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Lavrentiy Beria
Maxim Gorky, a pioneering Russian writer and political activist, became a key figure in literature and revolutionary movements. His works, like Mother and The Lower Depths, exposed societal injustices and championed the working class, earning him recognition as a founder of socialist realism. A passionate advocate for social change, he held close ties with Lenin and supported the Bolshevik cause, though his relationship with the Soviet regime grew increasingly complex. In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn portrays Gorky through a critical lens, depicting him as a writer whose earlier compassion for the oppressed conflicted with his later complicity in Stalin's regime. Gorky defended Soviet policies, including the use of labor camps, and his image became entangled with state propaganda.
Maxim Gorky Quotes in The Gulag Archipelago
The The Gulag Archipelago quotes below are all either spoken by Maxim Gorky or refer to Maxim Gorky. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Part 3, Chapter 2: The Archipelago Rises from the Sea Quotes
On June 23 Gorky left Solovki. Hardly had his steamer pulled away from the pier than they shot the boy. (Oh, great interpreter of the human heart! Great connoisseur of human beings! How could he have failed to take the boy along with him?!)
And that is how faith in justice was instilled in the new generation.
They try to tell us that up there on the summit the chief of literature made excuses, that he didn’t want to publish praise of USLON. But how can that be, Aleksei Maximovich? With bourgeois Europe looking on?! But right now, right at this very moment, which is so dangerous and so complicated! And the camp regimen there? We’ll change it, we’ll change the camp regimen.
And he did publish his statement, and it was republished over and over in the big free press, both our own and that of the West, claiming it was nonsense to frighten people with Solovki, and that prisoners lived remarkably well there and were being well reformed.
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Maxim Gorky Character Timeline in The Gulag Archipelago
The timeline below shows where the character Maxim Gorky appears in The Gulag Archipelago. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 3, Chapter 2: The Archipelago Rises from the Sea
In 1929, the famous writer Maxim Gorky visited Solovki, raising hopes among the prisoners that he would expose the camp’s atrocities. The...
(full context)
Gorky left the camp visibly emotional, but upon his return to Moscow, he published a statement...
(full context)
Part 3, Chapter 13: Hand Over Your Second Skin Too!
...against inmates with absurd charges, like expressing “defeatist propaganda” or criticizing state-favored writers such as Gorky. Innocuous comments about the harsh living conditions or criticism of the Soviet system earned inmates...
(full context)
