Maksim Gorky (1868-1936) - born on March 16 (New Style March 28) 1868 - pseudonym Gorky means "bitter", originally Aleksei Maximovich Peshkov

Russian short story writer, novelist, autobiographer and essayist, whose life was deeply interwoven with the tumultuous revolutionary period of his own country. Gorky ended his long career as the preeminent spokesman for culture under the Soviet regime of Joseph Stalin. Gorky formulated the central principles of Socialist Realism, which became doctrine in Soviet literature. The rough, socially conscious naturalism of Gorky was described by Chekhov as "a destroyer bound to destroy everything that deserved destruction."

"The long files of dock labourers carrying on their backs hundreds of tons of grain to fill the iron bellies of the ships in order that they themselves might earn a few pounds of this grain to fill their own stomachs, looked so droll that they brought tears to one's eyes. The contrast between these tattered, perspiring men, benumbed with weariness, turmoil and heat, and the mighty machines glistening in the sun, the machines which these men had made, and which, after all is said and done, were set in motion not by steam, but by the blood and sinew of those who had created them - this contrast constituted an entire poem of cruel irony." (from 'Chelkash', 1895, trans. by J. Fineberg)

Aleksei Peshkov (Maksim Gorky, also written Maksim Gor'kii) was born in Nizhnii Novgorod, the son of a journeyman upholster. Later the ancient city was named 'Gorky' in his honour, and in Moscow one of the leading thoroughfares was named Gorky Street. Gorky lost his parents at an early age – his father died of cholera and his mother died of tuberculosis. The scene of his mother, wailing and mourning over her dead husband, opens his book of memoir, My Childhood: "All her clothes were torn. Her hair, which was usually neatly combined into place like a large gray hat, was scattered over her bare shoulders, and hung over her face, and some of it, in the form of a large plait, dangled about, touching Father's sleeping face. For all the time I'd been standing in that room, not once did she so much as look at me, but just went on combing Father's hair, choking with tears and howling continually."
Orphaned at the age of 11, he experienced the deprivations of a poverty. The most important person in Gorky's life in those years was his grandmother, whose fondness for literature and compassion for the downtrodden influenced him deeply. Otherwise his relationships to his family members were strained, even violent. Gorky stabbed his stepfather, who regularly beat him. Gorky received little education but he was endowed with an astonishing memory. He left home at the age of 12, and followed from one profession to another. On a Volga steamer, he learned to read. In 1883 he was a worker in a biscuit factory, then a porter, baker's boy, fruit seller, railway employee, clerk to an advocate, and in 1891 an operative in a salt mill. Later Gorky used later material from his wandering years in his books. In 1884 he failed to enter Kazan University, and in the late 1880s he was arrested for revolutionary activities. At the age of 19 he attempted suicide but survived when the bullet missed his heart.
After travels through Ukraine, the Caucasus, and the Crimea Tiflis (late Tbilisi), Gorky published his first literary work, 'Makar Chudra' (1892), a short story. 'Chelkash', the story of a harbour thief, gained an immediate success. He started to write for newspapers, and his first book, the 3-volume Sketches and Stories (1898-1899), established his reputation as a writer. Gorky wrote with sympathy and optimism about the gypsies, hobos, and down-and-outs. He also started to analyze more deeply the plight of these people in a broad, social context. In these early stories Gorky skillfully mixed romantic exoticism and realism. Occasionally he glorified the rebels among his outcasts of Russian society. In his early writing career Gorky became friends with Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, and Vladimir Lenin. Encouraged by Chekhov, he composed his most famous play, The Lower Depths (1902), which took much of the material from his stories of outcasts, but did not have any single predominant figure. It was performed at the Moscow Art Theater under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavsky. The Lower Depths enjoyed a huge success, and was soon played in Western Europe and the United States.
Gorky was literary editor of Zhizn from 1899 and editor of Znanie publishing house in St. Petersburg from 1900. Foma Gordeyev (1899), his first novel, dealt with the new merchat class in Russia. The short story Dvadsat' shest' i odna (1899, Twenty-Six Men and a Girl) was about lost illusions, a theme which Gorky explored in a number of subsequent tales. "There were twenty-six of us – twenty-six living machines locked in a damp basement where, from dawn to dusk, we kneaded dough for making into biscuits and pretzels. The window of our basement looked out onto a ditch dug in front of them and lined with brick that was green from damp; the windows were covered outside in fine wire netting and sunlight could not reach us through the flour-covered panes. Our boss had put the wire netting there so we could not give hand-outs of his bread to beggars or those comrades of ours who were without work and starving." (from 'Twenty-Six Men and a Girl', 1899) The joy in the lives of the bakers is the 16-year old Tania, who works in the same building. A handsome ex-soldier, one of the master bakers, boasts of his success with women. He is challenged to seduce Tania. When Tania succumbs, she is mocked by the men, who have lost the only bright spot in the darkness. Tania curses them and walks away, and is never again seen in the basement.
Gorky became involved in a secret printing press and was temporarily exiled to Arzamas, central Russia in 1902. In the same year he was elected to the Russian Academy, but election was declared invalid by the government and several members of the Academy resigned in protest. Because of his political activism, Gorky was constantly in trouble with the tsarists authorities. He joined the Social Democratic party's left wing, headed by Lenin. To raise money to Russian revolutionaries, Gorky went to the United States in 1906. However, he was compelled to leave his hotel, not because of his political opinions, but because he traveled with Mlle. Andreieva, with whom he was not legally married. At that time, he had not obtained divorce from his first wife, Ekaterina Pavlovna, with whom he had two children. The American author Mark Twain expressed his support to Gorky at a dinner party, saying, "My sympathies are with the Russian revolution, of course."
In 1906 Gorky settled in Capri. Lenin visited his villa in 1908, he fished there and played chess, becoming childishly angry when he lost a game. Gorky was disgusted by Lenin's smug Marxism and after reading only a few pages from his book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism he threw it on the wall. In the controversial novel The Confession (1908), which rapidly fell after the Revolution into relative obscurity, Gorky coined the term "God-building", by which he combined religion with Marxism.
During his ill-fated mission to America to raise funds for the Bolshevik cause, Gorky wrote in the Adirondack Mountains greater part of his classic novel, The Mother, which appeared in 1906-1907. Its heroine, Pelageia Nilovna, adopts the cause of socialism in a religious spirit after her son's arrest as a political activist. Pelageia's husband is a drunkard and her only consolation is her religious faith. Pelageia's husband dies, and her son Pavel changes from a thug to socialist role model and starts to bring his revolutionary friends to the house. Pavel is arrested on May day for carrying a forbidden banner. While continuing to believe in Christ's words, she joins revolutionaries, and is betrayed by a police spy. Gorky based her character on a real person, Anna Zalomova, who had travelled the country distributing revolutionary pamphlets after her son had been arrested during a demonstration. The novel, considered the pioneer of socialist realism, was later dramatized by Bertolt Brecht.
In 1913 Gorky returned to Russia, and helped to found the first Workers' and Peasants' University, the Petrograd Theater, and the World Literature Publishing House. The first part of his acclaimed autobiographical trilogy, My Childhood, appeared in 1913-14. It was followed by In the World (1916), and My Universities (1922), which was written in a different style. In these works the author looked through the observant eyes of Alyosha Peshkov his development and life in a Volga River town. When the war broke out, Gorky ridiculed the enthusiastic atmosphere and broke off all relations with his adopted son, Zinovy Peshkov, who joined the army.
First the author also rejected Lenin's hard-line policy, defending the Petrograd intelligentsia. "Lenin's power arrests and imprisons everyone who does not share his ideas, as the Romanovs' power used to do," he wrote in November of 1917. After Russian revolution Gorky enjoyed protected status, although in 1918 his protests against Bolsheviks dictatorial methods were silenced by Lenin's order. Gorky's memoir of Lev Tolstoy (1919) painted nearly a merciless portrait of the great writer.
When Anna Akhmatova's former husband Nikolai Gumilyov was arrested in 1921, Gorky rushed to Moscow to ask Lenin for a pardon for his old friend. However, Gumilyov had been shot without trial.
Dissatisfaction with the communist regime and its treatment of intellectuals lead to his voluntary exile during the 1920s. "To an old man any place that's warm is homeland," Gorky once wrote. He spent three years at various German and Czech spas, and was editor of Dialogue in Berlin (1923-25). On Capri in the 1920s Gorky wrote his best novel, The Artamov Business (1925), dealing with three generations of a pre-revolutionary merchant family. Gorky's essay 'V.I.Lenin' was written immediately after Lenin's death. The author expressed his great admiration for the Revolution leader and gave a lively account of their discussions in Paris and Capri. "You're an enigma," he once said to me with a chuckle. "You seem to be a good realist in literature, but a romantic where people are concerned. You think everybody is a victim of history, don't you? We know history and we say to the sacrificial victims; 'overthrow the altars, shatter the temples, and drive the gods out!' Yet you would like to convince me that a militant party of the working class is obliged to make the intellectuals comfortable, first and foremost."
In 1924-25 Gorky lived in Sorrento, but persuaded by Stalin, he returned in 1931 to Russia. He founded a number of journals and became head of the Writers' Union - his photograph in the congress hall was nearly as large as Stalin's. Gorky's speech at The First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1935 established the doctrine of socialist realism.
Although Gorky criticized the bureaucracy of the Writers' Union, but nothing changed. All the proposals of the congress were very soon buried when the Great Terror started. Writers were shot and Stalin showed personal interest in the activities of writers. Gorky's actions and statements before and after his return to Russia are controversial. When the poet Anna Akhmatova and many writers asked Gorky to help Nikolai Gumilev, a celebrated poet and Akhmatova's first husband, Gorky apparently did nothing to save him from execution.
Gorky died suddenly of pneumonia in his country home, dacha, near Moscow on June 18, 1936. In some source the cause of death was said to be heart desease. The author was buried in the Red Square and Stalin started earnest his Show Trials. Rumors have lived ever since that he may have been assassinated on Joseph Stalin orders. Genrikh Yagoda, Stalin's secret police chief during the great purges of 1936-38, made a "confession" at his own trial in 1938, that he had ordered Gorky's death. According to another rumor, Gorky had been administered 'heart stimulants in large quantities', and the ultimate culprits were 'Rightists and Trotskyites'. The murder of Gorky's son in 1934 was seen as an attempt to break the father. However, when the KGB literary archives were opened in the 1990s, not much evidence was found to support the wildest theories. Stalin visited the writer twice during his last illness. The most probable conclusion is that Gorky's death was natural.
As an essayist Gorky dealt with wide range of subjects. His underlying theme is a passionate humanistic message and political commitment to bolshevism. In Notes on the Bourgeois Mentality he accuses the bourgeoisie of self-absorption and concern only with its own comfort. On the Russian Peasantry sees peasants as resistant to the new social order. City of the Yellow Devil, written in New York, condemns American capitalism. On the other hand, Gorky early opposed Bolsheviks, criticizing their use of violence against their fellow men. Among Gorky's important essays are biographical sketches of such writers as Tolstoy, Leonid Andreev and Anton Chechov.

For further reading: Letopis' zhiznii i tvorchestva A.M. Gor'kogo (1958-59, 3 vols.); Maxim Gorky: Romatic Realist and Conservative Revolutionary by Richard Hare (1962); Gorky: His Literary Development and Influence on Soviet Intellectual Life by Irwin Weil (1966); Stormy Petrel: the Life and Work of Maxim Gorki by D. Levin (1967); by F.M. Borras (1967); The Bridge and the Abyss: The Troubled Friendship of Maxim Gorky and V.I.Lenin by Bertram D. Wolfe (1967); Maxim Gorky by Barry P. Scherr (1988); Gorky by Henri Troyat (1989); The Early Fiction of Maxim Gorky by Andrew Barratt (1993); File on Gorky, ed. by Cynthia Marsh (1993); The KGB's Literary Archive by Vitaly Shentalinsky (1995) -- See also: Isaak Babel, Ivan Bunin - Other film adaptations: La folie des vaillants, dir. by Germaine Dulac (1926); Matj, dir. by Mark Donskoi (1955); Sommargäste, dir. by Peter Stein (1975) - Suom.: Gorkilta on myös suomennettu myös valikoimat Esseitä kirjallisuudesta (1975), Kirjailijakuvia (1975), ja Valitut teokset (1958). - Other English translations: The Confession (1980), The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakim (1910-11), Stories About Italy (1911-13), Through Old Russia (1912-16).

Selected works:

• 'Makar Chudra', 1892 (short story) - Makar Chudra (in The Collected Short Stories of Maxim Gorky, ed. by Avram Yarmolinsky and Baroness Moura Budberg, with a new introduction by Frederic Ewen, 1988) - Makar Chudra y.m. kertomuksia (suom E. Rauhamäki, 1934) / Makar Tšudra (suom. Lauri Kemiläinen, Valittuja: kertomuksia ja runoja, 1945; Juhani Konkka, Valitut teokset I, 1958) - film 1975: Tabor ukhodit v nebo, dir. by Emil Loteanu
• GOREMYKA PAVEL, 1894 - Orphan Paul (trans. L. Turner and M.O. Strever)
• 'Tselkash', 1895 (short story) - Chelkash (trans. J. Fineberg) / Chelkash and Other Stories (tr. 1915) / in Selected Short Stories, 1892-1901 (trans. Margaret Wettlin, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.) / Chelkash (in The Collected Short Stories of Maxim Gorky, 1988) - Tshelkash (suom. Lauri Kemiläinen, Valittuja: kertomuksia ja runoja, 1945) / Tšelkas (suom. Juhani Konkka, Valitut teokset I, 1958)
• SUPRUGI ORLOVI, 1895 - The Orlovs / Orlóff and His Wife (tr. Isabel F. Hapgood) - Orlowit: mies ja vaimo (suom. 1908) / Orlovin pariskunta (suom. Eila Salminen, 1980) - film 1978, dir. Mark Donskoi
• PESNJA O SOKOLE, 1895 - Laulu haukasta (suom. Lauri Kemiläinen, Valittuja: kertomuksia ja runoja, 1945; Juhani Konkka, Valitut teokset I, 1958)
• 'Starukha Izergil', 1985 (short story) - [Old Izergil / Old Woman Izergil]- Vanha Igergil (suom. Lauri Kemiläinen, Valittuja: kertomuksia ja runoja, 1945) / Igergil-muori (suom. Juhani Konkka, Valitut teokset I, 1958)
• 'Konovalov', 1897 (short story) - [Konovalov] - Konowalow (suom. W. C., 1907; suom. 1912) / Konovalov (suom. Juhani Konkka, Valitut teokset I, 1958)
• 'Buyshye lyudi', 1897 (short story) - in Creatures That Once Were Men (tr. by J.K.M. Shirazi, 1905)
• OCHERKI I RASSKAZY, 1898-99 (3 vols.) - Tales (1902)
• Dvatsat shest' i odna', 1899 (short story ) - Twenty-Six and One / Twenty-Six Men and a Girl: And Other Stories (tr. E. Jakowleff and D.B. Montefiore, 1915; tr. in The Collected Short Stories of Maxim Gorky, 1988) - Tyttö ja kaksikymmentä kuusi miestä (suom. Lauri Kemiläinen, Valittuja: kertomuksia ja runoja, 1945)
• FOMA GORDEEV, 1899 - The Man Who Was Afraid (tr. 1905) / Foma (tr. 1945) / Foma Gordeyev (tr. Margaret Wettlin, 1962) - Foma Gordojev (suom. Nikolai Jaakkola, 1955) / Foma, kauppiaan poika (suom. Seppo Elo, 1973) - film 1957, dir. Mark Donskoi, starring Georgi Yepifantsev, Sergei Lukyanov
• TROE, 1900 - The Three / Three of Them (tr. A. Linden) / Three Men (tr. C. Horne; A. Frumkin) - Kolme ystävystä (suom. Anton Helve, 1902-03; suom. 1940)
• 'Pesnia o Burevestnike', 1901 (short story)
• Orloff and His Wife: Tales of the Barefoot Brigade, 1901
• The Outcast and Other Stories, 1902
• Twenty-Six Men and a Girl and Other Stories, 1902
• MESHTSHANE, 1902 (play, prod. 1902) - The Smug Citizens (tr. 1906) / The Courageous One (tr. 1958) / The Lower Middle Class (tr. Edwin Hopkins, 1906) / The Petit-Bourgeois (tr. Margaret Wettlin, in Five Plays, 1956) / The Philistines (tr. Dusty Hughes, 1985) - Pikkuporvareita (suom.)
• NA DNE, 1903 (play, prod. 1902) - A Night's Lodging (tr. 1905) / Submerged (tr. 1914) / At the Botton (tr. 1930) / The Lower Depths (tr. Laurence Irving, 1912; Jenny Covan, 1922; Margaret Wettlin, in Plays, 1968; Alexander Bakshy, 1969; Kitty Hunter-Blair and Jeremy Brooks, in Five Plays, 1988) - Pohjalla (suom. Iisakki Lattu, 1904; Juhani Konkka, Valitut teokset 2, 1958) - films: 1921: Rojo no Reikon, dir. by Minoru Murata; 1936: Les bas-fonds, dir. by Jean Renoir; 1952, dir. by Andrei Frolov; 1957, dir. Akira Kurosawa, starring Toshirô Mifune; 1978, dir. by Aleksandr Pankratov; 1987: Bez solntsa, dir. by Yuli Karasik
• DACHNIKI, 1904 (play, prod. 1904) - Summer Folk (tr. Kitty Hunter Blair and Jeremy Brooks, in Five Plays, 1988) / The Summer People (tr. Nicholas Saunders and Frank Dwyer, 1995) - Kesävieraita (suom. Elvi Sinervo, 1975) - films: 1967, dir. by Boris Babochkin, Yelena Skachko; 1995, Sergei Ursulyak
• DETI SOLNTSA, 1905 (play) - Children of the Sun (tr. Kitty Hunter Blair and Jeremy Brooks, in Five Plays, 1988; Stephen Mulrine, 2000) - Auringon lapset (suom.) - film 1956, dir. by Aleksei Shvachko
• A.P. CHEKHOV, 1905 - Anton Tchekhov: Fragments and Recollections, 1921
• VARVARY, 1905 (play, prod. 1905) - Barbarians (tr. Kitty Hunter Blair and Jeremy Brooks, in Five Plays, 1988) - film 1953, dir. by Leonid Lukov
• V AMERIKE, 1906 - Amerikassa (suom. Mikko Mylläri, 1951)
• MAT', 1907 - Comrades (tr. 1907) / Mother (trans. Isidore Schneider, with an introd. by Howard Fast, 1947; Margaret Wettlin, 1949) - Äiti (suom. Hanna Kunnas, 1907; Valitut teokset. 1, 1931; suom. 1955; Juhani Konkka, Valitut teokset 2, 1958) - films: 1919, dir. by Aleksandr Razumnyi; 1926, dir. by Vsevolod Pudovkin, starring Vera Baranovskaya. "Picture has extraordinary visuals, all used for thematic purposes. While the acting is good, it is Pudovkin's montages that that let us know what these characters are thinking. The most famous example: while Batalov is in prison, Pudovkin intercuts shots of him thinking with shots of trees, sky, birds, beautiful outdoors. Escape scene was inspired by D.W. Griffith's Way Down East. " (Danny Peary in Guide for the Film Fanatic, 1986) - 1941, dir. by Leonid Lukov; 1955, dir. by Mark Donskoy, starring Vera Maretskaya; 1989, dir. by Gleb Panfilov, starring Inna Churikova.
