Topic: Maxim Gorky

Aleksey Maximovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешков; 28 March 1868 – 18 June 1936), better known as Maxim Gorky (Russian: Макси́м Го́рький, IPA: ), was a Russian/Soviet author, a founder of the socialist realism literary method and a political activist.

From 1906 to 1913 and from 1921 to 1929 he lived abroad, mostly in Capri, Italy; after his return to the Soviet Union he accepted the cultural policies of the time.

Gorky was born in Nizhny Novgorod and became an orphan at the age of nine. In 1880, at the age of twelve, he ran away from home in an effort to find his grandmother. Gorky was brought up by his grandmother, an excellent storyteller. Her death deeply affected him, and after an attempt at suicide in December 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing.