an episode when a crowd that had beaten a caught thief “held a vote: what death should the thief be executed with: drowning or shooting?”

From article to article, Gorky’s polemic with the Bolsheviks becomes more and more noticeable, gradually moving to an increasingly open, harsh form: “I believe that the reason of the working class, its consciousness of its historical tasks will soon open the eyes of the proletariat to the unrealizability of Lenin’s promises, to the full depth his madness and his Nechaev-Bakunin anarchism.” It becomes obvious that for the Bolsheviks the only way to retain power is to maintain and strengthen the dictatorship.

Gorky sees with horror how the campaign of unbridled Red Terror is unleashed: “Everything that contains cruelty or recklessness will always find access to the feelings of the ignorant and savage. Recently, the sailor Zheleznyakov, translating the ferocious speeches of his leaders into the simple language of a man of the masses, said that for the well-being of the Russian people, a million people can be killed.”

Gorky sees the essence of the tragedy in the substitution and then complete displacement of culture by politics, and the complete subordination of culture to politics, in the transformation of culture into a means of political activity and class struggle, and therefore in the distortion of the essence and meaning of culture as such.

Blok has a different perception of October. Not being a revolutionary, a comrade-in-arms of the Bolsheviks, Blok, unlike Gorky, accepted the revolution, but as an inevitable event of history, as a conscious choice of the Russian intelligentsia, thereby bringing the great national tragedy. Hence his perception of the revolution as “retribution” against the former ruling class, an intelligentsia cut off from the people, a refined, “pure”, largely elitist culture, of which he himself was a leader and creator.

In the article “Intellectuals and Revolution” (1918) he writes: “In that stream of thoughts and premonitions that captured me ten years ago, there was a mixed feeling for Russia: melancholy, horror, repentance, hope.” Revolution is retribution against the past. But the fact of the matter is that the meaning of the revolution, its essence, is aspiration into an unknown future, which is why horror, repentance, and melancholy are covered by hope for the best. "Russia - big ship, which is destined for a great voyage.”

The revolution in Blok’s romantic view is a whirlwind, a storm; “she is akin to nature”: “What were you thinking? That the revolution is an idyll? That creativity does not destroy anything in its path? That people are good boys? That hundreds of swindlers, provocateurs, Black Hundreds, people who love to warm their hands, will not try to grab what is bad? And, finally, what is so “bloodless” and so “painless”, and will the centuries-old discord between the “black” and “white” bones, between the “educated” and the “uneducated,” between the intelligentsia and the people be resolved?

“Only the spirit can fight horrors.” Blok called the “spirit” - of Russia, revolution, renewal - music. He spoke of the "duty of the artist" to "listen to the music" of the revolution - "with all his body, with all his heart, with all his mind." This perception took Blok away from the harsh and harsh reality, poeticized and elevated the revolution in his eyes.

After the revolution, as Blok said, art, life and politics developed inseparably, but henceforth they could not merge into any sociocultural unity. Their destiny was a mutual attraction to each other and a fierce struggle among themselves. This was expressed in the articles of Blok and Gorky about the intelligentsia and the revolution.

Introduction

1. The beginning of M. Gorky's journalistic activity
2. The main ideas of M. Gorky's journalistic activities

Conclusion

List of used literature

Introduction

At the turn of the new revolutionary upsurge in the mid-90s, when the “mass labor movement with the participation of social democracy” began in Russia, M. Gorky entered the field of professional journalist. The early journalism of the great proletarian writer continued the best traditions revolutionary democratic press. Working in 1895-1896. in the provincial newspapers of the Volga region and the South of Russia - "Samara Gazeta", "Nizhegorodsky Listok" and "Odessa News" - he invariably defended the interests of the people. True, at that time his worldview had not yet fully formed; rejecting the landowner-bourgeois system, Gorky did not see any real ways to replace it. And, nevertheless, the appearance of Gorky in the legal press was an important event in Russian journalism.

