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Why bitter called his thoughts untimely. Untimely Thoughts M

The book Cursed Days, built on diary entries from the period of revolution and civil war, was published in the West in 1935, and in Russia 60 years later. Some critics of the 80s wrote about her only as a reflection of the author's hatred for the Bolshevik government: “There is neither Russia nor its people here in the days of the revolution, nor the former Bunin the artist. There is only a man possessed by hatred.

"Punishment" - an unworthy life in sin. Akatkin (philological notes) finds in the book not only anger, but also pity, emphasizes the intransigence of the writer to acting: “everywhere there are robberies, Jewish pogroms, executions, wild anger, but they write about this with delight: “the people are embraced by the music of the revolution.”

"Cursed Days" is of great interest in several respects at once. First, in historical and cultural terms, "Cursed Days" reflect, sometimes with photographic accuracy, the era of revolution and civil war and are evidence of the perception, experiences and reflections of the Russian writer-intellectual of that time.

Secondly, in historical and literary terms, "Cursed Days" is a vivid example of documentary literature that has been rapidly developing since the beginning of the 20th century. The complex interaction of social thought, aesthetic and philosophical searches and the political situation led to the fact that diaries, memoirs and works based directly on real events took a prominent place in the work of various authors and ceased to be, in the terminology of Yu. N. Tynyanov, " a fact of everyday life", turning into a "literary fact".

Thirdly, from the point of view of I. A. Bunin's creative biography, "Cursed Days" is an important part of the writer's heritage, without which a full-fledged study of his work seems impossible.

"Cursed Days" was first published with long breaks in 1925-1927. in the Parisian newspaper Vozrozhdenie, created with the money of the oilman A. O. Gukasov and conceived "as an 'organ of national thought'".

In his diary, entitled "Cursed Days", Ivan Alekseevich Bunin expressed his sharply negative attitude towards the revolution that took place in Russia in October 1917.

In Cursed Days, he wanted to collide the autumnal, fading beauty of the past and the tragic formlessness of the present time. The writer sees how “pushkin bows his head sadly and low under a cloudy sky with gaps, as if he is saying again: “God, how sad is my Russia!”. A new world is presented to this unattractive new world as an example of vanishing beauty: “Again it smells like wet snow. Gymnasium girls are plastered with it - beauty and joy ... blue eyes from under a fur muff raised to their face ... What awaits this youth? Bunin was afraid that the fate of beauty and youth in Soviet Russia would be unenviable.

"Cursed Days" is painted with the sadness of the upcoming parting with the Motherland. Looking at the orphaned port of Odessa, the author recalls his departure from here on his honeymoon trip to Palestine and exclaims bitterly: “Our children, grandchildren will not even be able to imagine the Russia in which we once (that is, yesterday) lived, which we did not appreciate, did not understand - all this power, wealth, happiness ... ”Behind the collapse of Russian pre-revolutionary life, Bunin guesses the collapse of world harmony. He sees the only consolation in religion. And it is no coincidence that “Cursed Days” ends with the following words: “Often we go to church, and every time we are delighted to tears with singing, the bows of the clergy, censing, all this magnificence, decency, the world of all that good and merciful, where with such tenderness comforts, relieves any earthly suffering. And just think that before people of that milieu to which I partly belonged, were in church only at funerals! .. And in the church there was always one thought, one dream: to go out on the porch to smoke. And the dead man? God, how there was no connection between his entire past life and these funeral prayers, this halo on the Bone Lemon forehead! The writer felt his responsibility "to a place with a significant part of the intelligentsia for the fact" that what he thought was a cultural catastrophe had occurred in the country. He reproached himself and others for his past indifference to religious matters, believing that thanks to this, by the time of the revolution, the people's soul was empty. It seemed deeply symbolic to Bunin that Russian intellectuals had been in church before the revolution only at funerals. So, as a result, the Russian Empire had to be buried with all its centuries-old culture! The author of "Cursed: Days" remarked very truly; “It’s scary to say, but true; If there were no national disasters (in pre-revolutionary Russia. - B.S.), thousands of intellectuals would be downright unhappy people. How, then, to sit, protest, what to shout and write about? And without this, life would not have been life. ” Too many people in RUSSIA needed a protest against social injustice only for the sake of the protest itself* just so that life would not be boring.

Bunin was extremely skeptical about the work of those writers who, to one degree or another, accepted the revolution. In Cursed Days, he stated with excessive categoricalness: “Russian literature has been extraordinarily corrupted in recent decades. The street, the crowd began to play a very big role. Everything - and especially literature - goes out into the street, connects with it and falls under its influence. And the street corrupts, unnerves even if only because it is terribly immoderate in its praises, if it is catered to. In Russian literature now there are only "geniuses". Amazing harvest! The genius Bryusov, the genius Gorky, the genius Igor Severyanin, Blok, Bely. How can you be calm when you can jump into a genius so easily and quickly? And everyone strives to break forward with his shoulder, to stun, to draw attention to himself. The writer was convinced that the passion for social and political life had a detrimental effect on the aesthetic side of creativity. The revolution, which proclaimed the primacy of political goals over general cultural ones, in his opinion, contributed to the further destruction of Russian literature. Bunin associated the beginning of this process with the decadent and modernist trends of the late XIX - early XX centuries and considered far

It is not accidental that the writers of the corresponding trend ended up in the revolutionary camp

The writer understood that the consequences of the coup were already irreversible, but in no case did he want to accept and accept them. Bunin cites in Cursed Days a characteristic dialogue between an old man from the “former” and a worker: “You, of course, have nothing left now, neither God nor conscience,” says the old man. "Yeah, it's gone." - "You shot the fifth civilian over there." - “Look you! And how did you shoot for three hundred years? The horrors of the revolution were perceived by the people as a just retribution for three hundred years of oppression during the reign of the Romanov dynasty. Bunin saw it. And the writer also saw that the Bolsheviks "for the sake of the death of the "cursed past" are ready for the death of at least half of the Russian people." That is why such darkness emanates from the pages of Bunin's diary.

Bunin characterizes the revolution as the beginning of the unconditional death of Russia as a great state, as the unleashing of the basest and wildest instincts, as a bloody prologue to the incalculable disasters that await the intelligentsia, the working people, the country.

Meanwhile, with all the accumulation of “anger, rage, rage” in it, and perhaps for this very reason, the book is written with an unusually strong, temperamental, “personal” character. He is extremely subjective, tendentious, this artistic diary of 1918-1919, with a digression into the pre-revolutionary period and during the days of the February Revolution. His political assessments breathe hostility, even hatred towards Bolshevism and its leaders.

The book of curses, retribution and vengeance, even verbal, it has nothing equal in temperament, bile, rage in the “sick” and bitter white journalism. Because even in anger, passion, almost frenzy, Bunin remains an artist: and in great one-sidedness - an artist. This is only his pain, his agony, which he took with him into exile.

Protecting culture after the victory of the revolution, M. Gorky boldly spoke in the press against the power of the Bolsheviks, he challenged the new regime. This book was banned until “perestroika”. Meanwhile, without intermediaries, it represents the position of the artist on the eve and during the October Revolution. It is one of the most striking documents of the period of the Great October Revolution, its consequences and the establishment of a new Bolshevik government.

"Untimely Thoughts" is a series of 58 articles that was published in the New Life newspaper, the organ of the Social Democrat group. The newspaper existed for a little over a year - from April 1917 to July 1918, when it was closed by the authorities as an opposition press organ.

Studying Gorky's works of the 1890-1910s, one can note the presence in them of high hopes that he associated with the revolution. Gorky also speaks about them in Untimely Thoughts: the revolution will become that act, thanks to which the people will take “conscious participation in the creation of their history”, will gain a “sense of homeland”, the revolution was called upon to “revive spirituality” in the people.

But soon after the October events (in an article dated December 7, 1917), already anticipating a different course of the revolution than he had imagined, Gorky anxiously asks: “What new will the revolution give, how will it change the bestial Russian life, how much light does it bring into the darkness of the people's life? These questions were addressed to the victorious proletariat, which officially rose to power and "gained the opportunity for free creativity."

The main goal of the revolution, according to Gorky, is moral - to turn yesterday's slave into a personality. But in reality, as the author of “Untimely Thoughts” bitterly states, the October events and the outbreak of the civil war not only did not carry “signs of a person’s spiritual rebirth”, but, on the contrary, provoked the “ejection” of the darkest, most base - “zoological” - instincts. The “atmosphere of unpunished crimes”, which removes the differences “between the animal psychology of the monarchy” and the psychology of the “rebellious” masses, does not contribute to the education of a citizen, the writer claims.

“For each of our heads we will take a hundred heads of the bourgeoisie.” The identity of these statements testifies to the fact that the cruelty of the sailor masses was sanctioned by the authorities themselves, supported by the "fanatical implacability of the people's commissars." This, Gorky believes, "is not a cry for justice, but a wild roar of unbridled and cowardly beasts."

WITH The next fundamental difference between Gorky and the Bolsheviks lies in their views on the people and in their attitude towards them. This question has several facets.

What is the essence of M. Gorky's differences with the Bolsheviks on the question of the people.

Relying on all his previous experience and on his reputation as a defender of the enslaved and humiliated, confirmed by many deeds, Gorky declares: “I have the right to speak the offensive and bitter truth about the people, and I am convinced that it will be better for the people if I tell this truth about them. the first, and not those enemies of the people who are now silent and accumulate revenge and anger in order to ... spit anger in the face of the people ... ”.

Let us consider one of Gorky's most fundamental disagreements with the ideology and policy of the "People's Commissars" - the dispute over culture.

This is the core problem of Gorky's journalism in 1917-1918. It is no coincidence that when publishing his Untimely Thoughts as a separate book, the writer gave the subtitle Notes on Revolution and Culture. This is the paradox, the “untimeliness” of Gorky's position in the context of time. The priority he gave to culture in the revolutionary transformation of Russia might have seemed overly exaggerated to many of his contemporaries. In a country undermined by war, torn apart by social contradictions, weighed down by national and religious oppression, the most paramount tasks of the revolution were the implementation of the slogans: “Bread for the hungry”, “Land for the peasants”, “Plant and factories for the workers”. And according to Gorky, one of the most important tasks of the social revolution is the purification of human souls - to get rid of "the painful oppression of hatred", "mitigation of cruelty", "re-creation of morals", "ennoblement of relations". To accomplish this task, there is only one way - the way of cultural education.

However, the writer observed something directly opposite, namely: “chaos of excited instincts”, bitterness of political confrontation, boorish violation of the dignity of the individual, destruction of artistic and cultural masterpieces. For all this, the author blames first of all the new authorities, who not only did not prevent the rampage of the crowd, but even provoked it. A revolution is "fruitless" if it "is not capable of ... developing a strenuous cultural construction in the country," warns the author of Untimely Thoughts. And by analogy with the widespread slogan “The Fatherland is in danger!” Gorky puts forward his slogan: “Citizens! Culture is in danger!”

In Untimely Thoughts, Gorky sharply criticizes the leaders of the revolution: V. I. Lenin, L. D. Trotsky, Zinoviev, A. V. Lunacharsky and others. And the writer considers it necessary, over the head of his all-powerful opponents, to directly address the proletariat with an alarming warning: “You are being led to death, you are being used as material for inhuman experience, in the eyes of your leaders you are still not a man!”

Life has shown that these warnings were not heeded. And with Russia, and with its people, something happened that the author of Untimely Thoughts warned against. In fairness, it must be said that Gorky himself also did not remain consistent in his views on the revolutionary break that was taking place in the country.

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ABSTRACT

in the discipline "Culturology"

"Untimely thoughts" A.M. Gorky

Introduction
1. "Untimely Thoughts" as the pinnacle of M. Gorky's journalistic work
2. The problem of "untimely thoughts"
Conclusion
Literature
Introduction
This paper analyzes the series of essays by A. M. Gorky "Untimely Thoughts". Interest in "Untimely Thoughts" is not accidental. As you know, this book was banned until the “perestroika”. Meanwhile, without intermediaries, it represents the position of the artist on the eve and during the October Revolution. These years were marked by a special drama of the relationship between the writer and the authorities, the extreme sharpness of the literary struggle, in which Gorky played a significant role. In the coverage of this period of Gorky's life and work, not only is there no unanimity among researchers, moreover, extreme subjectivism in assessments prevails here. In the literary criticism of the Soviet era, Gorky appeared infallible and monumental. If you believe the latest publications about the writer, the cast body of the monument is full of voids filled with myths and legends.
In this work, the following tasks were set:
· reveal the essence of the discrepancies between Gorky's ideas about the revolution, culture, personality, people and the realities of Russian life in 1917-1918;
· justify the timeliness of "Untimely Thoughts" at the time of publication and their relevance in our time.
1. "Untimely thoughts" as the pinnacle of journalistic creativityRhonors M. Gorky
According to Gorky himself, "from the autumn of the 16th year to the winter of the 22nd" he "did not write a single line" of works of art. All his thoughts were connected with the turbulent events that shook the country. All his energy was turned to direct participation in public life: he interfered in the political struggle, tried to rescue innocent people from the dungeons of the Cheka, sought rations for scientists and artists dying of hunger, started cheap editions of masterpieces of world literature ... Journalism was for him one of the forms of direct public action.

Gorky returned from Italy on the eve of the First World War. He saw how Russia has changed during his absence, how "ordinary people" have become interesting "to the point of insanity." In difficult days for the country, the writer defended the “planetary significance of the foundations of Western European culture”, spoke out against national hatred, and criticized the murderous spirit of war.

Gorky was wary of rampant anarchy, the death of culture, the victory of the Germans. And he began to create a number of journalistic articles, where he proved his point of view.

"Untimely Thoughts" is a series of 58 articles that were published in the New Life newspaper, the organ of a group of social democrats. The newspaper existed for a little over a year - from April 1917 to July 1918, when it was closed by the authorities as an opposition press organ.

Gorky's journalism contradicted the "April Theses" by V.I. Lenin, so the book ended up in a closed fund of literature and was not republished until 1988. Soviet literary criticism, starting from Lenin’s definition “Gorky is not a politician”, interpreted journalism as a deviation from the truth of Bolshevism.

