As he tramped around Russia, Gorky accumulated a vast life experience and the impressions from what he saw during his trips formed the carcass of his future works. Gorky’s first short story, “Makar Chudra”, came out in 1892 and immediately gripped the attention of the reading public. Coming next were “Chelkash and Other Stories”, which brought Gorky nationwide popularity. People got fascinated with the new life philosophy, even though it was proclaimed by the dregs of society, the derelicts. The unshakable belief in personality and the eagerness to shake off the apathy of everyday life sounded so fresh in the conditions of the 1890s. 

Gorky’s books sold in huge numbers. His plays “Philistines” and “The Lower Depths” staged by the Moscow Art Theatre went round the world’s major stages and won widespread recognition. Every time he came out to public view Gorky evoked admiration – a tall, nicely-built man with no haste about him and a kind penetrating look in his eyes, he was the embodiment of dignity. In 1901 for his achievements in literary activities and journalistic work Maxim Gorky is honoured a membership in the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Empire. But soon afterwards his honourary membership was declared invalid by Emperor Nicholas II. The reason for such a ruling was that the young author was outspokenly sympathetic with Socialists and had organized an illegal printing house. Gorky felt close to the proletariat, which he saw as the only force capable of transforming the society. In Gorky’s opinion, tsarist autocracy was stifling Russia in the development of its natural resources and prevented it from joining the family of the world’s leading countries on parity basis. The peasants, who kept the centuries-old traditions of the Russian people, were sneered at as unimportant by Gorky for their unbreakable bonds to the land and private property. This caused Gorky’s sympathies to turn towards the Bolsheviks. In his allegory “The Storm Petrel” he openly sides with the revolutionaries proclaiming the coming upheavals. 

And the upheavals struck eventually - first the February revolution of 1917, which left the centuries-old empire crumbled. Gorky welcomed the revolution. He thought that the abdication of Nicholas II would pave the way for historic transformations within the Russian society. However, as the revolutionary euphoria gained force, it degraded into the stark bacchanalia of a street mob. The concept of overall equality was interpreted as the right to permissiveness. Crowds of soldiers, sailors and workers, often drunk, plundered the estates of the nobility, burned paintings by old masters, smashed statues and with a gleeful wail pulled down monuments on city squares. 

Such a revolution shook Gorky, and in an effort to influence the course of developments, the writer addresses to revolutionary masses with an appeal to preserve property inherited from the previous owners. “The inherited property will now belong to the people,” he wrote, “and the palaces will become galleries of national art. Do take care of pictures, statues and buildings – for they are the bearers of spiritual strength of you and your forefathers.” Gorky succeeded in winning protection for the cultural values of Petrograd and he strongly believed that comprehensive education and knowledge of culture would save Russia. To this end, he founded a newspaper, which he called “Novaya Zhizn” or “New Life”, and through which he hoped to instill common sense and reason into the common folk so that their superfluous energies could be channeled to the creative path. 

Several months after the February revolution the October upheaval struck and the power was seized by the Bolsheviks, many of which, including Vladimir Lenin, Gorky knew personally. But instead of the expected changes for the better the situation worsened. The new government knew no limits in its ambitiousness, thirst for power and urge to have everything their way. The Bolsheviks shot former tsarist clerks, officers and intellectuals. Petrograd was gripped by famine. Hundreds of people turned to Gorky with a last-hope request to intercede for their arrested relatives, family and friends. 

Horrified by the “red terror” Gorky considered himself responsible for what was happening too and his articles of those days were filled with ineffable bitterness: 

“People’s commissars,” he wrote, “treat Russia as experimental material and the Russian people as a horse inoculated with typhus so that it could produce the anti-typhus serum. Such an inhumane and doomed for failure experiment is performed on Russian people by the commissars, who are absolutely unaware of the possibility that a run-down horse may pass out.” 

The Bolshevik leadership found itself in a pretty pickle. A renowned writer, who supported it until recently, cracks down on it with his critical articles and is therefore becoming a threat. Gorky’s newspaper is closed down. The Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin writes Gorky a letter in which he advises the writer to change the environment or place of residence to put a fresh touch to his life. Gorky got what Lenin was driving at and resolved to leave Russia. 

He settled in Italy, in Sorrento, where he lived for 7 years. In 1928 he returns to Russia - not to the Bolsheviks, but to his home country, which welcomed him tenderly. Lenin had long been dead by then. However, the then leader – Joseph Stalin – asks Gorky to set up the Union of Writers. That was the last big enterprise of Maxim Gorky. 

The sudden death of Gorky’s son, Maxim, in 1934, and his long deteriorating health proved too much for the writer. Gorky died on June 18, 1936. 

After his ceremonial funeral the authorities launched an investigation into the doctor’s team who treated him. It was then that the suspicion that the writer might have been murdered was born. So the circumstances of Maxim Gorky’s death are still clouded in mystery.