Welcome to Russian History Retold, Episode 242, Maxim Gorky.

Last time we covered the life of Alexander Solgenitsin.

Today we enter three parts series about writers of Russia and the Soviet Union with another

author of note, Maxim Gorky.

Alexey Maximovich Peshkov, aka Maxim Gorky, was born on March 28, 1868 in Nizhnyi

Novgorod.

His early life was not an easy one, as he became an orphan at the age of 11.

His father had died when he was only five.

As grandparents would take him in after his father passed away, and the mother couldn't

take care of him.

The young boy would be treated poorly by his grandfather, often beating him, but his

grandmother would show him affection.

At the age of eight, Maxim was forced to go to work by his grandfather.

The jobs he would try included being an assistant in a soap maker's shop, an errand boy

for an icon maker, and a dishwasher on a vulgar steamer, where the cook introduced

him to reading, soon to become his primary passion in life.

Early beaten by his employers, nearly always hungry and ill-closed, he came to know the

seamy side of Russian life, as few other Russian authors before or since.

The bitterness of these early experiences later led him to choose the word Gorky for his

last name, which means bitter as a pseudonym.

By the age of twelve, he had had enough of the abuse, so he ran away.

Much of Maxim late at adolescence in early manhood were spent in Kazan, where he worked

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