The mysterious death of Maxim Gorky. The mysterious life and death of Maxim Gorky

Gorky's death has been the subject of controversy and speculation for several decades. This began soon after the death of the writer, when the doctors who treated him, D. D. Pletnev, L. G. Levin, I. N. Kazakov, were accused of poisoning the leader of proletarian literature chocolates with poisonous filling. “I plead guilty,” Levin testified at the trial, “that I used medication, contrary to character illness... I caused premature death Maxim Gorky and Kuibyshev." Other doctors who were charged with not only the murder of the writer said something similar... However, everything is in order.

In May 1936, Gorky became seriously ill. On the 27th he returned from Tesseli to Moscow and the next day went to his dacha in Gorki. On the way, the car drove into Novodevichy Cemetery- Gorky wanted to visit the grave of his son Maxim. The day was cold and windy. And in the evening, as nurse O.D. Chertkova recalls, Gorky felt uneasy. The temperature rose, weakness, malaise appeared...

The disease developed rapidly. Eyewitnesses note that already on June 8, Gorky was on the verge of death.

E. P. Peshkova:
“Alexei Maksimovich’s condition deteriorated so much that the doctors warned us that his near end was inevitable and their further intervention was useless. They invited us to enter for a final farewell...
Alexey Maksimovich is sitting in a chair, his eyes are closed, his head is bowed, his hands are lying helplessly on his knees.
Breathing is intermittent, pulse is uneven. The face, ears and fingers turned blue. After a while, hiccups began, restless movements with his hands, with which he seemed to be moving something away, removing something from his face.
One after another, the doctors quietly left the bedroom.
Only relatives remained near Alexey Maksimovich: me, Nadezhda Alekseevna, Maria Ignatievna Budberg (Alexey Maksimovich’s secretary in Sorrento), Lipa (O.D. Chertkova - a nurse and a family friend), P.P. Kryuchkov - his secretary, I.N. Rakitsky is an artist who lived for a number of years in the family of Alexei Maksimovich...
After a long pause, Alexey Maksimovich opened his eyes.
Their expression was absent and distant. As if waking up, he slowly looked around us all, stopping for a long time on each of us, and with difficulty, dully, separately, in a strangely alien voice, he said:
“I was so far away, from where it’s so difficult to return...”

The story recorded from the words of M.I. Budberg, with the exception of a few points, confirms what was said above: “On June 8, the doctors announced that they could do nothing more. Gorky was dying... Relatives gathered in the room... G[ Orky] was seated in a chair. He hugged Maria I[gnatievna] and said:
“All my life I’ve been thinking about how I could decorate this moment. Did I succeed?”
“It was a success,” answered M[aria] I[gnatievna].
- “Well, good!” He breathed heavily, rarely spoke, but his eyes remained clear. He circled everyone present and said:
“It’s so good that only close ones (no strangers).” He looked out the window - the day was gray - and said to Maria I[gnatievna]:
“It’s kind of boring.” Silence again. K.P. asked:
"Alexey, tell me, what do you want?" Silence. She repeated the question. After a pause, Gorky said:
“I’m already far away from you and it’s difficult for me to return.” His hands and ears turned black. Dying. And, dying, he weakly moved his hand, as one says goodbye when parting."

And then suddenly a miracle happened, about which all eyewitnesses write. They called and said that Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov were coming to visit Gorky. And Gorky came to life! Just like in medieval legends, when a touch or a look healed the sick. True, here the “miracle” was facilitated by a horse dose of camphor, injected into Gorky to support his strength and a worthy meeting with the leader. And the writer became so emboldened that he spoke with the visiting leader of the USSR about women writers and French literature.

“We’ll talk about the matter when you get better,” Stalin interrupted him.
“There’s so much work...” Gorky continued.
“You see,” Stalin shook his head reproachfully, “there’s a lot of work, but you decided to get sick, get better soon!” - And after a pause he asked:
- Maybe there is wine in the house? We would drink a glass to your health... Wine, of course, was found. Gorky just took a sip of it. Either Stalin's visit inspired him with strength, or his body had not yet exhausted all its resources, but the writer lived after that for another 10 days.

In the story of Gorky's death, eyewitnesses also agree on the main details. P.P. Kryuchkov says that Gorky did not believe the doctors. Knew he was dying. After the 8th he said about the doctors: “However, they deceived me.” He was sure from the first day that he did not have the flu (as he was told), but pneumonia. “The doctors are mistaken. I can see from the sputum that there is pneumonia. We need to figure this out ourselves.” After the 8th, the picture changed from day to day.