1. The beginning of M. Gorky’s journalistic activity

Samara Gazeta was a typical liberal-bourgeois provincial publication. It had widely developed departments of chronicles, reviews (metropolitan and provincial press, local life), correspondence, feuilletons, and fiction were published. In the 90s, the following people collaborated with the newspaper: N. I. Asheshov, S. S. Gusev, N. G. Garin-Mikhailovsky, S. G. Petrov (Wanderer). The newspaper's circulation was two to three thousand copies.

In “Essays and Sketches,” which Gorky began writing immediately upon his arrival in Samara in the spring of 1895, he for the first time had the opportunity to directly address the reader and give a public assessment of a number of phenomena public life. “Essays and Sketches” were based mainly on materials from the provincial press.

Almost simultaneously, Gorky, under the pseudonym Yehudiel Chlamida, began to run one of the most militant sections of the newspaper - a feuilleton on a local topic entitled “By the way.” He uses everyday facts for serious conversation on important issues, notices what is typical, and moves on to broad social generalizations. Unlike many provincial newspapermen, Gorky does not succumb to the fact: it is important to him not only in itself, but as a reason for conversation with the reader on pressing problems of life. Gorky deeply believed in the great progressive power of the press and viewed the newspaper as “an arena for the struggle for truth and goodness,” calling it “the scourge of the philistine conscience, a noble bell that broadcasts only the truth.”

The general character of the speeches of Gorky the publicist is protesting, accusatory. His materials indicate the author’s deep dissatisfaction with the entire system of life of the landowner-bourgeois state. The writer's feuilletons with extraordinary courage revealed many of the ulcers of provincial life: mockery of human dignity, lack of rights for women, savagery, lack of culture, the inner emptiness of the lives of ordinary people, etc.

The most great attention devoted to the exploitation of the working people. Not afraid of administrative and censorship persecution, Gorky exposes the Samara manufacturer Lebedev, who uses child labor in his factory (“By the way”). The situation of the workers is discussed in the sketches “Something about typesetters”, “Just like ours”, etc. Gorky’s sympathies are entirely on the side of the workers. He rejoices at the manifestation of solidarity among them, the craving for culture, “the emergence among some of the working environment of self-awareness and awareness of their human rights.”

A number of essays and feuilletons are devoted to the situation of peasants. Gorky does not idealize the peasant, he sees his underdevelopment, downtroddenness, suppressed sense of human dignity and understands that he is to blame for this social order, dooming the people to a powerless, half-starved existence. Officials and merchants treat the peasant rudely, rob him in transactions, and selfishly take advantage of his hopeless situation. Gorky is especially outraged by the cynicism of people of intelligent professions - lawyers, doctors - in relation to the common people (“Operation with a peasant”). He condemns the morals of the bourgeois provincial press, which makes the troubles and misfortunes of some people entertainment for others.

A large place in the feuilletons is given to the contrasts of a large capitalist city, criticism of the backwardness of provincial life, lack of culture. Gorky's clearly expressed sympathies for workers, peasants and small employees aroused the anger of the local bosses, but this did not frighten him. "...Newspaper! I am pleased with her, she does not give quiet days to the local public. She pricks like a hedgehog. Fine! Although it would be necessary for her to hit empty heads like a hammer,” Gorky noted in a letter to Korolenko on March 15, 1895.

Samara themes under Gorky’s pen sounded socially broad, going far beyond the borders of the city and province. In the writer’s feuilletons published in Samara Gazeta, the face of the entire autocratic Russia is clearly visible.

Staying in Samara is extremely important stage in the ideological and creative growth of Gorky. Along with journalism, “Song of the Falcon”, “Old Woman Izergil” and other works were created here. Work at Samara Gazeta provided the writer with ample material for developing the theme of philistinism, “okurovshchina.”

At the end of 1895, Gorky, as a correspondent for the newspaper Odessa News, went to Nizhny Novgorod to the All-Russian Industrial and art exhibition and at the same time began to collaborate in the Nizhegorodsky Leaf newspaper.

According to the plan of Tsar's Minister Witte, the exhibition was supposed to show the successes of Russian capitalism achieved over the past 10-12 years. But the advertising nature of the exhibition did not deceive Gorky. He was among those few Russian correspondents who were able to fairly evaluate it, despite the fuss raised by liberal and monarchist newspapers around the “Nizhny Novgorod miracle.” Gorky’s sober voice sounded throughout Russia: “The exhibition is instructive much more as a true indicator of the imperfections of human life than as a picture of the successes of the country’s industrial technology.” The young journalist was not overwhelmed by the scope and pomp with which it was arranged.

Gorky immediately noted a decisive drawback of the exposition: the pavilions and stands did not reflect at all the life and work of the people who produced all the valuables on display. How, by whom, and under what conditions tons of iron, coal, cotton were mined, cars were built, things were made - it was impossible to find out. The exhibition did not show the great creative power of the people.

The writer takes every opportunity to recall the cruel exploitation that reigns in domestic enterprises, which, of course, the organizers of the exhibition kept silent about. He talks about miserable wages, about the semi-slave labor of workers under capitalism. Life is abnormal when iron takes precedence, and man slavishly serves it (essay “Among the Metal”).

Describing the final preparations for the opening of the pavilions, Gorky notes that even here, scenes of exploitation are encountered at every step: “On all sides you are surrounded by various architectural delicacies..., and between them, on the same ground... bent over in three deaths, dirty and sweat-drenched workers drive wooden wheelbarrows and carry ten-pound boxes with exhibits “on their backs.” This is too striking... It’s unpleasant to see at an art and industrial exhibition an exhibition of the grueling day labor of unskilled workers.”

2. The main ideas of M. Gorky’s journalistic activities

Gorky’s essays and correspondence that made up the cycle “From the All-Russian Exhibition” are full of deep indignation against the absurd, unjustified admiration of its organizers for foreignness and neglect of their own, domestic. It’s a shame to see the West constantly and everywhere as our teacher, he says. The engine department is striking in the absence of Russian names - there are only Bromleys, Laharpes, Nobels, Tsindels around, and this offends Gorky’s patriotic feeling.

“I’m not a nationalist, not an apologist for Russian identity, but when I walk through the engine room, I feel sad. Russian surnames are almost completely absent from it - all are German, Polish surnames. But, however, some guy, it seems, Ludwig Tsop, is producing iron “according to the engineer Artemyev’s system”... This makes a piercing impression. They say that the soil of industrial activity is most likely to be akin to humanity. This would be good, of course, but for now I still want to see engineer Artemyev independently implementing his product processing system.”

The writer looks with alarm at how foreign capital, with the connivance of the tsarist government, is taking over one after another the leading branches of national industry: engineering, oil, textiles. Official patriotism is alien to him. He condemns the organizers of the exhibition for trying to present the self-taught artisan Korkin, who tried to make a bicycle and a piano by hand, as an example of Russian ingenuity, as a national genius, and sneers at those who remembered Polzunov and Yablochkin just for the sake of the exhibition.

The work of talented and hardworking Russian people, well organized and skillfully directed, could really produce great results, but in Tsarist Russia this does not and cannot happen.

Gorky truthfully depicts the degeneration of the bourgeois intelligentsia, its pernicious influence on all aspects of social and cultural life. Everything that the bourgeoisie touches with its dirty hands is vulgarized: cinema, painting, music, theater. The exhibition particularly clearly demonstrated the desire of the bourgeoisie to turn art into piquant entertainment. The bourgeois intellectual, like the Siberian merchant, only had access to café pleasures (“Entertainment”).

The severity of Gorky's essays and correspondence was such that city newspapers were forbidden to print his articles during the Tsar's visit to Nizhny Novgorod.

It should be noted that there is some difference in approach to the theme of the exhibition between Gorky’s essays and correspondence in Nizhny Novgorod List and in Odessa News. Nizhny Novgorod residents were more fully informed about the exhibition and exhibition life, so they were not interested in descriptions of the celebration, but in the assessment and comments of the publicist. And vice versa, the Odessa reader wanted to know about all the attractions of the exhibition, about how and what life is like in Nizhny Novgorod. Gorky took this into account in his correspondent work, never, however, sacrificing serious conclusions for the sake of entertainment. On the pages of Odessa News, he was able to highlight the shortcomings of the existing social system with contrasts of moods, landscapes, allegories, and remarks from his interlocutors.

Gorky’s articles, essays and correspondence about the All-Russian Exhibition of 1896 helped the Russian reader understand the ostentatious nature of “this universal shop”, which covered up the anti-people essence of the policy of the tsarist government. They played a significant role in the creative growth of the writer himself.

The exhibition gave Gorky new material for sharp criticism of decadent bourgeois culture, art and literature. In a number of articles and essays, the writer revealed the reactionary essence of naturalism and decadence - movements in art generated by the era of capitalism, developing into imperialism.

Regarding the assessment of new trends in Russian painting, especially the paintings of Vrubel and Gallen, Gorky enters into polemics with the artist Karelin, who wrote in the newspapers Nizhegorodskaya Pochta and Volgar, and the publicist Dedlov from Nedelya. He criticizes not only fashion painting impressionists, but also the poetry of decadents, symbolists, alien to working people. “...Gentlemen artists and poets, stricken by decadence and a fashionable disease, look at art as an area of ​​free expression of their personal feelings and sensations, not constrained by any laws. “Art is free,” they firmly remember and confidently engage in haidama in art, putting forward in place of the crystal clear and sonorous verse of Pushkin their own non-rhythmic verses, without meter and content, with vague images and with exaggerated claims to the originality of themes, and in place paintings by Repin, Perov, Pryanishnikov and other colossi of Russian painting - colossal canvases, the technique of which is quite similar to the angular and disheveled verses of Madame Gippius and others like her. What social meaning is there in all this, what positive significance can this dance of St. Vitus have in poetry and painting?” The writer himself defends clarity and simplicity in art, its close connection with life. The task of literature and painting is to ennoble the human spirit, to educate him ideologically, to show the truth of life. Art should teach a person to think; there can be no place in it for stupid and harmful “eccentricities.”

Gorky highly values ​​the realism of Makovsky’s painting, the acting of the Maly Theater actors, program music, and asserts the immeasurable superiority of Renaissance artists and Russian masters of the 19th century. over impressionist painting. He especially appreciates the genuine art of the people themselves, no matter in what forms it appears. The writer speaks with delight about the nameless Russian stone-cutters, who give the stone “light, airy forms” and have “delicate taste,” “a confident hand,” and “a well-developed sense of proportion.” Gorky’s sympathies are given to “grandmother Irina,” the famous storyteller Irina Andreevna Fedosova (essay “Voplenitsa”).

Gorky’s speeches touching on issues of art are accompanied by his article “Paul Verlaine and the Decadents,” published by Samara Gazeta in 1896. It most fully reveals the roots and social meaning of decadence as an art generated by the decaying bourgeoisie. Pessimism and complete indifference to reality are characteristic features of the work of French and Russian decadents (Rimbaud, Malarme, Sologub, Merezhkovsky, etc.). “...Decadents and decadence are a harmful, antisocial phenomenon, a phenomenon that must be fought,” writes Gorky.

Conclusion

From article to article, Gorky's journalistic skills become stronger. Coming from the people, who saw a lot “in people” even during his wanderings in Rus', the writer tirelessly works on himself and comes closer and closer to the class truth of the proletariat, to the masterpieces of his work - “The Song of the Petrel”, the novel “Mother” and others the best works. Until the end of his life he did not stop his journalistic activities. The professional journalist school turned out to be extremely useful for the future growth of the writer.

List of used literature

1. Paramonov B.. Gorky, white spot. October, 1992, N 5, p. 158.
2. Drunk M.. Toward comprehension of the “Russian system of soul” in the revolutionary era. Star. - 1991 - N 7. - p. 183.