orig. Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov
born March 28, 1868, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
died June 14, 1936, Nizhny Novgorod
Russian writer.
After a childhood of poverty and misery (his assumed name, Gorky, means "bitter"), he became a wandering tramp. His early works offered sympathetic portrayals of the social dregs of Russia; they include the outstanding stories "Chelkash" (1895) and "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl" (1899) and the successful play The Lower Depths (1902). For his revolutionary activity, he spent the years 1906–13 abroad as a political exile. His works include the autobiographical trilogy My Childhood (1913–14), In the World (1915–16), and My Universities (1923). Though initially an open critic of Socialist Realism . He died suddenly while under medical treatment, possibly killed on the orders of {{link=Stalin, Joseph">Joseph Stalin .