Periods of improvement were followed by more and more attacks. Lived only on oxygen (150 pillows of oxygen). Timosha spoke about death: “You have to die in the spring, when everything is green and cheerful.” He told Lipa: “We need to make it fun to die.” He believed only Speransky. When the number of doctors increased, he said: “Things must be bad - the doctors have arrived...” On the 10th, Stalin and others arrived at night. (For the second time! - A.L.) They were not allowed in. They left a note. Its meaning is this: “They came to visit, but your “aesculapians” did not let you in”... Stalin and Co. came back on the 12th. A[lexey] M[aksimovich] again spoke like a healthy man about the situation of the French peasants.

I was in my bedroom all the time. He was sitting on the bed, not lying. Sometimes they lifted him up. One day he said: “Exactly the ascension!” (when he was lifted by his arms).

The injections were painful, but he did not complain. Only on one of the last days did he say, barely audibly: “Let me go” (to die). And the second time, when he could no longer speak, he pointed with his hand at the ceiling and doors, as if wanting to escape from the room.

The story of P. P. Kryuchkov complements O. D. Chertkov:
“One night he woke up and said: “You know, I was arguing with the Lord God. Wow, how he argued. Do you want to tell me?" But I was embarrassed to ask him... On the 16th [June] the doctors told me that pulmonary edema had begun. I put my ear to his chest to listen - is it true? What if he hugs me tightly, like he’s healthy, and kissed him. And so we said goodbye to him. He never regained consciousness. The last night there was a strong thunderstorm. He began to go into agony. All his relatives gathered. They gave him oxygen all the time. During the night they gave 300 bags of oxygen, transferred by conveyor directly from the truck , up the stairs, into the bedroom. He died at 11 o'clock. He died quietly. He was just suffocating. The autopsy was performed in the bedroom, on this table. They invited me. I didn't go. So that I could go and watch how they would gut him? It turned out that he had the pleura grew in like a corset. And when they tore it off, it broke, it became so calcified. No wonder, when she would take him by the sides, he would say: “Don’t touch me, it hurts!”

P.P. Kryuchkov, who was present at the autopsy, also says that “the condition of the lungs turned out to be terrible. Both lungs were almost completely “ossified,” as well as the bronchi. It is not clear how he lived and how he breathed. The doctors were even glad that the condition of the lungs turned out to be in such bad condition. They were absolved of responsibility."

No, no one relieved them of responsibility. Later, they were nevertheless accused - first of incompetence, and then of outright malice.

In principle, the majority of evidence still suggests that Gorky died of pneumonia. But we cannot discard the facts that speak in favor of the version of poisoning. For the sake of objectivity, we will present them too.

1. For some reason, the head of the GPU hung around the house of the dying writer. O. D. Chertkova, for example, says that when Stalin visited Gorky, he saw G. G. Yagoda in the dining room. “Why is this guy hanging out here?” Stalin allegedly asked. “So that he wouldn’t be here...” Perhaps Stalin was afraid that Yagoda, by too zealously carrying out the order of poisoning, would give rise to unwanted rumors.

2. Despite his poor lungs, Gorky was physically very resilient. V.F. Khodasevich, who at one time knew Gorky closely and noted that “there was a connection between his last illness and the tuberculosis process that was discovered in him in his youth,” he further wrote: “But this process was healed about forty years ago, and if it reminded of itself with cough, bronchitis and pleurisy, it was still not to the same extent as they constantly wrote about it and what the public thought. In general, he was cheerful, strong - not without reason, and lived to be sixty-eight years old." And N.P. Kryuchkov testifies that Gorky had a wonderful heart, which could withstand jumps from 60 to 160 beats within a minute.

3. Both G. Yagoda and the doctors who treated Gorky were killed - perhaps as unwanted witnesses. (Yagoda, of course, was destroyed in connection with other “slippery” matters.)

4. Immediately after his death, Gorky’s body was “gutted” by doctors. According to the story of P.P. Kryuchkov, when he entered the room, he saw a sprawled, bloody body in which doctors were swarming. Then they began to wash the insides. They somehow sewed up the cut with simple twine... The brain was placed in a bucket to be delivered to the Brain Institute. P.P. Kryuchkov remained convinced: if Gorky had not been treated, but had been left alone, he might have recovered.