The title of the book by A. M. Gorky sounds paradoxical, because the thought always reveals something, explains, follows from the activity of the individual himself, which is already timely. But our society has been accustomed to a clear division of thoughts into "timely" and "untimely", referring the latter to the "general line" of ideology.

The policy of suppression of thought is known from the old Russian monarchy. Gorky's discourses on the development of science and culture did not pretend to be revolutionary upheavals, however, in the conditions of political confrontation, they began to be perceived as being said "out of place". Gorky himself understood this well.

Studying works of art and journalistic works written by A.M. Gorky in 1890-1910 can first of all be noted what great hopes he associated with the revolution. Gorky also speaks of them in Untimely Thoughts: the revolution will become that act, thanks to which the people will take "conscious participation in the creation of their history", will gain a "sense of homeland", the revolution should "revive spirituality" in the people. But soon after the October Revolution (in an article dated December 7, 1917), already anticipating a different course of the revolution than he had imagined, Gorky anxiously asks: “What new will the revolution give, how will it change the bestial Russian life, how much light does it bring into the darkness of the people's life?

After the publication of The Song of the Petrel, Gorky was called the "singer of the revolution." However, when he saw the revolution in the process of its evolution, faced with a fratricidal war, Gorky was horrified and no longer mentioned the words uttered on the eve of 1905: "Let the storm break more strongly."

He realized how dangerous it is to call the people to a destructive storm, to incite hatred for "loons", "stupid penguins" and so on. It became quite obvious that the intensifying struggle between the parties kindles the base instincts of the crowd, gives rise to a real threat to human life.

Gorky mastered the difficult path between the bourgeois and socialist revolutions on his own. Published on the pages of Novaya Zhizn, he tried to work out his position. "Untimely Thoughts" largely develops the writer's previous thoughts. In the cycle, as in his early works, the writer defends the ideals of "heroism of the spirit", "a man passionately in love with his dream", the proletariat, pouring "into life the great and beneficent idea of a new culture, the idea of world brotherhood". But there are also new intonations: the rampant anarchy is angrily condemned, the revolutionary authorities are denounced for the prohibition of freedom of speech, for their inability to "improve and organize" the spirituality of the proletariat.

In the polemic heat, the author also expresses a number of provisions that cause conflicting assessments. For example, the Russian people, unlike all other peoples of Europe, are drawn only in black colors. Another position of Gorky also raises doubts: “I consider the class a powerful cultural force in our dark peasant country. Everything that the peasant produces, he eats and eats, his energy is completely absorbed by the earth, while the labor of the worker remains on the earth, decorating it. Gorky suspects the peasantry of grave sins and opposes the working class to it, admonishing: “Do not forget that you live in a country where 85% of the population are peasants, and that you are among them a small island in the ocean. You are alone, a long and stubborn struggle awaits you. Gorky does not count on the peasantry, because it “is greedy for property, will receive land and turn away, tearing Zhelyabov’s banner on its heels .... The peasants slaughtered the Paris Commune - that’s what the worker needs to remember.” This is one of Gorky's mistakes. Not knowing the Russian peasant well enough, he did not understand that the land for the peasant is not a means of profit, but a form of existence.

Gorky had the opportunity to see the backwardness of Russia from European states, he felt the separation of the Russian intelligentsia from the people and the distrust of the peasants in the intelligentsia. In a cycle of essays, he tries to understand everything that is happening in Russia, he admits contradictions in his judgments.

2. Problems of "Untimely Thoughts"

Gorky puts forward a number of problems that he is trying to comprehend and resolve. One of the most significant among them is the historical fate of the Russian people.

Based on all his previous experience and on his reputation as a defender of the enslaved and humiliated, confirmed by many deeds, Gorky declares: “I have the right to speak the offensive and bitter truth about the people, and I am convinced that it will be better for the people if I tell this truth about them. the first, and not those enemies of the people who are now silent and hoarding revenge and anger in order to ... spit anger in the face of the people ... "

Fundamental is the difference in views on the people between Gorky and the Bolsheviks. Gorky refuses to "half-dore the people", he argues with those who, based on the most good, democratic motives, devoutly believed "in the exceptional qualities of our Karataevs."

Beginning his book with the message that the revolution gave freedom of speech, Gorky declares to his people the "pure truth", i.e. one that is above personal and group preferences. He believes that he illuminates the horrors and absurdities of the time so that the people see themselves from the outside and try to change for the better. In his opinion, the people themselves are to blame for their plight.

Gorky accuses the people of passively participating in the state development of the country. Everyone is to blame: in war people kill each other; fighting, they destroy what is built; in battles, people become embittered, go berserk, lowering the level of culture: theft, lynching, debauchery become more frequent. According to the writer, Russia is threatened not by a class danger, but by the possibility of savagery, lack of culture. Everyone blames each other, Gorky states bitterly, instead of "resisting the storm of emotions with the power of reason." Looking at his people, Gorky notes "that he is passive, but cruel, when power falls into his hands, that the glorified kindness of his soul is Karamazov's sentimentalism, that he is terribly immune to the suggestions of humanism and culture."

Let us analyze an article devoted to the "drama of July 4" - the dispersal of the demonstration in Petrograd. In the center of the article, a picture of the demonstration itself and its dispersal is reproduced (exactly reproduced, not retold). And then follows the author's reflection on what he saw with his own eyes, ending with a final generalization. The reliability of the report and the immediacy of the author's impression serve as the basis for an emotional impact on the reader. Both what happened and thoughts - everything happens as if before the eyes of the reader, therefore, obviously, the conclusions sound so convincing, as if they were born not only in the brain of the author, but also in our minds. We see the participants in the July demonstration: armed and unarmed people, a "truck-car" closely packed with motley representatives of the "revolutionary army" that "like a rabid pig" rushes. (Further on, the image of the truck evokes no less expressive associations: “a thundering monster”, “a ridiculous cart.”) But then the “panic of the crowd” begins, frightened of “itself”, although a minute before the first shot it “renounced the old world” and “ shook his dust off her feet." A “disgusting picture of madness” appears before the eyes of the observer: the crowd, at the sound of chaotic shots, behaved like a “herd of sheep”, turned into “heaps of meat, distraught with fear.”

Gorky is looking for the cause of what happened. Unlike the absolute majority, who blamed the "Leninists", Germans or outright counter-revolutionaries for everything, he calls the main reason for the misfortune that happened "severe Russian stupidity", "uncivilization, lack of historical flair."

A.M. Gorky writes: “Reproaching our people for their inclination towards anarchism, dislike for work, for all their savagery and ignorance, I remember: it could not be otherwise. The conditions among which he lived could not instill in him either respect for the individual, or consciousness of the rights of a citizen, or a sense of justice - these were conditions of complete lack of rights, oppression of a person, shameless lies and bestial cruelty.

Another issue that attracts Gorky's close attention is the proletariat as the creator of revolution and culture.

The writer in his very first essays warns the working class “that miracles do not really happen, that famine, complete breakdown of industry, destruction of transport, prolonged bloody anarchy await it ... because it is impossible to make 85% of the peasant population of the country socialist by pike command.”

Gorky invites the proletariat to carefully examine its attitude towards the government, to be cautious about its activities: “But my opinion is this: the people’s commissars are destroying and ruining the working class of Russia, they are terribly and absurdly complicating the labor movement, creating irresistibly difficult conditions for all the future work of the proletariat and for all the progress of the country.

To his opponent's objections that the workers are included in the government, Gorky replies: "From the fact that the working class predominates in the Government, it does not yet follow that the working class understands everything that is done by the Government." According to Gorky, “People’s Commissars treat Russia as a material for experiment, the Russian people for them are the horse that bacteriologists inoculate with typhus so that the horse develops anti-typhoid serum in its blood.” “Bolshevik demagogy, inflaming the egoistic instincts of the peasant, extinguishes the germs of his social conscience, therefore the Soviet government spends its energy on inciting malice, hatred and gloating.”

According to Gorky's deep conviction, the proletariat must avoid contributing to the crushing mission of the Bolsheviks, its purpose lies elsewhere: it must become "an aristocracy in the midst of democracy in our peasant country."

“The best that the revolution has created,” Gorky believes, “is a conscious, revolutionary-minded worker. And if the Bolsheviks carry him away with robbery, he will die, which will cause a long and gloomy reaction in Russia.

The salvation of the proletariat, according to Gorky, lies in its unity with the “class of the working intelligentsia,” for “the working intelligentsia is one of the detachments of the great class of the modern proletariat, one of the members of the great working-class family.” Gorky turns to the mind and conscience of the working intelligentsia, hoping that their union will contribute to the development of Russian culture.

"The proletariat is the creator of a new culture - these words contain a beautiful dream of the triumph of justice, reason, beauty." The task of the proletarian intelligentsia is to unite all the intellectual forces of the country on the basis of cultural work. “But for the success of this work, it is necessary to abandon party sectarianism,” the writer reflects, “politics alone will not bring up a “new person”, by turning methods into dogmas, we do not serve the truth, but increase the number of pernicious delusions”

The third problematic link in Untimely Thoughts, which closely adjoins the first two, was the articles on the relationship between revolution and culture. This is the core problem of Gorky's journalism in 1917-1918. It is no coincidence that when publishing his Untimely Thoughts as a separate book, the writer gave the subtitle Notes on Revolution and Culture.

Gorky is ready to survive the cruel days of 1917 for the sake of the excellent results of the revolution: “We Russians are a people who have not yet worked freely, who have not had time to develop all their strength, all their abilities, and when I think that the revolution will give us the opportunity of free work, all-round creativity, - my heart is filled with great hope and joy even in these accursed days filled with blood and wine.”

He welcomes the revolution because "it is better to burn in the fire of the revolution than slowly rot in the rubbish heap of the monarchy." These days, according to Gorky, a new Man is being born who will finally throw off the accumulated dirt of our life for centuries, kill our Slavic laziness, and enter the universal work of arranging our planet as a brave, talented Worker. The publicist calls on everyone to bring into the revolution "all the best that is in our hearts," or at least reduce the cruelty and malice that intoxicate and discredit the revolutionary worker.

These romantic motifs are interrupted in the cycle by biting truthful fragments: “Our revolution has given full scope to all bad and bestial instincts ... we see that among the servants of the Soviet government, bribe-takers, speculators, swindlers are caught every now and then, and honest ones who know how to work, so as not to starve to death, sell newspapers on the streets. "Half-starved beggars deceive and rob each other - the current day is filled with this." Gorky warns the working class that the revolutionary working class will be responsible for all outrages, dirt, meanness, blood: "The working class will have to pay for the mistakes and crimes of its leaders - with thousands of lives, with streams of blood."

According to Gorky, one of the most paramount tasks of the social revolution is to purify human souls - to get rid of "the painful oppression of hatred", to "mitigate cruelty", "recreate morals", "ennoble relations". To accomplish this task, there is only one way - the way of cultural education.

What is the main idea of "Untimely Thoughts"? Gorky's main idea is still very topical today: he is convinced that only by learning to work with love, only by understanding the paramount importance of labor for the development of culture, the people will be able to really create their own history.

He calls to heal the swamps of ignorance, because a new culture will not take root on rotten soil. Gorky offers, in his opinion, an effective way of transformation: “We treat labor as if it were the curse of our life, because we do not understand the great meaning of labor, we cannot love it. It is only possible with the help of science to ease the conditions of work, reduce its quantity, make work easy and pleasant ... Only in love for work will we achieve the great goal of life.

The writer sees the highest manifestation of historical creativity in overcoming the elements of nature, in the ability to control nature with the help of science: “We will believe that a person will feel the cultural significance of labor and love it. Labor done with love becomes creativity.”

According to Gorky, science will help facilitate human labor and make it happy: “We, Russians, especially need to organize our higher mind - science. The wider and deeper the tasks of science, the more plentiful are the practical fruits of its research.

He sees a way out of the crisis situations in a careful attitude to the cultural heritage of the country and the people, in rallying the workers of science and culture in the development of industry, in the spiritual re-education of the masses.

These are the ideas that make up the untimely book of Untimely Thoughts, a book of topical problems of revolution and culture.

Conclusion

"Untimely Thoughts" evoke mixed feelings, probably as did the Russian Revolution itself and the days that followed. This is also the recognition of Gorky's timeliness and talented expressiveness. He possessed great sincerity, insight and civic courage. M. Gorky's unkind look at the history of the country helps our contemporaries to re-evaluate the works of writers of the 20-30s, the truth of their images, details, historical events, bitter forebodings.

The book "Untimely Thoughts" has remained a monument to its time. She captured the judgments of Gorky, which he expressed at the very beginning of the revolution and which turned out to be prophetic. And no matter how the views of their author subsequently changed, these thoughts turned out to be eminently timely for everyone who happened to experience hopes and disappointments in the series of upheavals that befell Russia in the 20th century.

Literature

1. Gorky M. Untimely thoughts. M.: 1991

2. Paramonov B. Gorky, white spot. // October. 1992 - No. 5.

3. Drunk M. To comprehend the "Russian system of the soul" in the revolutionary era.// Star. 1991 - No. 7.

4. Reznikov L. On the book of M. Gorky "Untimely Thoughts". // Neva. 1988 - No. 1.

5. Shklovsky V. Good luck and defeat of M. Gorky. M.: 1926

I

The Russian people got married to Svoboda. Let us believe that from this union in our country, exhausted both physically and spiritually, new strong people will be born.

Let us firmly believe that in a Russian person the forces of his mind and will will flare up with a bright fire, forces extinguished and suppressed by the age-old oppression of the police system of life.

But we should not forget that we are all people of yesterday and that the great cause of reviving the country is in the hands of people who have been brought up by the painful impressions of the past in a spirit of mistrust towards each other, disrespect for their neighbor and ugly egoism.

We grew up in an "underground" atmosphere; what we called legal activity was, in essence, either radiating into the void, or petty politicking of groups and individuals, the internecine struggle of people whose self-esteem has degenerated into morbid pride.

Living among the ugliness of the old regime that poisoned the soul, among the anarchy born by it, seeing how limitless the limits of the power of the adventurers who ruled over us, we - naturally and inevitably - became infected with all the pernicious properties, all the skills and methods of people who despised us, mocked us.

We had nowhere and nothing to develop in ourselves a sense of personal responsibility for the misfortunes of the country, for its shameful life, we are poisoned by the cadaveric poison of dead monarchism.

