The Book about the Russian Village: M. Gorky’s Unfulfilled Plan of the 1930s

Abstract

The article attempts to reconstruct M. Gorky’s unfulfilled plan of the mid-1930s to write a book about the Russian pre-revolutionary village for the literary and artistic series “Kolkhoznik Library,” which was part of the publishing project “History of the Village.” The author deeply analyzes Gorky’s stories “Saddler and Fire,” “Execution,” “Eagle,” “Bull,” published in 1934–1935 in the “Kolkhoznik” magazine, and also the initial fragment of his unfinished story about the Russian village. The material of Gorky’s correspondence with V.Ya. Zazubrin and archival sources on the “History of the Village” (the Archive of A.M. Gorky IWL RAS, Moscow) show the emergence of the idea of a book about the Russian village and the beginning of the writer’s work on its embodiment; the pre-term volume of the collection and its place in the literary and artistic series “Kolkhoznik Library.” The article demonstrates the special importance that Gorky attached to the publishing project “The History of the Village” and within its framework “Kolkhoznik Library,” which is confirmed by the writer’s intention to create a new book of works of fiction specifically for this series.