5. The Soviet government (that is, in fact, Stalin) decided to cremate Gorky. E. P. Peshkova, who asked Stalin to allocate at least a particle of ashes for her to be buried in the same grave with the writer’s son Maxim, was denied this - and denied not through anyone, but through Yagoda.

6. At the trial of Yagoda, who was arrested in April 1937, his secretary Bulanov testified that Yagoda had a special cabinet of poisons, from where he removed precious vials as needed and handed them over to his agents with the appropriate instructions. L.D. Trotsky writes that “in relation to poisons, the head of the GPU, by the way, a former pharmacist, showed exceptional interest. He had at his disposal several toxicologists, for whom he built a special laboratory, and funds were allocated for it unlimitedly and without control. It is impossible, of course, not to moment to allow Yagoda to build such an enterprise for his personal needs. No, and in this case he performed an official function. He was a poisoner, like the old woman Locust at court Nero, instrumentum reghi. He is only far ahead of his dark predecessor in the field of technology!

Sitting next to Yagoda in the dock were four Kremlin doctors accused of murdering Maxim Gorky and two Soviet ministers."

Further, Trotsky sets out his reasons in favor of the murder version. He does not believe that the doctors were slandered; in his opinion, they nevertheless committed the poisoning on Yagoda’s orders. But why did Stalin need to kill the “petrel of the proletariat”? Here is how Trotsky argues: “Maxim Gorky was neither a conspirator nor a politician. He was a compassionate old man, an intercessor for the offended, a sentimental Protestant. This was his role from the first days of the October revolution. During the period of the first and second Five-Year Plans, hunger, discontent and repression reached the highest limit. Dignitaries protested, even Stalin's wife, Alliluyeva, protested. In this atmosphere, Gorky posed a serious danger. He was in correspondence with European writers, foreigners visited him, offended people complained to him, he formed public opinion. There was no way to force him to remain silent. It was even less possible to arrest him, deport him, much less shoot him. The idea of ​​speeding up the liquidation of the sick Gorky “without shedding blood” through Yagoda should have presented itself under these conditions to the owner of the Kremlin as the only way out...

Having received the order, Yagoda turned to “his” doctors. He didn't risk anything. Refusal would be, in Levin's words, "our death, that is, the death of me and my family."

“There is no salvation from Yagoda, Yagoda will not back down from anything, he will pull you out of the ground.” Why, however, did not the authoritative and honored doctors of the Kremlin complain to members of the government, whom they knew closely as their patients? One doctor Levin’s list of patients included 24 high dignitaries, all members of the Politburo and the Council People's Commissars! The answer is that Levin, like everyone in the Kremlin and around the Kremlin, knew very well whose agent Yagoda was. Levin submitted to Yagoda because he was powerless to resist Stalin.

Gorky's dissatisfaction, his attempt to escape abroad, and Stalin's refusal of a foreign passport were known and whispered in Moscow. After the writer’s death, suspicions immediately arose that Stalin had slightly helped the destructive force of nature. The Yagoda trial had the incidental task of clearing Stalin of this suspicion. Hence the repeated statements by Yagoda, doctors and other defendants that Gorky was a “close friend of Stalin,” a “confidant,” a “Stalinist,” who fully approved of the “leader’s” policies and spoke with “exceptional delight” about Stalin’s role. If this were even half true, Yagoda would never have dared to take upon himself the killing of Gorky, and even less would he have dared to entrust such a plan to a Kremlin doctor, who could destroy him with a simple telephone call to Stalin.”

And yet, despite many seemingly convincing arguments, the version of Gorky’s poisoning seems unlikely. After all last years Gorky truly fully accepted Stalin's policies - including the policy of repression. Let us at least remember his visit to the camp on Solovki and his participation in the trip along the White Sea Canal. Let us remember his famous catchphrase: “If the enemy does not surrender, he is destroyed.” And Gorky very often came into “exceptional delight” about phenomena much less significant than the “genius of all peoples.” Why, one might ask, did Stalin need to visit the sick writer three times (sic!) within a week if he had already given the order for his destruction? Or is this an example of sophisticated, sadistic entertainment? Lots of questions. At the most pathetic moment, history, as always, puts on an impenetrable mask. We must guess the true expression of her face intuitively.

N.A. Peshkova, Gorky’s daughter-in-law - the wife of his son Maxim; her family's name was Timosha.
And also a mistress, according to N.N. Berberova. It is believed that M.I. Budberg was both an agent of the GPU and the Intelligence Service.
*** E. P. Peshkova.
**** One of the doctors who treated Gorky.
***** Means of execution (lat.)