The lists of “secret employees of the Security Department” published in the newspapers are a shameful indictment against us, this is one of the signs of the social disintegration and decay of the country, a formidable sign.

There is also a lot of dirt, rust and all kinds of poison, all this will not disappear soon; the old order is destroyed physically, but spiritually it remains to live both around us and in ourselves. The many-headed hydra of ignorance, barbarism, stupidity, vulgarity and boorishness has not been killed; she was frightened, hid, but did not lose the ability to devour living souls.

We must not forget that we live in the wilds of a multi-million mass of the layman, politically illiterate, socially uneducated. People who don't know what they want are politically and socially dangerous people. The mass of the philistine will not soon be distributed along its class paths, along the lines of clearly conscious interests, it will not soon be organized and become capable of a conscious and creative social struggle. And for the time being, until it is organized, it will feed its muddy and unhealthy juice to the monsters of the past, born of the usual police system for the layman.

One could also point out some more threats to the new system, but it is premature to talk about this and, perhaps, obscene.

We are going through an extremely difficult moment, requiring the exertion of all our strength, hard work and the greatest caution in decisions. We do not need to forget the fatal mistakes of 905-6 - the brutal massacre that followed these mistakes weakened and beheaded us for a whole decade. During this time, we have become politically and socially corrupted, and the war, having exterminated hundreds of thousands of young people, further undermined our strength, undermining the economic life of the country to the root.

The generation that will be the first to accept the new order of life has got freedom cheaply; this generation knows little of the terrible efforts of people who, over the course of a whole century, gradually destroyed the gloomy fortress of Russian monarchism. The layman did not know the hellish, mole work that was done for him - this hard labor is unknown not only to one layman in ten hundred district cities of Russia.

We are going and we are obliged to build a new life on the principles that we have long dreamed of. We understand these beginnings with reason, they are familiar to us in theory, but - these beginnings are not in our instinct, and it will be terribly difficult for us to introduce them into the practice of life, into ancient Russian life. It is precisely for us that it is difficult, because, I repeat, we are a completely uneducated people socially, and our bourgeoisie, which is now advancing to power, is just as poorly educated in this respect. And we must remember that the bourgeoisie does not take into its hands the state, but the ruins of the state, it takes these chaotic ruins under conditions that are immeasurably more difficult than the conditions of 5-6 years. Will it understand that its work will be successful only if it is firmly united with democracy, and that the task of strengthening the positions taken from the old government will not be stable under all other conditions? Undoubtedly, the bourgeoisie must correct, but this should not be rushed, so as not to repeat the gloomy mistake of the 6th year.

In turn, revolutionary democracy should assimilate and feel its nationwide tasks, the need for itself to take an active part in organizing the economic strength of the country, in developing the productive energy of Russia, in protecting its freedom from all encroachments from outside and from within.

Only one victory has been won - political power has been won, there are many more difficult victories to be won, and above all we must defeat our own illusions.

We overthrew the old government, but we succeeded not because we are a force, but because the government, which rotted us, was itself rotten through and through and fell apart at the first friendly push. The very fact that we could not decide on this push for so long, seeing how the country was being destroyed, feeling how we were being raped, this long-suffering alone testifies to our weakness.

The task of the moment is, as far as possible, to firmly strengthen the positions we have taken, which is achievable only with a reasonable unity of all the forces capable of working for the political, economic and spiritual revival of Russia.

The Russian people got married to Svoboda. Let us believe that from this union in our country, exhausted both physically and spiritually, new strong people will be born. Let us firmly believe that in a Russian person the forces of his mind and will will flare up with a bright fire, forces extinguished and suppressed by the age-old oppression of the police system of life. But we should not forget that we are all people of yesterday and that the great cause of reviving the country is in the hands of people who have been brought up by the painful impressions of the past in the spirit of mistrust towards each other, disrespect for their neighbor and ugly egoism. We grew up in an "underground" atmosphere; what we called legal activity was, in essence, either radiating into the void, or petty politicking of groups and individuals, the internecine struggle of people whose self-esteem has degenerated into morbid pride. Living among the ugliness of the old regime that poisoned the soul, among the anarchy born by it, seeing how limitless the limits of the power of the adventurers who ruled over us, we - naturally and inevitably - became infected with all the pernicious properties, all the skills and methods of people who despised us, mocked us. We had nowhere and nothing to develop in ourselves a sense of personal responsibility for the misfortunes of the country, for its shameful life, we are poisoned by the cadaveric poison of dead monarchism. The lists of “secret employees of the Security Department” published in the newspapers are a shameful indictment against us, this is one of the signs of the social disintegration and decay of the country, a formidable sign. There is also a lot of dirt, rust and all kinds of poison, all this will not disappear soon; the old order is destroyed physically, but spiritually it remains to live both around us and in ourselves. The many-headed hydra of ignorance, barbarism, stupidity, vulgarity and boorishness has not been killed; she was frightened, hid, but did not lose the ability to devour living souls. We must not forget that we live in the wilds of a multi-million mass of the layman, politically illiterate, socially uneducated. People who don't know what they want are politically and socially dangerous people. The mass of the philistine will not soon be distributed along its class paths, along the lines of clearly conscious interests, it will not soon be organized and become capable of a conscious and creative social struggle. And for the time being, until it is organized, it will feed its muddy and unhealthy juice to the monsters of the past, born of the usual police system for the layman. One could also point out some more threats to the new system, but it is premature to talk about this and, perhaps, obscene. We are going through an extremely difficult moment, requiring the exertion of all our strength, hard work and the greatest caution in decisions. We do not need to forget the fatal mistakes of 905-6 - the brutal massacre that followed these mistakes weakened and decapitated us for a whole decade. During this time, we have become politically and socially corrupted, and the war, having exterminated hundreds of thousands of young people, further undermined our strength, undermining the economic life of the country to the root. The generation that will be the first to accept the new order of life has got freedom cheaply; this generation knows little of the terrible efforts of people who, over the course of a whole century, gradually destroyed the gloomy fortress of Russian monarchism. The layman did not know the hellish, mole work that was done for him - this hard labor is unknown not only to one layman in ten hundred district cities of Russia. We are going and we are obliged to build a new life on the principles that we have long dreamed of. We understand these principles with reason, they are familiar to us in theory, but these principles are not in our instinct, and it will be terribly difficult for us to introduce them into the practice of life, into ancient Russian life. It is precisely for us that it is difficult, because, I repeat, we are a completely uneducated people socially, and our bourgeoisie, which is now advancing to power, is just as poorly educated in this respect. And we must remember that the bourgeoisie does not take into its hands the state, but the ruins of the state, it takes these chaotic ruins under conditions that are immeasurably more difficult than the conditions of 5-6 years. Will it understand that its work will be successful only if it is firmly united with democracy, and that the task of strengthening the positions taken from the old government will not be stable under all other conditions? Undoubtedly, the bourgeoisie must correct, but this should not be rushed, so as not to repeat the gloomy mistake of the 6th year. In turn, revolutionary democracy should assimilate and feel its nationwide tasks, the need for itself to take an active part in organizing the economic strength of the country, in developing the productive energy of Russia, in protecting its freedom from all encroachments from outside and from within. Only one victory has been won - political power has been won, there are many more difficult victories to be won, and above all we must defeat our own illusions. We overthrew the old government, but we succeeded not because we are a force, but because the government, which rotted us, was itself rotten through and through and fell apart at the first friendly push. The mere fact that we could not decide on this push for so long, seeing how the country was being destroyed, feeling how we were being raped - this very long-suffering of ours testifies to our weakness. The task of the moment is, as far as possible, to firmly strengthen the positions we have taken, which is achievable only with a reasonable unity of all the forces capable of working for the political, economic and spiritual revival of Russia. The best stimulant of a healthy will and the surest method of correct self-esteem is the courageous consciousness of one's shortcomings. The years of war have shown us with terrifying clarity how weak we are culturally, how weakly organized. The organization of the country's creative forces is as essential to us as bread and air. We are hungry for freedom and, with our inherent inclination towards anarchism, we can easily devour freedom - this is possible. There are many dangers that threaten us. Eliminating and overcoming them is possible only under the condition of calm and friendly work to strengthen the new order of life. The most valuable creative force is man: the more developed he is spiritually, the better armed with technical knowledge, the more durable and valuable his work, the more cultural and historical it is. We have not mastered this - our bourgeoisie does not pay due attention to the development of labor productivity, a person for them is still like a horse - only a source of brute physical strength. The interests of all people have a common ground, where they solidarize, despite the irreducible contradiction of class friction: this ground is the development and accumulation of knowledge. Knowledge is a necessary weapon of interclass struggle, which underlies the modern world order and is an inevitable, albeit tragic, moment of a given period of history, an ineradicable force of cultural and political development; knowledge is a force that, in the end, should lead people to victory over the elemental energies of nature and to the subordination of these energies to the general cultural interests of man, humanity. Knowledge must be democratized, it must be made universal, it, and only it, is the source of fruitful work, the basis of culture. And only knowledge will equip us with self-consciousness, only it will help us correctly assess our strengths, the tasks of the present moment, and show us the wide path to further victories. Quiet work is the most productive. The force that all my life firmly held and keeps me on the ground was and is my faith in the human mind. To this day, the Russian revolution in my eyes is a chain of bright and joyful manifestations of rationality. A particularly powerful manifestation of calm rationality was the day of March 23, the day of the funeral on the Champ de Mars. In this ceremonial procession of hundreds of thousands of people, for the first time and almost tangibly felt - yes, the Russian people have made a revolution, they have risen from the dead and are now joining the great cause of the world - the construction of new and ever freer forms of life! What a blessing to live to see such a day! And with all my heart I would wish the Russian people to go further and further, forward and higher, just as calmly and powerfully, until the great holiday of world freedom, universal equality, brotherhood!

Composition

I came into this world to disagree.
M. Gorky

A special place in Gorky's legacy is occupied by articles published in the newspaper Novaya Zhizn, which was published in Petrograd from April 1917 to June 1918. After the victory of October, Novaya Zhizn castigated the costs of the revolution, its "shadow sides" (looting, lynching, executions). For this, she was sharply criticized by the party press. In addition, the newspaper was suspended twice, and in June 1918 it was completely closed.

Gorky was the first to say that one should not think that the revolution in itself "spiritually crippled or enriched Russia." Only now begins "the process of intellectual enrichment of the country - the process is extremely slow." Therefore, the revolution must create such conditions, institutions, organizations that would help the development of the intellectual forces of Russia. Gorky believed that the people, who had lived in slavery for centuries, should be instilled with culture, give the proletariat systematic knowledge, a clear understanding of their rights and obligations, and teach the rudiments of democracy.

During the period of the struggle against the Provisional Government and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, when blood was shed everywhere, Gorky advocated the awakening of good feelings in the souls with the help of art: deepening into the mysteries of life. It is strange for me to see that the proletariat, in the person of its thinking and acting organ, the "Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies," is so indifferent to the sending to the front, to the slaughterhouse, of soldiers-musicians, artists, drama artists and other people necessary to its soul. After all, by sending its talents to slaughter, the country exhausts its heart, the people tear off the best pieces from their flesh. If politics divides people into sharply hostile groups, then art reveals the universal in a person: “Nothing straightens a person’s soul so easily and quickly as the influence of art and science.”

Gorky was mindful of the irreconcilability of the interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. But with the victory of the proletariat, the development of Russia had to follow the democratic path! And for this it was necessary first of all to stop the predatory war (in this Gorky agreed with the Bolsheviks). The writer sees a threat to democracy not only in the activities of the Provisional Government, in the armed struggle, but also in the behavior of the peasant masses with their ancient "dark instincts". These instincts resulted in pogroms in Minsk, Samara and other cities, in lynching of thieves, when people were killed right on the streets: “During wine pogroms, people are shot like wolves, gradually accustoming them to calm extermination of their neighbor ...”

In Untimely Thoughts, Gorky approached the revolution from a moral standpoint, fearing unjustified bloodshed. He understood that with a radical break in the social system, armed clashes cannot be avoided, but at the same time he opposed senseless cruelty, against the triumph of the unbridled mass, which resembles a beast that smells blood.

The main idea of "Untimely Thoughts" is the indissolubility of politics and morality. The proletariat must be magnanimous both as a victor and as a bearer of the lofty ideals of socialism. Gorky protests against the arrests of students and various public figures (Countess Panina, book publisher Sytin, Prince Dolgorukov, etc.), against the reprisals against cadets who were killed in prison by sailors: “There is no poison more vile than power over people, we must remember this in order to the authorities did not poison us, turning us into cannibals even more vile than those against whom we fought all our lives. Gorky's articles did not go unanswered: the Bolsheviks conducted investigations and punished those responsible. Like any real writer, Gorky was in opposition to the authorities, on the side of those who were feeling bad at the moment. Arguing with the Bolsheviks, Gorky nevertheless called on cultural figures to cooperate with them, because only in this way could the intelligentsia fulfill its mission of educating the people: “I know that they are conducting the most cruel scientific experiment on the living body of Russia, I know how to hate, but I want to be fair."

Gorky called his articles "untimely," but his struggle for genuine democracy was launched at the right time. Another thing is that the new government very soon ceased to be satisfied with the presence of any opposition. The newspaper was closed. The intelligentsia (including Gorky) were allowed to leave Russia. The people very soon fell into a new slavery, covered with socialist slogans and words about the welfare of ordinary people. Gorky was deprived of the right to speak openly for a long time. But what he managed to publish - the collection Untimely Thoughts - will remain an invaluable lesson in civic courage. They contain the writer's sincere pain for his people, painful shame for everything that happens in Russia, and faith in its future, despite the bloody horror of history and the "dark instincts" of the masses, and the eternal call: "Be more humane in these days of universal brutality!"

Problems of "Untimely Thoughts"

Gorky puts forward a number of problems that he is trying to comprehend and resolve. One of the most significant among them is the historical fate of the Russian people.

Another issue that attracts Gorky's close attention is the proletariat as the creator of revolution and culture.

These are the ideas that make up the untimely book of Untimely Thoughts, a book of topical problems of revolution and culture.

Conclusion

The book "Untimely Thoughts" has remained a monument to its time. She captured the judgments of Gorky, which he expressed at the very beginning of the revolution and which turned out to be prophetic. And no matter how the views of their author subsequently changed, these thoughts turned out to be eminently timely for everyone who happened to experience hopes and disappointments in a series of upheavals that befell Russia in the 20th century.

Department of Public Education

Literature abstract

Topic: "Untimely Thoughts" by M. Gorky - a living document of the Russian revolution.

Artist: Nikolaev A.V.

11th grade student

Middle School No. 55

Supervisor:

Literature teacher

Goryavina S.E.

Novouralsk 2002

1. Introduction 3 pages

2. Biography 4 pages

3. Untimely thoughts - a living document of the Russian revolution 8 pp.

4. Conclusion page 15

5. References 16 pages.

6. Appendix 17 p.

Introduction

New times are in the yard, the moment has come to rethink a lot, to look from a different point of view. What is the meaning of the seventy-five-year period that we have experienced? I think that the reasons for this should be sought at the very beginning of this period, it was then that its foundations, the core of the idea, were created. After all, the very idea expressed by the theoreticians of socialism is not so bad. Perhaps they saw something that we do not understand now. What is the mistake of the "singers" of the revolution? It is necessary, of course, to turn to the journalism of that time, which, due to its characteristics, is a direct response to ongoing events. And here we will find the most striking example in one of the "petrel" of 17 - the year - Maxim Gorky - these are his articles, which he called "Untimely Thoughts". They are a vivid demonstration of real events, truly showing the atmosphere of that time. For many years, these articles were unknown to readers, so it became interesting for me to study this material myself. In my work, I would like to consider the following questions:

To reveal the essence of the discrepancies between Gorky's ideas about the revolution, culture, personality, people and the realities of Russian life in 1917–1918;
- justify the timeliness of "Untimely Thoughts" at the time of publication and their relevance in our time;
- develop your ideas about journalism as a special kind of literature.

Biography

On March 16 (28), 1868, the baby Alexei was born, and on March 22, the baby Alexei was baptized. His parents are "philistine Maxim Savvatiev Peshkov and his legal wife Varvara Vasilyeva." Alexei was the fourth child of the Peshkovs (his two brothers and sister died in infancy). The grandfather of the future writer on his father's side, Savvaty Peshkov, rose to the rank of officer, but was demoted for cruel treatment of soldiers. His son Maxim ran away from his father five times and left home forever at the age of 17.

Maxim Peshkov learned the trades of cabinetmaker, upholsterer and draper. He was apparently not a stupid person (later he was appointed manager of the steamship office), and artistically gifted - he supervised the construction of the triumphal arch, which was being built on the occasion of the arrival of Alexander II.

Grandfather on the mother's side, Vasily Kashirin, was a barge hauler in his youth, then he opened a small dyeing establishment in Nizhny Novgorod and for thirty years was a shop foreman.

The large Kashirin family - except for Vasily Kashirin and his wife, in the house where Maxim and Varvara settled, their two sons lived with their wives and children - was not friendly, Maxim Savvatievich's relationship with his new relatives did not go well, and in the first half of 1871 the Peshkovs left Lower to Astrakhan.

Alexei almost did not remember his kind, inexhaustible father for inventions: he died at the age of 31, having contracted cholera from four-year-old Alyosha, whom he selflessly cared for. After the death of her husband, the barbarian and her son returned to her father in Nizhny Novgorod.

The boy came to the Kashirins when their “business”, as they used to call a trade or industrial enterprise in the old days, was declining. Handicraft dyeing was supplanting factory dyeing, and impending poverty determined much in the life of the larger family.

Alyosha's uncles liked to drink, and after drinking they beat each other or their wives. It got to the kids too. Mutual enmity, greed, constant quarrels made life unbearable.

The most vivid impressions of Kashira life are described by Gorky in his story "Childhood".

But the writer also had fond memories from childhood, and one of the brightest ones is about grandmother Akulina Ivanovna, “an amazingly kind and selfless old woman,” whom the writer remembered all his life with a feeling of love and respect. A difficult life, family worries did not embitter or harden her. Grandmother told fairy tales to her grandson, taught him to love nature, instilled in him faith in happiness, did not allow the greedy, selfish Kashirin world to take possession of the boy's soul.

In the autobiographical trilogy, the writer fondly remembers other kind and good people.

“A person is created by his resistance to the world around him,” wrote Gorky many years later. This resistance to the outside world, the unwillingness to live the way they live around, early determined the character of the future writer.

The grandfather began to teach his grandson to read and write according to the Psalter and the Book of Hours. The mother forces the boy to memorize verses, but soon Alyosha had an invincible desire to alter, distort the verses, to pick up other words for them.

This stubborn desire to remake the verses in her own way angered Varvara. She did not have the patience to work with her son, and in general she paid little attention to Alyosha, considering him the cause of her husband's death.

At the age of seven, Alyosha went to school, but studied for only a month: he fell ill with smallpox and almost died.

In January 1877, he was assigned to the Kunavinsky Primary School - a school for the urban poor.

Alyosha studied well, although at the same time he had to work - to collect bones and rags for sale. At the end of the second grade, the boy was given a "Commendation Sheet" - "for excellent success in science and good manners" - and was awarded books (they had to be submitted - my grandmother was sick, and there was no money in the house).

There was no need to study further. On August 5, 1879, my mother died of transient consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis), and a few days later my grandfather said: - Well, Lexey, you are not a medal, there is no place for you around my neck, but go and join the people ...

Alyosha is eleven years old.

“In people” was not sweet. The “boy” at the “fashionable shoe” store, Alyosha did a lot of work, and later, he was placed in the service of the contractor Sergeev.

Later, he sails as a vessel on a steamboat, again in the service of the Sergeyevs, catching birds for sale. Alexei was also a salesman in an icon-painting shop, a worker in an icon-painting workshop, a foreman at the construction of a fair, and an extra in a fair theater.

In 1886 he moved to Kazan and got a job in a pretzel establishment and a bakery A.S. Derenkov, which in the gendarmerie reports of that time was characterized as "a place of suspicious gatherings of student youth." This period for Gorky is the time of acquaintance with Marxist ideas. He begins to visit Marxist circles, studies the works of Plekhanov. In 1888, he made his first long journey around Rus', and in 1891 he left Nizhny Novgorod, where he worked as a clerk for a barrister and went on a second journey through Rus', which gave him invaluable experience of acquaintance and understanding of Russian life at a crisis, a turning point in its development. The experience of wandering will be reflected in the cycle of stories "Across Rus'", but the experience of travel will leave a mark in all his works.

World fame comes to him with the novel "Foma Gordeev" (1899), published in the journal "Life". In 1900 he wrote the novel "Three". At the beginning of the century, Gorky created his first plays - "Petty Bourgeois" (1901), "At the Bottom" (1902), "Summer Residents" (1904), "Children of the Sun" (1905), "Barbarians" (1905).

In 1905, Gorky met V.I. Lenin. This acquaintance grew into a friendship, sometimes filled with dramatic conflicts, which became especially aggravated in 1918-1921, when Gorky, at the insistence of Lenin, was forced to go abroad - to his second emigration (1921). And the first came in 1906, when, in order to avoid reprisals for supporting the revolution of 1905, the writer emigrated first to the United States, and then to Capri in Italy. During this period, Gorky became close to A.A. Bogdanovich, a prominent revolutionary, philosopher, art theorist. In 1909 Maxim Gorky, A.V. Lunacharsky and A.A. Bogdanov organized a party school in Capri, where Gorky lectured on the history of Russian literature. Surprising are the delusions that reigned in Capri: socialism, the ideas of the new world turned into a religion based on the belief in their fatal triumph. The people were presented as a new deity and god-builder.

The Capri period is very fruitful for Gorky in a creative sense. At this time, he creates the play "The Last" (1908), the first edition of "Vassa Zheleznova" (1910), the story "Summer", etc.

In 1913, after an amnesty, he returned to St. Petersburg, where he lived until his second emigration in 1921.

Revolution (1917) Gorky received ambiguously. Sincerely believing in the necessity and humanistic pathos of the social transformation of reality, he was afraid of the distortion of his ideals in a peasant country, believing that the peasantry (an inert mass incapable of movement and development) could not be revolutionary in its essence. These doubts were expressed in the series of articles "Untimely Thoughts" published in the newspaper "New Life" (1917-1918), which was the organ of the Social Democrats - "internationalists", Mensheviks, supporters of Martov. Struck by the scenes of street lynching, drunken pogroms, looting and destruction of cultural property by illiterate people who despise culture. Gorky comes to a pessimistic conclusion about the revolution as the total destruction of life, culture, and the state. In the middle of 1918, Novaya Zhizn was closed by the Bolsheviks, and Gorky's relations with the new government became even more strained.

The conflict with the leaders of the Bolsheviks and V.I. Lenin escalated, and in the summer of 1921, under the pretext of treating tuberculosis, the writer traveled to Germany, and then to Czechoslovakia. In April 1924 he moved to Italy (Sorrento, Naples). Here the third part of the autobiographical trilogy was completed - the story "My Universities", the novel "The Artamonov Case" was written, etc.

But paradoxically, neither the first nor the second emigration was reflected in the writer's work.

Gorky returned to Russia in 1931, becoming the last emigrant to return. Upon his return, he took the position of the first Soviet official writer, he began a personal relationship with Stalin, with his direct participation the work of the Organizing Committee of the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers was going on, he also became the chairman of the board of the Union of Writers of the USSR founded in 1934, and Stalin spent his famous meetings with writers. At one of these meetings, the term "socialist realism" arose and was filled with specific socio-political content.

At this time, Gorky, who was under the control of the OGPU agents and his secretary Kryuchkov, was experiencing a spiritual crisis. He feels lonely. The writer does not want to see, but sees the mistakes and suffering, and sometimes even the inhumanity of the new case.

At that time, Kryuchkov became the sole mediator of all Gorky's connections with the outside world: letters, visits (or rather, requests to visit Gorky) were intercepted by him, he alone was given the opportunity to judge who could and who could not see Gorky.

Gorky died on June 18, 1936 - officially recognized as a classic of Soviet literature, a writer, as if giving the new government what it needed: with its authority, he seemed to sanction its deeds, present and future. And a magnificent funeral on June 20, 1936 on Red Square allegedly completed the visible path for everyone, first as a petrel of the revolution, a friend, and then an opponent of Lenin, a former emigre who became the first Soviet writer, the founder of the method of "socialist realism" in Soviet literature. So he remained for a long time in the literary criticism of subsequent decades, and many of his thoughts remained untimely.

Untimely thoughts - a living document of the Russian revolution

Studying the life and work of Gorky in the Soviet era 1917-1936) is difficult. These years were marked by a special drama of the relationship between the writer and the authorities, the extreme sharpness of the literary struggle, in which Gorky played a significant role. In the coverage of this period of Gorky's life and work, not only is there no unanimity among researchers, moreover, extreme subjectivism in assessments prevails here. In the literary criticism of the Soviet era, Gorky appeared infallible and monumental. If you believe the latest publications about the writer, the cast body of the monument is full of voids filled with myths and legends. A person embarking on the study of the Soviet period in Gorky's work has to thoroughly “filter” this material in order to present with maximum objectivity the writer's path in these years: his hopes and disappointments, the torment of searches, hesitations, delusions, his mistakes, real and imaginary. .

My interest in Untimely Thoughts is not accidental. As you know, this book was banned until “perestroika”. Meanwhile, without intermediaries, it represents the position of the artist on the eve and during the October Revolution. It is one of the most striking documents of the period of the Great October Revolution, its consequences and the establishment of a new Bolshevik government.

According to Gorky himself, "from the autumn of the 16th year to the winter of the 22nd" he "did not write a single line" of works of art. All his thoughts were connected with the turbulent events that shook the country. All his energy was turned to direct participation in public life: he interfered in the political struggle, tried to rescue innocent people from the dungeons of the Cheka, sought rations for scientists and artists dying of hunger, started cheap editions of masterpieces of world literature ... Publicism, due to its specificity, was for him one of the forms of direct public action.

But soon after the October events (in an article dated December 7, 1917), already anticipating a different course of the revolution than he had imagined, Gorky anxiously asks: “What new will the revolution give, how will it change the bestial Russian life, how much light does it bring into the darkness of the people's life? . These questions were addressed to the victorious proletariat, which officially rose to power and "gained the opportunity for free creativity."

The whole “intrigue” of the work lies in the fact that we can see the clash of ideals, in the name of which Gorky called for a revolution, with the realities of revolutionary reality. From their discrepancy follows one of the main questions that arise in the process of studying the articles: what is, in Gorky's words, his "line of divergence from the insane activity of the people's commissars"?

Having independently analyzed the facts that Gorky reports in an article dated 03/26/18, we can understand what is at stake, about the so-called statement of the “special meeting of the sailors of the Red Fleet of the Republic”, which caused Gorky’s “deepest amazement”. “The wild idea of physical retribution” is the main idea of this document. Gorky compares the content of the statement of the sailors (“We will answer for the death of hundreds and thousands of rich people for each of our killed comrades ...”) and the publication in Pravda, the authors of which, “taking damage to the car body for an attempt on Vladimir Ilyich, announced menacingly: “For we will take a hundred heads of the bourgeoisie for each of our heads.” The identity of these statements testifies to the fact that the cruelty of the sailor masses was sanctioned by the authorities themselves, supported by the "fanatical implacability of the people's commissars." This, Gorky believes, "is not a cry for justice, but a wild roar of unbridled and cowardly beasts."

When analyzing this article, I would like to pay special attention to its stylistic qualities, which give the writer's word a special expression. The article is built as a kind of dialogue with the authors of the statement. The indignant feeling of the writer pours out through rhetorical questions: “Well, does the government agree with the method of action promised by the sailors?”, “I ask you, gentlemen sailors: where and what is the difference between the animal psychology of the monarchy and your psychology?” Expression lies in a decisive, clear and concise conclusion-call: “We must come to our senses. We must try to be human. It's difficult, but it's necessary." (It is also worth mentioning that the Kronstadt sailors threatened Gorky with physical harm for his "Untimely Thoughts").

The next fundamental difference between Gorky and the Bolsheviks lies in their views on the people and in their attitude towards them. This question has several facets.

First of all, Gorky refuses to "half-dore the people", he argues with those who, based on the most good, democratic motives, devoutly believed "in the exceptional qualities of our Karataevs." Looking at his people, Gorky notes “that he is passive, but cruel when power falls into his hands, that the glorified kindness of his soul is Karamazov’s sentimentalism, that he is terribly immune to the suggestions of humanism and culture.” But it is important for the writer to understand why the people are like this: “The conditions among which he lived could not instill in him either respect for the individual, or consciousness of the rights of a citizen, or a sense of justice - these were conditions of complete lack of rights, oppression of a person, shameless lies and brutal cruelty." Consequently, the bad and terrible that came through in the spontaneous actions of the masses during the days of the revolution is, according to Gorky, a consequence of that existence, which for centuries has killed dignity, a sense of personality in Russian people. So a revolution was needed! But how can one reconcile the need for a liberation revolution with the bloody bacchanalia that accompanies the revolution? I am trying to resolve this painful contradiction in the subsequent analysis of "Untimely Thoughts", for example, by analyzing an article dated July 14, 1917, devoted to the "drama of July 4" - the dispersal of the demonstration in Petrograd. The article is interesting for analysis in many respects. It is worth noting the originality of its compositional structure: in the center of the article, a picture of the demonstration itself and its dispersal is reproduced (it is reproduced, and not retold). And then follows the author's reflection on what he saw with his own eyes, ending with a final generalization. The reliability of the report and the immediacy of the author's impression serve as the basis for an emotional impact on the reader. Both what happened and thoughts - everything happens as if before the eyes of the reader, therefore, obviously, the conclusions sound so convincing, as if they were born not only in the brain of the author, but also in our minds.

Looking at the picture drawn by the writer, it is necessary to note the details and details, not forgetting their emotional coloring. We see the participants in the July demonstration: armed and unarmed people, a “truck-car” closely packed with motley representatives of the “revolutionary army”, that “like a rabid pig” rushes. (Further on, the image of a truck appears before us, evokes no less expressive associations: “a thundering monster”, “a ridiculous cart.”) Then the “panic of the crowd” begins, frightened of “itself”, although a minute before the first shot it “renounced the old world ” and “shake his dust from off her feet.” A “disgusting picture of madness” appears before the eyes of the observer: at the sound of chaotic shots, the crowd behaved like a “herd of sheep”, turned into “heaps of meat, mad with fear”.

Gorky is looking for the cause of what happened. Unlike the absolute majority, who blamed the "Leninists", the Germans or outright counter-revolutionaries for everything, he calls the main reason for the misfortune that happened "severe Russian stupidity" - "uncivilization, lack of historical flair."

The very conclusions drawn by me from this work turn into a statement of the main, according to the author, tasks of the revolution: “This people must work hard in order to acquire consciousness of their personality, their human dignity, this people must be tempered and cleansed of slavery, nurtured in it, by the slow fire of culture.”

What is the essence of M. Gorky's differences with the Bolsheviks on the question of the people.

At first glance, it seems that the harsh judgments of the author of "Untimely Thoughts" about the people testify to his disrespect for ordinary working people, his lack of compassion for him, his disbelief in his spiritual powers. In fact, everything looks different. Relying on all his previous experience and on his reputation as a defender of the enslaved and humiliated, confirmed by many deeds, Gorky declares: “I have the right to speak the offensive and bitter truth about the people, and I am convinced that it will be better for the people if I tell this truth about them. the first, and not those enemies of the people who are now silent and hoarding revenge and anger in order to ... spit anger in the face of the people ... ”.

Let us consider one of Gorky's most fundamental disagreements with the ideology and policy of the "People's Commissars" - the dispute over culture.

This is the core problem of Gorky's journalism in 1917-1918. It is no coincidence that when publishing his Untimely Thoughts as a separate book, the writer gave the subtitle Notes on Revolution and Culture. This is the paradox, the “untimeliness” of Gorky's position in the context of time. The priority he gave to culture in the revolutionary transformation of Russia might have seemed overly exaggerated to many of his contemporaries. In a country undermined by war, torn apart by social contradictions, weighed down by national and religious oppression, the most paramount tasks of the revolution were the implementation of the slogans: “Bread for the hungry”, “Land for the peasants”, “Plant and factories for the workers”. And according to Gorky, one of the most paramount tasks of the social revolution is the purification of human souls - to get rid of "the painful oppression of hatred", "mitigation of cruelty", "recreation of morals", "ennoblement of relations". To accomplish this task, there is only one way - the way of cultural education.

It is worth noting that Gorky considers “one of the first tasks of the moment” “to excite in the people - next to the political emotions aroused in them - ethical and aesthetic emotions.” However, the writer observed something directly opposite, namely: “chaos of excited instincts”, bitterness of political confrontation, boorish violation of the dignity of the individual, destruction of artistic and cultural masterpieces. For all this, the author blames first of all the new authorities, who not only did not prevent the rampage of the crowd, but even provoked it. A revolution is "fruitless" if "it is not capable of ... developing a strenuous cultural construction in the country," warns the author of Untimely Thoughts. And by analogy with the widespread slogan “The Fatherland is in danger!” Gorky puts forward his slogan: “Citizens! Culture is in danger!”

Not a single fact of infringement of culture, no matter how insignificant it may seem, does not pass the attention of the writer. He protests against "dirty" literature, "especially harmful right now, when all dark instincts are aroused in people"; opposes “the decision of the Council of Soldiers’ Deputies on the question of sending artists, painters, musicians to the front”, because he is afraid of the following: “... what will we live with, having used up our best brain?” . He laments the disappearance of a “good honest book” from the book market, and “a book is the best instrument of enlightenment.” Having learned about the ban on the publication of opposition newspapers and magazines, he “feels longing”, painfully worried “for young Rus', which has just received the gifts of freedom”, raises his voice of protest against the arrest of I.D. Sytin, whom for his fifty years of publishing activity he calls the true "Minister of Public Education" ...

Another of the questions of Gorky's series "Untimely Thoughts" is the following question: who was at the head of the October Revolution - the "eternal revolutionary" or the "revolutionary for the time being, to this day"? (We will find the answer to it in the article dated 06.06.18.)

It is far from accidental that Gorky’s example of the “romanticism of the revolution” is a peasant in the Perm province, who sent the writer a letter in which he condemns the “peasantry, greedy for property”, looking for “pocket interests” in the revolution. According to the author of Untimely Thoughts, this peasant is a true revolutionary, because he sees the higher, spiritual goals of the revolution. The writer calls such people “eternal revolutionaries”, because they are characterized by an eternal feeling of dissatisfaction. The “eternal revolutionary” “knows and believes that humanity has the power to endlessly create the best out of the good”, “his only and truly revolutionary goal” is “to revive, spiritualize the entire brain of the world”, while he himself is “yeast”.

But on the powerful wave of the revolution, another type of public figure also splashed to the surface, whom Gorky bitingly called a "revolutionary for a while." He saw such people primarily among the participants in the October Revolution. A “revolutionary for a while” is a person who “accepts into his mind”, and not into his soul, “revolutionary ideas inspired by time”, and therefore he “distorts” and “defames”, “reduces to a ridiculous, vulgar and absurd cultural, humanistic, universal content of revolutionary ideas”. Such figures translate the revolutionary impulse into settling accounts with former real or imaginary offenders (“for each of our heads ...”), it is they who provoke the “grasping instinct” in the excited crowd (“rob the loot”), it is they who emasculate, de-wing, discolor life supposedly in the name of universal equality (because this is equality in poverty, in lack of culture, in the leveling of personalities), it is they who, planting a new - “proletarian” - morality, in fact, deny universal morality.

Gorky proves that for the “cold fanatic”, “ascetic”, “castrating the creative power of the revolutionary idea”, the moral aspects of the revolution are completely insignificant, moreover, the seemingly noble posture of the ascetic even becomes a kind of romantic justification for the unprecedented cruelty with which “revolutionaries for a while ” carried out their project of transforming Russia. Gorky sees the main manifestation of the immorality of the Bolsheviks in their attitude towards the whole people as to the object of a gigantic experiment: “material for inhuman experience” - this is what the article of 01/19/18 says; “from this material - from the village dark and flabby people” - dreamers and scribes want to create a new socialist state” - this is a phrase from an article dated 03/29/18; “they (the Bolsheviks) are doing a disgusting experience on the people” - this is in an article dated 05/30/18. And in an article dated 01/13/18, the author speaks even more harshly: “People's commissars treat Russia as a material for experiment, the common people for them are the horse that bacteriologists inoculate with typhus so that the horse develops anti-typhoid serum in its blood. It is precisely such a cruel and doomed to failure experiment that the commissars are carrying out on the Russian people ... The reformers from Smolny do not care about Russia, they cold-bloodedly doom it as a victim of their dream of a world or European revolution. The accusation of immorality is the most important accusation that Gorky throws in the face of the new government. It is worth paying attention to the extreme expression of the writer's words in the above fragments: a comparison of the social upheaval with a laboratory experiment, and Russia with an experimental animal; hidden opposition of experience and dreams, confirming the failure of revolutionary actions; direct evaluative epithets (“cruel” and “doomed to failure”, a caustic paraphrase “reformers from Smolny”). In an article dated 03/16/18, the leaders of October are associated with biblical executioners - they “drag and push unhappy Rus' to Golgotha in order to crucify it for the sake of saving the world.”

In Untimely Thoughts, Gorky sharply criticizes the leaders of the revolution: V.I. Lenin, L.D. Trotsky, Zinoviev, A.V. Lunacharsky and others. And the writer considers it necessary, over the head of his all-powerful opponents, to directly address the proletariat with an alarming warning: “You are being led to destruction, you are being used as material for an inhuman experience, in the eyes of your leaders you are still not a man!” .

However, the book Untimely Thoughts remained a monument to its time. She captured the judgments of Gorky, which he expressed at the very beginning of the revolution and which turned out to be prophetic. And no matter how the views of their author subsequently changed, these thoughts turned out to be eminently timely for everyone who happened to experience hopes and disappointments in the series of upheavals that befell Russia in the 20th century.

Thus, in the course of writing the abstract, an attempt was made to reveal the complex of basic ideas expressed by Gorky in the book Untimely Thoughts. Given the journalistic nature of the analyzed text. These are distinguished by a special, journalistic poetics, which expresses not just an idea, but an “idea-passion”. Finally, “Untimely Thoughts” is the starting point for understanding the creative fate of M. Gorky in the Soviet era

Bibliography:

1. Gorky M. Untimely thoughts. M.: Sovremennik, 1991

2. Golubkova M. Maxim Gorky. Moscow: Bustard, 1997

3. Ignebeirg L.Ya. From Gorky to Solzhenitsyn. Moscow: Higher school, 1997

6. Ostrovskaya O.D. By the hand of Gorky, M.: 1985

7. Scale I.S. Seven years with Gorky. M.:, 1990

8. Application:

. Untimely thoughts. M.: Sovremennik, 1991. P.30

Gorky M. Untimely thoughts. M.: Sovremennik, 1991. P.33

Gorky M. Untimely thoughts. M.: Sovremennik, 1991. P.38

Gorky M. Untimely thoughts. M.: Sovremennik, 1991. P.70

Gorky M. Untimely thoughts. M.: Sovremennik, 1991. P.28

Gorky M

Gorky M. Untimely thoughts. M.: Sovremennik, 1991. P.87

Gorky's journalistic and social activities are, first of all, his newspaper Novaya Zhizn.

In March 1917, immediately after the February bourgeois revolution, Bitter founded the New Life newspaper, where he regularly printed articles and feuilletons on the front page under the general heading " Untimely Thoughts"It should be noted that at first there was complete agreement between the editors of Novaya Zhizn and the Bolsheviks, and when in July 1917 Pravda and Rabochy Put were closed by the censorship of the provisional government, Novaya Zhizn invited them to publish materials on their pages But on the eve of the October Revolution and after it, to the extent that dictatorial aspirations were asserted in the Leninist party, Novaya Zhizn began to move away from the Bolshevik positions, and then came out against the October Revolution, considering it premature. October 1917, Novaya Zhizn published an article by L. Kamenev, who, on behalf of himself and G. Zinoviev, protested against the impending armed seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. such that the Commissar of Petrograd informed Gorky that the newspaper would be closed and the members of the editorial board put on trial. Having taken a diplomatic step (Sukhanov expressed his opinion and the editorial board did not agree with him), the newspaper postponed the sentence for several months, although it drew fire from the Bolshevik publications. From November 4 to December 31, 1917, Pravda criticized Novaya Zhizn four times, calling Gorky"gravedigger of the revolution". The article by I. Stalin was also rude and unambiguous, where the author directly threatened Gorky: "The Russian revolution overthrew a lot of authorities ... There are a whole string of them, these" big names "rejected by the revolution ... We are afraid that Gorky drawn to them, to the archive. Well, free will ... The revolution can neither spare nor bury its dead..." (17; 30).

The editorial office of the newspaper Gorky at the head, started a stubborn battle with the Bolsheviks in defense of democracy. As a result, the newspaper was first severely condemned by the Bolshevik newspapers and magazines, then temporarily suspended (in February and June 1918) and finally banned completely in July of the same year.

It would seem that such an attitude of the Bolsheviks towards Gorky and his newspaper were supposed to push the writer away from Lenin and his party even further, but strange as it may seem, rapprochement begins again. A few days after Kaplan's assassination attempt on Lenin Bitter Lunacharsky told Lunacharsky that the terrorist acts against the leaders of the Soviet republic "encourage him to definitively embark on the path of close cooperation with them." In October 1918, Krasnaya Gazeta happily reported: “His beloved son has returned to the working class. Maksim Gorky ours again."

At the same time, in 1918, Bitter publishes two books that incorporate all of the writer's Novozhiznenskaya journalism. One of them - " Untimely Thoughts"- with the subtitle "Notes on the Revolution and Culture" was published in Petrograd in a small circulation and was doomed to "special storage" for 70 years. Only in 1988, within Russia, she again saw the light in the journal "Literary Review". The second book - "Revolution and Culture" - was published in Berlin, but has not yet been republished, as a result of which it remains unknown to the ordinary reader.

G. Mitin considers " Untimely Thoughts""unique in the entire history of Russian literature, the only great book that arose from the writer's short newspaper responses to the topic of the day" and defines their genre as "reporting under the gun of the Aurora" (17; 29).

Let's look at some topics Gorky journalism of 1917-1918.

On the eve of the October Revolution, on October 18, 1917, when rumors began to spread about the impending action of the Bolsheviks, Bitter published an article “You can’t be silent”, in which he depicted the most likely course of events: “So again, trucks, closely packed with people with rifles and revolvers in their hands trembling with fear, and these rifles will shoot at the windows of shops, at people - anywhere! ... All the dark instincts of the crowd, irritated by the devastation of life, the lies and dirt of politics, will flare up and begin to smoke, poisoning with anger, hatred, revenge - people will kill each other, unable to destroy their bestial stupidity.

At the end of the note Bitter, addressing the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks, obligated him to refute the rumors about the speech on October 20 and further insisted: "He must do this if he really is a strong and freely functioning political body capable of controlling the masses, and not a weak-willed toy of the moods of a wild crowd, not a tool in hands of the most shameless adventurers or crazed fanatics"

For an article by M. Gorky I. Stalin replied with a caustic and insulting note.

Already after the revolution Bitter publishes a note "Towards Democracy", in which, despite his long-term friendship with Lenin, he gives him and his associates an impartial characterization: "Lenin, Trotsky and those accompanying them have already been poisoned by the rotten poison of power, as evidenced by their shameful attitude towards freedom of speech, personality and to the whole sum of those rights for the triumph of which democracy fought.

Blind fanatics and unscrupulous adventurers are rushing headlong, allegedly along the path of "social revolution" - in fact, this is the path to anarchy, to the death of the proletariat and revolution.

On this path, Lenin and his comrades-in-arms consider it possible to commit all crimes, such as the massacre near St. Petersburg, the defeat of Moscow, the destruction of freedom of speech, senseless arrests ...

The working class cannot fail to understand that Lenin, in his own skin, on his blood, produces only a certain experience, strives only to carry the revolutionary mood of the proletariat to the extreme and see what will come of it? ..

Lenin is not an all-powerful sorcerer, but a cold-blooded conjurer who spares neither the honor nor the life of the proletariat.

It is interesting to note that with the same assessment of the events taking place in the country in the 30s, academician I.P. Pavlov wrote a letter to the Council of People's Commissars: "... What you are doing is, of course, only an experiment, out of courage ... and ... like any experiment, with an unknown final result. Secondly, the experiment is terribly expensive (and this is the essence of the matter). With the destruction of all cultural peace and all the cultural beauty of life ... ".

To the personality of Lenin Bitter returns again in a note dated November 10, 1917, “To the Attention of the Workers”: “Lenin, of course, is a man of exceptional strength; for 25 years he stood in the forefront of the fighters for the triumph of socialism, he is one of the largest and brightest figures of international social democracy; a talented person, he has all the qualities of a "leader", as well as the lack of morality necessary for this role and a purely lordly, ruthless attitude towards the life of the masses ... He considers himself entitled to do a cruel experiment with the Russian people, doomed to failure in advance .. He works like a chemist in a laboratory, with the difference that the chemist uses dead matter (...), while Lenin works on living material and leads the revolution to ruin."

On October 26, 1917, among other bourgeois newspapers, the newspaper Rech was also closed. Bitter, considering such actions contrary to democracy, came out with the words: “I find that to shut up the mouth of Rech and other bourgeois newspapers with a fist just because they are hostile to democracy is shameful for democracy ...

Deprivation of freedom of the press is physical violence, and it is unworthy of democracy."

It is interesting to note that in untimely thoughts"y Gorky there are some obvious consonances with Dostoevsky, a writer with whom he argued long before the revolution and after it and whom he repeatedly subverted. But in the very period of the revolution, the points of view of the two writers agreed. This is evidenced by a direct quotation of Dostoevsky's "Demons": "Vladimir Lenin introduces a socialist system in Russia according to the Nechaev method -" at full speed through the swamp. "And Lenin, and Trotsky, and all others who accompany them to death in the quagmire of reality, obviously We are convinced, together with Nechaev, that "the right to dishonor is the easiest way to captivate a Russian person with oneself."

Harmonies are found and not so direct. In Possessed, Dostoevsky presents future socialism as a continuous equation of rights, duties, and talents. Here is how the heroes of Dostoevsky set out the principles of the new society: “First of all, the level of education, sciences and talents is lowered. A high level of sciences and talents is accessible only to higher abilities, no higher abilities are needed! equality..."

It would seem a completely absurd forecast that can never, under any circumstances, be realized. But from the memoirs of F.I. Chaliapin we learn about the dismissive attitude of some communists towards outstanding people. So, the Bolshevik Rakhya declared that talented people should be cut. To the question "Why?" he replied that "no person should have any advantages over people. Talent violates equality."

"Untimely Thoughts"They state: that" The Battalion Committee of the Izmailovsky Regiment sends 43 artists to the trenches, among whom there are extremely talented, culturally valuable people "who do not know military service and have not been trained in military affairs, who do not even know how to shoot. Bitter outraged by this fact, because he is convinced that sending talented artists to the front is "the same extravagance and stupidity as golden horseshoes for a draft horse", "a death sentence for innocent people."

Thus, Bitter, "learning from practice, from real experience, as if rediscovering those psychological features of the revolution, which are exhaustively and fearlessly shown in "Demons" (32; 163).

But most of all Gorky what frightens and amazes me is that the revolution does not bear in itself signs of a person's spiritual rebirth, does not make people more honest, straightforward, does not increase their self-esteem and moral assessment of their work, preserves bureaucracy and arbitrariness: "Different small fry, enjoying power, treats a citizen as to the vanquished... They yell at everyone, they yell like watchmen in Konotop or Chukhloma. All this is done in the name of the "proletariat" and in the name of the "social revolution", and all this is the triumph of animal life, the development of that Asiaticism that rots us.. The "new bosses" are just as rude as the old ones, only they are even less outwardly well-bred. They yell and stomp their feet in modern districts, as they used to yell before. And they grab bribes, like the former bureaucrats grabbed them, and drive people in herds into prisons. Everything is old, the ugly until it disappears."

AND Bitter concludes: "This is a bad sign: it indicates that only a transfer of physical force has taken place, but this transfer does not accelerate the growth of spiritual forces." In this remark Bitter already merges with another titan of Russian literature - L.N. Tolstoy, who in 1898 wrote in his diary: “Even if what Marx predicts happened, it would only happen that despotism would move. the stewards of the workers will rule." As the chronicle of A.M. Gorky, and Leo Tolstoy's prediction came true completely.

In the preface to the book Untimely Thoughts", republished in 1990, S. Mikhailova notes that it fully reveals "the glaring contradictions that were characteristic of life itself and the author, realism, romanticism and outright utopianism ..." (18; 4 ).

This remark is correct. If, for example, in such words: "The working class must know that miracles do not really happen, that famine awaits it, the complete breakdown of industry, the destruction of transport, a prolonged bloody anarchy, and after it - no less bloody and gloomy reaction" a clear , a realistic view of reality; if in another phrase: "Science is the most grandiose and amazing of all the folly of mankind, this is its most sublime madness!" feel the romantic urge Gorky, then his utopianism is manifested with the same obviousness: “I passionately believe that the day is near when someone who loves us very much, who knows how to understand and forgive everything, will shout:

Arise, dead!

And we will rise. And our enemies will be defeated. I believe."

Talking about features untimely thoughts", I would like to note that they were extremely useful and timely not only in the period of the seventeenth-eighteenth years, but also for our time. Separate pages full of national self-criticism and criticism of the government echo so much with the current era that one gets the impression as if they were written yesterday or today.

"Of course," whoever does nothing is not mistaken, "but we have an awful lot of people who, whatever they do, make mistakes."

Or: "Any government - whatever it may call itself - strives not only to 'manage' the will of the masses of the people, but also to educate this will in accordance with its principles and goals...

The government always and inevitably seeks to master the will of the masses, to convince the people that it is leading them along the most correct path to happiness.

This policy is the inevitable duty of every government; being sure that it is the mind of the people, it encourages by its position to inspire the people with the conviction that it has the most intelligent and honest government, sincerely devoted to the interests of the people.

And finally: “It should be said, without fear of the truth, that there is nothing to praise us for. and how did society reveal its resistance to the evil and dark forces of life? How did its civic self-consciousness, hooliganly denied by everyone who was given the power to this denial, express itself? And in what, besides eloquence and epigrams, did our offended self-esteem express itself?"

Among the returned literature" Untimely Thoughts"occupy a special place. Articles by G. Mitin, L. Saraskina, L. Reznikov, V. Lazarev, A. Gazizova, L. Egorova, P. Basinsky, O. Aleksandrovich, E. Shevelev and others are devoted to them. In the interpretation " untimely thoughts" you can see two trends. In one, the authors focus on criticism Gorky the Russian people, who, due to their cultural backwardness and anarchy, could not take advantage of the freedom they had won. L. Anninsky, exaggerating this side " untimely thoughts", even love brings out of it Gorky to ... Chekists. Others emphasize the criticism of those who distorted and compromised socialist ideals with a bloody coven. One can agree with those who believe " Untimely Thoughts"Gorky undoubted, moral and civic feat, believes that the writer evaluates what is happening according to the laws of conscience and morality, and not according to the rules of political struggle and revolutionary violence ... "All journalism Gorky of this period is a desperate cry, terrible pain, mortal longing - not for the killed old, but for the new being killed. "L. Saraskina, who owns the above words, characterizes" Untimely Thoughts"as a" literary and human document of historical importance, "capturing" the phenomenon of spiritual resistance to violence on the part of the writer and public figure, who for many years affirmed the triumph of the "storm" ... In the midst of the "storm" Bitter... delivered a sermon of non-violence ... His preaching of peace, goodness and mercy, his passionate desire not to stain the holy cause of freedom with innocent blood is highly instructive" (30; 161-164).

For the spur:

The book Untimely Thoughts was arrested by Lenin. In it, Gorky set the goal of opening the eyes of the people, of fighting moral blindness, with the interests of those who enrich themselves through the revolution. Of the revolution, Gorky said this: "A revolution is fruitless if it is not capable of ... developing an indispensable cultural construction in the country." "Untimely Thoughts" is a chronicle of an exciting time, a diary of history, a diary of experiences. The writer appears as a true humanist. The writer is also a prophet - much of what was predicted in the book came true. The writer develops three problems: the paths of the revolution, the life of the people in the conditions of freedom won, the fate of culture. The new government, according to Gorky, should create conditions for the development of the country's intellectual forces. Intellectual force is the first productive force. Gorky proposes to abandon the political struggle. For politics divides as well as religion. But art, on the contrary, connects.

Gorky opposes the terror and violence introduced by the Bolsheviks, speaks of the poisoning of the leaders of the revolution with the "rotten poison of power", as evidenced by the shameful attitude towards freedom of speech and personality.

The people are not only a force that creates all material values, it is the only and inexhaustible source of spiritual values, ”this is how the article“ Destruction of the Personality ”began. In The Destruction of the Personality, Gorky sought to reveal the process of inevitable depersonalization, the disintegration of the personality in a bourgeois society built on animal egoism, on a divisive individualistic principle. The bourgeois personality, poisoned by the poison of "nihilistic individualism", turns "into a hooligan - a creature incoherent in itself, with a fragmented brain, torn nerves." “Thanks to philistinism, we have come from Prometheus to a hooligan,” Gorky summed up his critical judgments about the apostasy of the intelligentsia.

Introduction……………………………………………………………………..p.3

Chapter 1

Gorky………………………………………………………………p. 4-5

Chapter 2. "Untimely thoughts" - pain for Russia and the people.

2.1. Gorky's general impression of the revolution…………………...p. 6-8

2.2. Gorky against the "monster of war" and manifestations

nationalism…………………………………………………………p. 9-11

2.3. Gorky's assessment of some revolutionary events……….p.12-13

2.4. Gorky about the “lead abominations of life”……………………..p. 14-15

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………..p. 16

Introduction

You have to look straight into the eyes of the stern

truth - only knowledge of this truth can

restore our will to live... Ah

every truth must be spoken aloud

for our teaching.

M. Gorky

Gorky's entry into the literary field marked the beginning of a new era in world art. Being a legitimate successor to the great democratic traditions of Russian classical literature, the writer was at the same time a true innovator.

Gorky affirmed faith in a better future, in the victory of human reason and will. Love for people determined the irreconcilable hatred for the war, for everything that stood and stands in the way of people to happiness. And truly significant in this regard is the book of M. Gorky "Untimely Thoughts", which absorbed his "notes on the revolution and culture" of 1917-1918. For all its dramatic inconsistency, "Untimely Thoughts" is an unusually modern book, in many respects visionary. Its importance in restoring the historical truth about the past, which helps to understand the tragedy of the revolution, the civil war, their role in the literary and life fate of Gorky himself cannot be overestimated.

Chapter 1. The history of writing and publishing Gorky's Untimely Thoughts.

A writer-citizen, an active participant in the social and literary movements of the era, A. M. Gorky, throughout his entire career, actively worked in various genres, vividly responding to the fundamental problems of life, topical issues of our time. His legacy in this area is enormous: it has not yet been fully collected.

The journalistic activity of A. M. Gorky during the years of the First World War, during the overthrow of the autocracy, the preparation and conduct of the October Revolution, was distinguished by great intensity. A lot of articles, essays, feuilletons, open letters, speeches of the writer appeared then in various periodicals.

A special place in the work of Gorky as a publicist is occupied by his articles published in the newspaper Novaya Zhizn. The newspaper was published in Petrograd from April 1917 to July 1918 under the editorship of A. M. Gorky. The writer's work in Novaya Zhizn lasted a little more than a year, he published about 80 articles here, 58 of them in the Untimely Thoughts series, emphasizing their acute relevance and polemical orientation by the title itself.