• VRAGI, 1906 (play, prod. 1907) - Enemies (in Seven Plays, 1945; Margaret Wettlin, in Plays, 1968; Kitty Hunter Blair and Jeremy Brooks, in Five Plays, 1988) - Viholliset (suom.) - films: 1938, dir. by Aleksandr Ivanovsky; 1953, dir. by Tamara Rodionova; 1977, dir. by Rodion Nahapetov
• ZHIZN NENUZHNOGO TSHELOVEKA, 1907 - The Life of a Useless Man (tr. Moura Budberg, 1971) / The Spy: The Story of a Superfluous Man (tr. T. Seltzer) - Vakooja (suom. Terttu Elo, 1971) / Joutavan ihmisen elämä (suom. Esa Adrian, 1973)
• POSLEDNIE, 1908 (play)
• ISPOVED', 1908 - The Confession (tr. William Fredrick Harvey, 1910) - Tunnustus (suom. Hella Wuolijoki, 1908)
• LETO, 1909 [Summer]
• VASSA ZELEZNOVA, 1910 (play, prod. 1911, rev. version, 1935) - Vassa Zheleznova (tr. in Seven Plays, 1945; Tania Alexander and Tim Suter, 1988) - Muuan äiti (suom.) - films: 1953, dir. by Leonid Lukov, starring Vera Pashennaya; 1982: Vassa, dir. Gleb Panfilov, starring Inna Churikova, Vadim Mikhajlov
• VSTRECHA, 1910 (play)
• CHUDAKI, 1910 (play) - Queer People (tr. Alexander Bakshi and Paul Nathan, in Seven Plays, 1945)
• GORODOK OKUROV, 1910
• ZHIZN' MATVEI KOZHEMIAKINA, 1911 - The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin (tr. Margaret Wettlin, 1960)
• SKAZBU OB ITALII, 1911-1913 - Tales of Italy (tr. R. Prokofieva) - Tarinoita Italiasta (suom. Toivo Ahava, 1957)
• DETSTVO, 1913 - My Childhood (tr. Alec Brown; Ronald Wilks, 1966-79) - Lapsuuteni (suom. Heikki Välisalmi, 1944; Juhani Konkka, Valitut teokset 3, 1958) - film 1938, dir. by Mark Donskoy, screenplay by Ilya Gruzdev, starring Aleksei Lyarsky
• ZYKOVY, 1914 (play) - The Zykovs (tr. by Alexander Bakshy and Paul Nathan, in Seven Plays, 1945) - Zikovin perhe (suom.)
• Tales of Two Countries, 1914
• PO RUSI, 1915 - Through Russia (tr. C.J. Hogarth) - Halki Venäjän (suom. Seppo Elo & Hannu Sarrala, 1972)
• STARIK, 1915 (play) - The Judge (tr. 1924) / The Old Man (tr. 1956)
• V LYUDYAKH, 1916 - In the World (tr. Gertrude M. Foakes) / Autobiography of Maxim Gorky: My Childhood. In the World. My Universities (trans. Isidor Schneider, 1949) / My Apprenticeship (tr. Margaret Wettlin, 1968; Ronald Wilks, 1974) - Maailmalla (suom. V.Kallama, 1947; Juhani Konkka, 1975) / Ihmisten parissa (suom. Juhani Konkka, Valitut teokset 3, 1958) - film 1939, dir. by Mark Donskoy, screenplay by Mark Donskoy, starring Aleksei Lyarsky
• NESVOYEVREMENNYE MYSLI, NOVAIA ZHIZN', 1917-18 - Untimely Thoughts (tr. Herman Ermolaev, 1968) - Väärään aikaan ajateltua (suom. Seppo Heikinheimo, 1990)
• STATI ZA 1905-1916, 1918
• VOSPOMINANIIA O TOLSTOM, 1919 - Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chechov and Andreyev (tr. by Katherine Mansfield, S.S. Koteliansky, Virginia Woolf, and Leonard Woolf, 1934)
• REVOLYUTSIA I KULTURA: STATI ZA 1917 GOD, 1920
• STARIK, 1921 (play) - The Judge (tr. M. Zakrevsky and B.H. Clark) / The Old Man
• MOI UNIVERSITY, 1922 - My Universities (tr. Helen Altschuler, 1953; Margaret Wettlin; 1973; Ronald Wilks, 1979) - Nuoruuteni yliopistot (suom. Y. Gustafson, 1927; Juhani Konkka, 1974) / Yliopistoni (suom. Valitut teokset. 2, 1932; Juhani Konkka, Valitut teokset. 4, 1958) - film 1940, dir. by Mark Donskoi, starring Nikolai Valbert
• O RUSSKOM KRESTYANSTVE, 1922
• VOSPOMINANIYA, 1923
• ZAMETKI IZ DNEVNIKA, 1924 - Fragments from My Diary (tr. Moura Budberg, 1972)
• V.I. LENIN, 1924 - V.I. Lenin (tr. 1931) / Days with Lenin (tr. 1933) - V.I. Lenin (suom. 1934)
• DELO ARTAMONOVYH, 1925 - Decadence (tr. Veronica Dewey, 1927) / The Artamonov Business (Alec Brown, 1948) / The Artamonovs (tr. by Helen Altschuler) - Artamovien tarina (suom. S. E. Rautanen, 1935; Juhani Konkka, 1945) - film 1941, dir. by Grigori Roshal, starring Vera Maretskaya, Mikhail Derzhavin, Sergei Romodanov, T. Chistyakova
• SOBRANIE SOCHINENY, 1923-1928 (21 vols.)
• O PISATELYAKH, 1928 [About Writers]
• ZHIZN' KLIMA SAMGINA, 1929-36 (written) - The Bystander (tr. B.G. Guerney, 1930) / The Magnet (tr. Alexander Bakshy, 1931) / Other Fires (tr. Alexander Bakshy, 1933) / The Spectre (tr. Alexander Bakshy, 1938) / The Life of Kim Samgin (tr. B.G. Guerney) - Klim Samginin elämä (suom. S. E. Rautanen, 1934; Oleg Korimo, 1946) - film 1986, dir. by Viktor Titov
, starring Andrei Rudensky
• JEGOR BULITSHEV I DRUGIJE, 1932 (play, prod. 1932) - Yegor Bulichoff and Others (in The Last Plays, 1937) / Yegor Bulychov and Others (tr. Margaret Wettlin, in Plays, 1968) - Jegor Bulytshev ja muut (suom. Kaarlo Halme, 1933) - films: 1953, dir. by Yuliya Solntseva; 1973, dir. by Sergei Solovyov
• O LITERATURE: STATI I RECHI, 1933 (rev. ed., 1935, 1955) - On Literature: Selected Articles (tr. 1958) - Esseitä kirjallisuudesta (suom. Ulla-Liisa Heino, 1975)
• DOSTIGAEV I DRUGIE, 1933 (play, prod. 1934) - Dostigaeff and Others (in The Last Plays of Maxim Gorki, 1937) - film 1959, dir. by Yuri Muzykant, Natalya Rashevskaya
• SOBRANIE SOCHINENII, 1933-1934 (25 vols.)
• Belomor. An Account of the Construction of the New Canal Between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea, 1935 (ed.)
• O RELIGII, 1937
• ISTORIA RUSSKOY LITERATURY, 1939
• SOMOV I DRUGIE, 1941 (play)
• Seven Plays, 1945 (tr. Alexander Bakshy and Paul Nathan)
• Literature and Life: A Selection from the Writings, 1946
• History of the Civil War in the USSR, Volume 2: The Great Proletarian Revolution, October-November 1917, 1947
• The Unrequited Love and Other Stories, 1949
• SOBRANIE SOCHINENII, 1949-55 (30 vols.)
• .F.I. CHALIAPIN, 1957-58 (2 vols.) - Chaliapin: An Autobiography (ed. by Nina Froud and James Hanley, 1967) - Šaljapin ( suom. Seppo ja Päivi Heikinheimo, 1987)
• Letters of Gorky and Andreev, 1958 (ed. Peter Yershov)
• LITERATURNYE PORTRETY, 1959 - Literary Portraits (tr. Ivy Litvinov) - Henkilökuvia (suom. Leo Holm)
• O PECHATI, 1962
• Plays, 1968 (tr. Margaret Wettlin et al.)
• POLNOE SOBRANIE SOCHINENII, 1968-76 (25 vols.)
• The City of the Yellow Devil, 1972
• Collected Works, 1978-83 (10 vols.)
• PEREPISKA M. GOR'KOGO, 1986 (2 vols.)
• Five Plays, 1988 (tr. Kitty Hunter Blair and Jeremy Brooks)
• The Collected Short Stories of Maxim Gorky, 1988 (ed. by Avram Yarmolinsky and Baroness Moura Budberg, with a new introduction by Frederic Ewen)
• Correspondence: Romain Rolland, Maxime Gorki, 1991(ed. Jean Pirus)
• Selected Letters, 1997 (ed. and tr. Andrew Barratt and Barry P. Scherr)
• Gorky's Tolstoy & Other Reminiscences, 2008 (translated, edited, and introduced by Donald Fanger)