Authors

Russian · 1868–1936

Maxim Gorky

Maxim Gorky was the pen name of Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, a Russian author who rose from extreme poverty to become the founder of Socialist Realism and the most prominent figure in Soviet literary culture. His play The Lower Depths (1902) is the most frequently performed Russian play internationally after Chekhov. His autobiography — Childhood, In the World, My Universities — is one of the great self-portraits of emergence from destitution. His relationship with Lenin and Stalin was complicated; he spent time abroad criticizing Bolshevik terror before returning to become the regime's literary showpiece.