Most of these "New Life" articles (with minor repetitions) were two complementary books - "Revolution and Culture. Articles for 1917" and "Untimely Thoughts. Notes on Revolution and Culture. The first was published in 1918 in Russian in Berlin, the edition of I. P. Ladyzhnikov. The second was published in the autumn of 1918 in Petrograd. Here it is necessary to note the following important fact: in 1919 - 1920 or 1922 - 1923, A. M. Gorky intended to republish "Untimely Thoughts", for which he supplemented the book with sixteen articles from the collection "Revolution and Culture", designating each article with a serial number. Combining both books and destroying the chronological sequence of Ladyzhnikov's edition, he gave "Untimely Thoughts" - in a new composition and new composition - an even more fundamental, generalizing meaning. The publication was not carried out. A copy prepared by the author is stored in the Archives of A. M. Gorky.

In the USSR, these books were not published. Gorky's articles seemed to be random facts, no one ever tried to consider them in general connection with Gorky's ideological and artistic searches of the previous and subsequent decades.

Chapter 2. "Untimely thoughts" - pain for Russia and the people.

2.1. Gorky's general impression of the revolution.

In Untimely Thoughts, Gorky refuses the usual (for a journalistic collection of articles) chronological arrangement of material, grouping it mostly by topics and problems. At the same time, the realities and facts of pre- and post-October reality are combined and interspersed: an article published, for example, May 23, 1918, goes next to an article dated October 31, 1917, or an article dated July 1, 1917 - in a row with an article dated June 2 1918, etc.

Thus, the author's intention becomes obvious: the problems of revolution and culture are given universal, planetary significance. The peculiarity of the historical development of Russia and the Russian revolution with all its contradictions, tragedies and heroism only highlighted these problems more clearly.

On February 27, 1917, the fate of the Romanov dynasty was decided. The autocratic regime in the capital was overthrown. Gorky enthusiastically greeted the victory of the insurgent people, to which he also contributed as a writer and revolutionary. After the February Revolution, Gorky's literary, social and cultural activities gained even wider scope. The main thing for him at this time was the protection of the gains of the revolution, concern for the rise of the country's economy, the struggle for the development of culture, education, and science. For Gorky, these problems are closely interrelated, always modern and future-oriented. Cultural issues come first. It is not for nothing that academician D.S. Likhachev speaks with such anxiety that without culture a society cannot be moral. A nation that loses its spiritual values also loses its historical perspective.

In the very first issue of Novaya Zhizn (April 18, 1917), in the article "Revolution and Culture", Gorky wrote:

“The old power was mediocre, but the instinct of self-preservation correctly told it that its most dangerous enemy is the human brain, and so, by all means available to it, it tried to hinder or distort the growth of the country’s intellectual forces.” The results of this ignorant and prolonged "extinction of the spirit," the writer notes, "were revealed with terrifying obviousness of the war": in the face of a strong and well-organized enemy, Russia found itself "weak and unarmed." “In a country generously endowed with natural wealth and talents,” he writes, “as a result of its spiritual poverty, complete anarchy was revealed in all areas of culture. Industry, technology - in its infancy and without a strong connection with science; science is somewhere in the backyard, in the dark and under the hostile supervision of an official; art, limited, distorted by censorship, cut off from the public ... ".

However, one should not think, Gorky warns, that the revolution itself "spiritually healed or enriched Russia." Only now, with the victory of the revolution, is the process of "intellectual enrichment of the country - an extremely slow process" just beginning.

We cannot deny the writer his civic patriotic pathos, fail to see how sharply modern the conclusion of the same article sounds and his call to action, work: “We must unanimously take up the work of the comprehensive development of culture ... The world was created not by word, but by deed”, - this is beautifully said, and this is an undeniable truth.

From the second issue of Novaya Zhizn (April 20), the first of Gorky's articles appeared, published in the newspaper under the general title Untimely Thoughts. Here, although not a direct, but an obvious polemic with the line of the Bolsheviks, who considered the struggle against the Provisional Government to be the most important task, "not a parliamentary republic, but a republic of Soviets" is revealed. Gorky writes: "We live in a storm of political emotions, in the chaos of the struggle for power, this struggle arouses, along with good feelings, very dark instincts." It is important to abandon the political struggle, because politics is precisely the soil on which "thistles of poisonous enmity, evil suspicions, shameless lies, slander, painful ambitions, disrespect for the individual grow rapidly and abundantly." All these feelings are hostile to people, because they sow enmity between them.

2.2. Gorky against the "monster of war" and manifestations of nationalism.

Gorky resolutely opposed the "world slaughter", "cultural savagery", propaganda of national and racial hatred. He continues his anti-war offensives on the pages of Novaya Zhizn, in Untimely Thoughts: “There is a lot of absurdity, more than grandiose. The robberies began. What will happen? Don't know. But I clearly see that the Cadets and Octobrists are making a military coup out of the revolution. Will they do it? Seems like it's already been done.

We will not turn back, but we will not go far forward ... And, of course, a lot of blood will be shed, an unprecedented amount.”

Novozhiznensky publications are strong and valuable precisely because of their anti-militarist orientation, their revealing anti-war pathos. The writer castigates the “senseless massacre”, “the damned war started by the greed of the commanding classes”, and believes that the war will be ended “by the force of the common sense of the soldiers”: “If it happens, it will be something unprecedented, great, almost miraculous, and it will give a person the right to be proud of himself - his will defeated the most disgusting and bloody monster - the monster of war. He welcomes the fraternization of German soldiers with Russians at the front, is indignant at the generals' calls for a merciless fight against the enemy. “There is no justification for this disgusting self-destruction,” the writer notes on the day of the third anniversary of the start of the war. No matter how much hypocrites lie about the “great” goals of the war, their lies will not hide the terrible and shameful truth: war was born by Barysh, the only god who is believed and prayed to by “real politicians”, murderers who trade the life of the people.”

I came into this world to disagree.
M. Gorky

He really felt more than he let on. In those terrible days of the revolution, when Russia was engulfed in chaos, Maxim Gorky wanted to tell the world that it was impossible to live like this. They say that if a person thinks that something needs to be changed, then he turns into a monster who cast aside his despair and strives for change. So was Gorky. "Untimely Thoughts" did not become an anthem to the new, post-revolutionary world, but everyone who reads these publications feels that they were written by a caring person. A man who understood what was happening, but he had no weapons other than words.

Creation

In the literary criticism of the Soviet era, Gorky appeared to the public as infallible and monumental, his image became a legend. But in the period 1917-1918. he had to bare his pen and write a series of journalistic articles called "Untimely Thoughts." M. Gorky vehemently defends his point of view in them.

The author begins to publish articles in the publication "New Life" from April 1917 - after the February Revolution. For the writer, the outer world was inextricably linked with the inner world. His brothers in writing joyfully greeted the revolution. Gorky believed that the new political order would also require a new state of mind. Before the revolution, only a few could be considered spiritually free people, and when the changes began, it was time to show their best moral qualities.

Before the October Revolution, Gorky tried with all his might to find justifications for the destructive forces awakened in man. It was a time of hopes and worries, a period of sorrow and impotence. Thanks to the bloody revolution, we have the opportunity to read Gorky's Untimely Thoughts, where the author cares for his people and curses senseless power.

Structure

Gorky's articles "Untimely Thoughts" are today combined into one book, which consists of 66 chapters. When published in the newspaper, the author refused to group them in chronological order. He combined publications according to the problem under consideration. Thus, one can single out the main topics touched upon by Gorky: the problems of the revolution, the historical development of Russia and culture. In the book, the articles are not in the order in which they were published in the newspaper, but still form a single whole. Even if we prepare a summary of Gorky's Untimely Thoughts chapter by chapter, the end result will be an extensive article, where excerpts from different sections are mixed.

At the time of writing, the author often referred in one publication to another. In this way he strengthened his arguments and united the scattered fragments of thoughts into a single whole. For example, in chapter 38 of the book (it was the 16th article in the newspaper), he writes about the destructive characteristics of the revolution and, saying that he does not want to list them, refers to already published publications in which they were mentioned more than once. Well, now we can proceed to a summary of Gorky's Untimely Thoughts.

Russian people

In his notes, Gorky expresses his personal opinion about the war, the revolution, the fate of people who are entirely dependent on culture and knowledge. His bold statements, polemics, contrary to the state apparatus of government, became the reasons for the fact that the newspaper was closed. But Gorky's words have already been written, albeit not in full, but they sounded and continue to sound.

The first thing the author notes is the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty. This was the beginning, the first step towards complete victory. And this victory could be achieved if culture and democratized knowledge were developed. The strength of the country should be a man, and his weapon - culture and spirituality. In the summary of Gorky's Untimely Thoughts, it is worth noting that he considered illiterate and socially ill-bred people to be dangerous. For the country, for the Russian people, creative forces are needed, which are necessary in a period of transformation, like bread and air.

Fierce Enemies

In the face of a cultured and organized enemy, Russia is helpless. And the war revealed this fading of the spirit. Those who talked about saving Europe from the shackles of civilization through culture quickly fell silent. As Gorky writes: The spirit of true culture turned out to be an ignorant stench of selfishness, laziness and carelessness". If a people cannot refuse violence against a person, it will never become free. No matter how many times the government changes, the practitioners of violence will forever remain its hostages.

You need to cultivate in yourself an aversion to murder and fight, fight daily with fierce enemies - stupidity and cruelty.

Truth and atrocities

Also in Gorky's articles "Untimely Thoughts" there are reflections on the truth. The author considers it a real art, which is so difficult to comprehend. For the average layman, the truth is inconvenient and unacceptable. He will accept the lie that suits him, and he will never refuse it.

Particular attention in the summary of Gorky's "Untimely Thoughts" should be given to the atrocities of the war. In particular, remember what the author wrote when talented youth were taken to the battlefield. These people did not know military service and did not know how to shoot. On Monday, they visited the shooting ranges for the first time, and on Wednesday they were sent to the front. These people did not know how to defend themselves, they did not go to fight, but went to the slaughter. Gorky laments the stupid decision of the tsarist government. Sending artists, writers, or musicians to war is like making horseshoes out of gold for a draft horse.

War is a senseless extermination of people, the destruction of fertile soil and a time of bloody chaos. And everyone is guilty of this. One has only to imagine how much useful the dead soldiers could do for the country. But as he writes.

culture

Further, in the summary of Gorky's articles "Untimely Thoughts", the benefits of cultural development are noted. According to the writer, it is culture that will save a Russian person from stupidity. After the revolution, the proletariat had the opportunity to engage in creativity. But while this segment of the population is still limited by the remnants of the past. It is in the proletariat that the author sees his dream - the triumph of justice and the formation of a cultured person.

Gorky considers the book to be the main source of culture. She is a pure spring of spiritual food and knowledge. But valuable libraries are being destroyed in the country, and book printing has almost ceased. The author writes that the old government was mediocre, but the instinct of self-preservation told her that her worst enemy is the human brain. Therefore, she tried by all means to impede the intellectual development of the country. Maxim Gorky actively encourages his readers to revive the intellectual, cultural and spiritual heritage of the country.

Disappointment

Later, Gorky learns that even after the overthrow of monarchism, complete lawlessness reigns in the country. For the new government, representatives of the old regime were enemies who were expected to be groundless arrests and ill-treatment. As soon as the revolution ended, people began to carry out acts of looting. They devastated the wine cellars, and after all, the stocks of this drink could be sold abroad in order to provide the country with the necessary medicines, equipment and manufactory. Even in the brief summary of Maxim Gorky's Untimely Thoughts, a strong resentment against his compatriots is acutely felt, and yet the author is looking for excuses for them.

Gorky writes that Bolshevism did not justify the hopes of the uncultured masses and the proletariat could not win. Seizure of banks, severe hunger, innocent people are locked up in prisons. The revolution failed to bring spiritual rebirth. " There is no poison more insidious than power over people, this must be remembered so that power does not poison us».

In the summary of Gorky's Untimely Thoughts, it is worth mentioning the author's advice that he gives to his compatriots. The writer says that you need to get addicted to the study of European culture. It will help the crazed layman to become more humane and teach them to think independently. Analyzing revolutionary realities, the author notes that people have ceased to see the difference between criticism and slander.

The revolution gave the green light to freedom of speech, which turned into an incredible freedom of slander. More than once the press raised the question of who is to blame for the devastation of Russia, and every publicist was sure that his opponent was guilty. Gorky emphasizes that people have a completely undeveloped sense of personal responsibility, everyone blames their neighbor for their troubles. The author sees the way to salvation only in culture. He despises foolish ignorance and yet loves his countrymen: The most sinful and dirty people on earth, stupid both in Good and in Evil. Intoxicated with vodka, disfigured by violence. But still good-natured and, in the end, talented».

condemnation

Even in the summary of M. Gorky's Untimely Thoughts, one can see how the author encourages people to love their homeland. Calls for learning, because the true essence of culture lies in the aversion to everything dirty, vicious and deceitful, which makes a person suffer and belittles his dignity.

Gorky condemns the despotic methods of Trotsky and Lenin, who are completely rotten from power. With them there is no freedom of speech, and the people are just a mechanism that allows you to build socialism. The leaders led both the revolution and the people to death. From the books they knew how to raise the people, but they never knew the people themselves. The revolution was supposed to bring democracy, but in fact it became the epicenter of violence.

Slave and leader

The content of Gorky's "Untimely Thoughts" says that there is no greater joy for a slave than to see his master defeated. He does not know the joy that is available to a smart person - to be free from feelings of enmity. As if with the last of his strength, the author claims that there is no point in living if there is no faith in human brotherhood and confidence in the victory of love. The authorities are bending their line and are proud of the fact that the self-esteem of the Russian inhabitant is rising. Sailors proudly declare that for each of their lives they will take thousands of lives of the rich. Naturally, killing is easier than convincing. No one cares that the people become better, the free press is under the heel of the authorities and must make a less disgusting reality out of embittered, bestial violence.

The one the world needs

Only the person who knows how to love and work is needed by the world. Russian people do not like to work, and they do not know how to love. The revolution cast aside the morality and intellectual energy of the country. Those who have brought a lot of benefit to society are imprisoned. In the eyes of the leaders, every Russian is "not yet a man", but how beautifully the government decorates its speeches - "we express the will of the people."

The only good thing that the revolution brought was the equality of the Jews. Finally, the people who can work better will do it. Gorky is amazed that Jews love Russia more than many Russians.

conclusions

Maxim Gorky believes that for the socio-aesthetic education of the people, this very people needs to read European literature, French comedies and Greek tragedies. He knows the needs of the working class, so he offers exactly what they will understand and assimilate.

Gorky is sure that it is necessary to unite the intellectual forces of the intelligentsia with the forces of young peasants, only then it will be possible to revive the spiritual wealth of the country. This is the true path to freedom and culture, over which politics should have no power. After all, politics is always disgusting. Whoever does it, it will always be accompanied by lies, violence, slander. The author appeals to every reader, to his good beginnings, which must overcome darkness. Only then is democracy and freedom possible in the country.

Here they are, "Untimely Thoughts" by Maxim Gorky. He is not completely sure of his concept and has repeatedly tried to find a compromise that even the authorities will agree to. And yet, he could not remain silent about many points. His country and people suffered, and he suffered with them, trying to reach everyone with his only weapon - the word.

The end of the 20th century is a turning point in history and human thought. We realized that the whole long period of the last 75 years had a specific meaning. And this meaning was best expressed by the theoreticians of socialism. The “petrel” of that time, Maxim Gorky, was able to truly convey the stormy, restless atmosphere of the beginning of the century in his notes entitled “Untimely Thoughts”.

It is not for nothing that this work is called a living document of the revolution. The book, without intermediaries and cuts, expresses the position of the author in relation to its prerequisites, consequences and the coming of a new power of the Bolsheviks. "Untimely Thoughts" was a forbidden work until the very perestroika. For the first time, the articles were published by Novaya Zhizn, which was then also closed under the pretext of the oppositional nature of the press.

Gorky connected his "Untimely Thoughts" with the revolution, as the embodiment of all the high hopes of the people. He considered it a harbinger of the revival of spirituality, the reason for the return of a long-lost sense of the homeland, and also an act with the help of which the people will finally be able to independently take part in their own history.

So it was in the first articles of the cycle (there are 58 in total). But already after the beginning of the October events, Gorky realized that the revolution was not going at all the way he had expected. He turns to the proletariat, which has won the victory, with the question of whether this victory will bring changes to the “bestial Russian life”, whether it will light up the light in the darkness of the life of the people. In other words, here already the ideals with which the writer loudly called for revolution begin to be opposed to the reality of the revolutionary days, which no one, not even Maxim Gorky, could foresee.

"Untimely Thoughts" especially clearly expresses the expressionism of the writer, their stylistic qualities give the right to call the notes one of his best works. There are many rhetorical questions, clear decisive conclusions, emotional appeals. The final idea of most of the articles is the fundamental divergence of Gorky's views from the Bolshevik slogans. And the main reason for this is the opposite points of view on the people and a fundamentally different attitude towards them. Gorky notes the passivity and at the same time the cruelty of the people, with unlimited power falling into their hands. Justifies the conditions of many years of life, in which there was nothing bright: no respect for the individual, no equality, no freedom.

However, the revolution, as Untimely Thoughts tells us, was still needed. Another thing is the combination of its liberation ideas with the bloody orgy that invariably accompanies all coup d'état. Here "Thoughts" carry out an interesting experiment of national self-criticism. Gorky showed us the dual nature of the personality of a Russian person. This person is incapable of daily manifestations of the generally accepted ones, but, nevertheless, he can accomplish a feat and even self-sacrifice.

As a result, the reason for the failure that occurred, according to Gorky, is not at all what the vast majority sees it. It is not "sloths" or counter-revolutionaries who are to blame for the misfortune - but ordinary Russian stupidity, lack of culture and sensitivity to historical changes. According to the author, the people, with long hard work, must win back the awareness of their own personality, be cleansed of the slavery that has sprouted in it, with the bright fire of culture.

M. Bitter - chronicler Russians revolutions.

Maxim Gorky has never been a professional politician. At one time he was a member of the Bolshevik Party. He supported her financially. However, he was a great artist of the word and an experienced journalist.

As a writer, by 1917 he had made the difficult path from romanticism to critical realism, and then to socialist realism. There is no other such writer in the 20th century who, on behalf of the proletariat, introduced so many new ideas both into world fiction and into the theory of literary criticism, aesthetics, and social philosophy.

That is why simple workers so passionately love their protector and teacher. That is why M. Gorky is so hated by the bourgeois hacks and talkers who pretend to be "thinkers" and "outstanding" public figures.

M. Gorky was a brilliant chronicler - Nestor - of his era. A rich imagination and a huge talent from God gave birth to those vivid images that readers once saw in his stories and stories, in fairy tales and legends, forever remained in their memory. He painted the great revolutionary era in large strokes and described it in such detail that even the most talented professional journalists could not rise to.

It will be about his journalism of 1917 - about his articles published in the newspaper "New Life", published by him and his colleagues, and then collected in the book "Untimely Thoughts". This SPECIAL BOOK of the writer. It will be discussed further.

In articles, he expressed his dissatisfaction with the behavior of the masses, the actions of Lenin and Russian officials on the eve, during and after two revolutions - February and October. He described events as he saw and, as it seemed to him, understood. However, not always a person can correctly assess the situation. Even such a brilliant mind as M. Gorky.

After three years of imperialist war, soldiers armed with rifles returned to hungry Russia from the front after the cowardly abdication of the tsar from the throne. Millions of shell-shocked and wounded. Weakened by the long absence of male workers, the village. A little later, tsarist officials who fled abroad, who did not want to work for the victorious proletariat, as well as nobles, aristocracy, bourgeois, merchants, and intelligentsia.

Murders without trial or investigation, robberies, banditry, theft, rudeness after February 1917. The decline in morals, violence, and the humiliation of women spilled onto the streets of cities. The decline of culture, the export of works of art abroad - all this taken together could not but stun a cultured and educated person, accustomed to order and discipline in public places. Such drastic changes in the country could not but horrify Gorky.

He shifted all the blame for these horrors on Kerensky, Lenin and the Bolsheviks. As if there was no Provisional Government!? There were no defeats of the tsarist army on the fronts of the First World War!? There were no desertions and executions of officers and soldier riots!?

He wrote in those articles:

"Imagining themselves Napoleons from socialism, the Leninists tear and rush, completing the destruction of Russia - the Russian people will pay for this with lakes of blood."

“Lenin himself, of course, is a man of exceptional strength; for twenty-five years he stood in the forefront of the fighters for the triumph of socialism, he is one of the largest and brightest figures in international social democracy; a talented man, he has all the qualities of a “leader”, as well as and the lack of morality necessary for this role and a purely aristocratic, ruthless attitude towards the life of the masses.

Lenin is the “leader” and is a Russian gentleman, not alien to some of the spiritual properties of this class that has gone into oblivion, and therefore he considers himself entitled to do a cruel experiment with the Russian people, doomed to failure in advance.

And there are many such words about the leader of the world proletariat in those articles of his.

The Pravda newspaper then wrote about this series of articles: "Gorky spoke in the language of the enemies of the working class."

M. Gorky objected: “This is not true. Addressing the most conscious representatives of the working class, I say: Fanatics and frivolous dreamers, having aroused hopes in the working masses that are not feasible under the given historical conditions, are leading the Russian proletariat to defeat and death, and the defeat of the proletariat will provoke a long and gloomy reaction in Russia.” (From Gorky's book. "Untimely Thoughts").

When I first read this book by M. Gorky in 1988, I did not believe that our Burevestnik could write such a rude scolding of both the revolution and Lenin.

In 1922, Gorky went to Italy for treatment: an exacerbation of tuberculosis began again. Returning a few years later to Soviet Russia, he looked at the country and the people with different eyes. He traveled half the country, rejoicing at the tremendous work done by the Bolshevik Party and personally by Stalin. In the four years of his life remaining, he managed to restore socialist order in Russian-language and Russian fiction, gather all the writers for the first congress and develop the theoretical methods of socialist realism. This congress is still to be discussed.

For many years of Soviet power, Untimely Thoughts was not published. In the lectures on Gorky at the philological faculty, these "Thoughts" were not told to us. And in vain!....

As soon as the supreme power in culture under Gorbachev was seized by the future Shvydkoizers, they urgently began to publish anti-Soviet literature. Such is their "intellectual" and "cultural" level. Well, what can you do with them: Born to crawl - can't fly!

Today, numerous Russian-speaking officials are engaged in this important "work". All anti-communist, Russophobic and anti-Soviet actions have recently been planned and implemented by Medynsky and his team. Thick-cheeked Bykov was assigned the role of the main slanderer of Soviet literature, Soviet writers, including M. Gorky ....

Needless to say, the years of the revolution and the Civil War were difficult. Each of the 14 imperialist states sent tens of thousands of their troops to divide Russia into 14 pieces.

How Gorky treated the White Guard and the interventionists, I will tell you a little later.

However, today I would like to remind you of the counter-revolutionary events of 1991-1993, of the deeds of President Yeltsin, the puppet of the West. What would M. Gorky say if he saw with his own eyes the execution by Soviet officers and soldiers of the Supreme Soviet, an organ of the proletarian dictatorship? I suppose that he would have been very indignant not only with the actions of the anti-Soviet Yeltsin, who ordered the execution of the White House, but also with the actions of the Soviet generals (Defense Minister Grachev and his deputy Kobets, generals Evnevich and Polyakov, colonels Savilov and Tishin), who carried out his decree No. 1400.

What did the so-called "president" do with the country and its people? It practically destroyed the economy of the entire country. Introduced a new anti-Soviet Constitution. Transferred state finances into the hands of foreign tycoons. Fragmented homogeneous Soviet society into antagonistic classes, estates and sects. Banned the Communist Party and liquidated independent trade unions.

Was there among the Russian-speaking liberals, among those who cannot fly, at least one honest and cultured writer who captured all the criminal anti-people, anti-Soviet actions of Yeltsin? No one!!

None of the liberals tried to describe the picture of the execution of the White House on his orders on October 3-4, 1993. None published their "untimely" thoughts about those bloody days.

Only M. Gorky could honestly formalize his "Untimely Thoughts". One Gorky and no one else.

And here are some of his "timely thoughts" applicable to the current situation in Russia, from the same book:

“But telling the truth is the most difficult art of all arts, because in its “pure” form, not connected with the interests of individuals, groups, classes, nations ...

“For those who destroy millions of lives in order to seize several hundred miles of foreign land into their own hands, for them there is neither god nor devil. The people for them are cheaper than stone, love for the motherland is a series of habits. They love to live the way they live, and let the whole earth shatter into dust in the universe - they do not want to live otherwise than they are used to.

“Politics is the soil on which the thistle of poisonous enmity, evil suspicions, shameless lies, slander, painful ambitions, disrespect for the individual grows rapidly and abundantly—list all the evil that is in a person—all this grows especially vividly and richly precisely on ground of political struggle.

"The task of culture is the development and strengthening of social conscience, social morality in a person, the development and organization of all abilities, all talents of the individual - is this task feasible in the days of universal brutality?"

Later, M. Gorky criticized his erroneous judgments expressed by him in the articles we are considering. More on this ahead.

Not everyone from the first reading understands the meaning of the title of M. Gorky's collection - "Untimely Thoughts". Others understand, but deliberately troll, distort its meaning.

Why did he call the thoughts that arose in him after February 1917 "untimely" and nothing else?

In his younger years, like many writers at the beginning of the 20th century, Gorky did not escape the fascination with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). In the works of this philosopher, he found several "Untimely reflections" on history, culture, and man. He argued that the lot of modernity is small thoughts, insignificant passions, pitiful feelings. We must rise above the present and peer into the distance of the future.

Nietzsche MADE A VERY IMPORTANT DISCOVERY that "... there is such a degree of insomnia, constant chewing of the cud, such a degree of development of historical feeling, which entails enormous damage to all living things and eventually leads to its death, whether it be an individual, or people, or culture."

Let's stop and go back to our days. Do our contemporaries have "insomnia", "experience of chewing gum"?

Of course there is. Any government tries by propaganda and agitation, psychological methods to put the masses of people into a sleepless state. Lulls him with promises and never keeps them.

We will open any TV channel of Russian companies. Each of them is given several false ideas, which they are obliged to "chew", "suck in" daily. Sofa inhabitants are thoroughly saturated with this lie and behave law-abidingly.

If such chewing continues from day to day, a person, the population of an entire country, develops "... such a degree of development of historical feeling, which entails enormous damage to all living things and eventually leads to its death, whether it be an individual person, or people, or culture." To an uprising, to a revolution, to the Arab Spring...

In other words, the time is coming, a deep spiritual CRISIS that can lead certain people, state, civilization to chaos and death.

We are experiencing such an era, which began in 1917, the era of the GLOBAL transition of mankind from capitalist to non-capitalist relations. It has been going on for a whole century, and the ruling bourgeois classes and estates have no hope of maintaining the status quo that currently exists.

Nietzsche argued that such a crisis could lead humanity and all life on the planet to death. In the Second World War, the USSR saved humanity from destruction. Now again the smell of gunpowder of a new world war. Who can save humanity?

M. Gorky understood the idea expressed by Nietzsche in a different way. He was seriously frightened by what he observed in 1917 in Petrograd after the abdication of the last Romanov. He was horrified by the chaos that arose in the city - murders, robberies, banditry, etc. And he, describing this chaos, wanted to warn people in his "untimely" articles about the death that the revolution allegedly brought to people and culture.

Lenin called him to move from Petrograd to Moscow. He moved. He looked at the new life of the people and stopped publishing articles in Novaya Zhizn. The period of compiling the annals of the transformations that took place in the USSR before his eyes began.

Already in mid-May 1918, Gorky wrote in one of his articles:

“Dirt and rubbish is always more noticeable on a sunny day, but it often happens that we, focusing our attention too tensely on facts that are irreconcilably hostile to the thirst for a better one, no longer see the rays of the sun and, as it were, do not feel its life-giving power ... Now the Russian people are all involved in the creation of one's own history is an event of great importance, and from this one must proceed in assessing everything good and bad that torments and pleases us.

So the term "untimely thoughts" of M. Gorky entered the journalistic and scientific circulation and became a chronicle of those historical events that he observed, but could not understand the future turn from chaos to a new socialist order.

So Nietzsche gave Gorky "... the opportunity... to penetrate into that non-historical atmosphere in which every great historical event occurs, and breathe it for a while, then such a person would be able, perhaps, as a knowing being, to rise to the supra-historical point of view, which ... pointed out as a possible result of historical reflections "...

(Continued in the 4th article)

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