M. Gorky “About the Russian peasantry”: Problematics, poetics, historical context

Abstract

The article examines Gorky’s special, negatively distrustful attitude towards the Russian peasantry, whose political and spiritual conservatism could prevent, in the writer’s opinion, the realization of the socialist ideals of the revolution. During the 1917 revolution and the Civil War, it seemed to Gorky that it was the Russian “peasant” who could ruin the revolution and that the revolution itself was inexorably turning into a brutal struggle between town and village, workers and intellectuals on the one hand and peasants on the other. The result of the writer ‘s intense reflections in 1917–1921. Gorky’s artistic and journalistic article “On the Russian Peasantry” (1922) was about the fate of his native people and its role in the revolution, which became his first major public appearance in the press after leaving Russia for Europe. Based on Gorky’s negative attitude towards the Russian peasantry, it seems quite natural that the writer at the turn of the 1920–30s supported the Bolshevik policy of universal collectivization of the village. Moreover, it was the radical breaking of the foundations of village life that made him believe in the “truly socialist character” of the October Revolution.