Maxim Gorky Quotes


I declare that the Russian revolution is a cultural and constructive movement, the only movement capable of saving Russia from political dissolution


Context

Aleksei Maximovitch Peshkov


Citations

Maxim Gorky 1868-1936, Russian Writer, Letter on the Russian Revolution, January 27, 1906

Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations

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Vladimir Lenin. The two American leftists had been deported from America. Lenin and the Russian leadership was delighted to have these two famous radicals, and they thought they would find Russia wonderful. But soon the Americans discovered that the freedoms that they found so critical did not, and would not, exist in Communist Russia. After two years, they left Russia for Canada and Europe where they wrote and castigated Communist Russia to the delight of their old American enemies and the shock of many of their old American friends. Lenin was glad to be rid of them. They were as much of a threat to his regime as they were to the United States of the time.


Harding, not the most historically knowledgeable of American Presidents, had forgotten the revolutionary origin of the United States or its drastically experimental nature. It was the fear of Communism and the Russian Revolution that gave revolution a bad name at the time.


The Red Scare had already reached most conservatives and Truman and most others had not yet been affected by the fear of Communism that so many people had through the 1970s.


This is a very important historical, political quotation. The conservatives have since the Russian Revolution conflated socialism and communism. However, here in 1932 the leader of the American Socialist Party had already described the Communist Revolution in Russia as a failure of founding an acceptable modern state. Nonetheless, even into the 21st century many conservatives describe Thomas as a Communist. See {626692} for his distinction between Communism and Socialism. The difficulty of modern nation building was explained by Thomas and others but was really not accepted until the many attempts of the early 21st century, some supported by America like Iraq and Afghanistan and the Balkans and others like the “Arab Spring.” Then his early wisdom on this point became more appreciated.


Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky
  • Born: March 28, 1868
  • Died: June 18, 1936
  • Nationality: Russian
  • Profession: Writer, Dramatist, Politician

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, primarily known as Maxim Gorky (Russian: Макси́м Го́рький), was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method, and a political activist. He was also a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Prior to his renown as an author, he frequently changed jobs and roamed across the Russian Empire; these experiences would later influence his writing. Gorky's most famous works were The Lower Depths (1902), Twenty-six Men and a Girl (1899), The Song of the Stormy Petrel (1901), My Childhood (1913–1914), Mother (1906), Summerfolk (1904) and Children of the Sun (1905). He had associations with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov; Gorky would later mention them in his memoirs.