Maxim Gorky is a famous Russian writer who contributed to Russian literature famous works: “Makar Chudra”, “Old Woman Izergil”, “Chelkash”, “At the Bottom”.

Born March 16, 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod in the Peshkov family. At birth he was given the name Alexey. But later he himself came up with a pseudonym, under which he became known throughout the world. The writer was orphaned early and was raised by his paternal grandparents.

Fate turned out in such a way that Alyosha Peshkov had to early childhood work. He washed dishes on the ship, was engaged in baking and other work that brought at least a small income. Admission to Kazan University in 1884 ended in complete failure. Then again young writer is interested in politics and revolution. His life was bright and controversial. This is confirmed nearby interesting facts from his biography:

1. There was a lot of mystery in Gorky. For example, he did not feel physical pain, but at the same time he experienced the pain of others so painfully that when he described the scene of how a woman was stabbed with a knife, a huge scar swelled on his body. According to one of his wife’s stories, one day, while doing housework, she heard a roar. Having run to the place, she saw her bloodied husband. Having asked him what happened, the writer replied that he deliberately hurt himself in order to feel the pain of the character he was writing about.
2. From a young age he suffered from tuberculosis and smoked 75 cigarettes a day.
3. He tried to commit suicide several times, and each time he was saved by an unknown force, for example, in 1887, which deflected a bullet aimed at the heart a millimeter from the target.
4. He could drink as much alcohol as he wanted and never got drunk.
5. More than once I resorted to the help of a psychiatrist. Mental imbalance and mental anguish brought Gorky suffering and pain. But the attitude towards suicides was negative, even dismissive.
6. Gorky was a zealous revolutionary figure: he was a member of the party, engaged in propaganda and paid for all the needs of the revolution. For this he was taken into custody. But we must pay tribute to the moral component of his struggle - he was not involved in the repressions and, on the contrary, he asked the authorities for freedom for many repressed writers and other representatives of the opposition. But the relationship with Lenin was very strained. The reason lay in Gorky’s unjustified hopes: he wanted to change the life of Russia, change the attitude of the authorities towards to the common man, imbued with the ideas of the Bolsheviks, but was faced with a reality in which there was a place for both the physical elimination of unwanted people and the destruction of the thinking intelligentsia in the most cruel way. But Lenin took Maxim Gorky into account. And Stalin appreciated his literary talent. They were not friends in fact, but both successfully used each other: Gorky prepared the “First Congress Soviet writers", throughout his life he was a link between the authorities and the Russian intelligentsia; Stalin, in turn, made concessions and provided freedom literary activity Gorky.
7. Gorky's life is an amazing carnival that ended tragically. The question still remains unresolved: did Gorky die a natural death or was he killed on the orders of Stalin. Gorky's last days and hours were filled with some kind of horror. Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov drank champagne near the bed of the dying Russian writer. Gorky’s Nizhny Novgorod friend and then political emigrant Ekaterina Kuskova wrote: “But even over the silent writer they stood with a candle day and night...”
8. In 1936 he died twice, on June 9 and 18. On June 9, the now virtually deceased writer was miraculously revived by the arrival of Stalin, who came to Gorky’s dacha in Gorki near Moscow to say goodbye to the deceased. On the same day, Gorky organized a strange vote among his family and friends, asking them: should he die or not? In fact, he controlled the process of his dying...
9. Maxim Gorky had a special attitude towards Jews. More than once in his work he touched on the topic of genocide of the Jewish people. He wrote an eloquent appeal to the Russian people in defense of the Jews. And he even adopted a Jewish boy, who received the writer’s surname. Thus, Zalman Sverdlov officially became Zinovy ​​Alekseevich Peshkov. Common-law wife– Maria Fedorovna Andreeva was of Jewish origin, and her mistress Maria Ignatievna Zakrevskaya - Benckendorf-Budberg had Jewish roots.
10. Gorky, as it is now fashionable to say, is a homophobe. He fiercely hated people with such a deviation, and called from the pages of newspapers for the destruction of this shameful phenomenon, which he equated with fascism. Maxim Gorky believed that homosexuality is extremely dangerous for society and requires immediate suppression and punishment.
11. Gorky often lived abroad. In 1906, he, in the company of his beloved Maria Andreeva, visited Italy and lived on the island of Capri. It was at this time that he worked on the edition of the novel “Mother”. In 1913, he received permission from the tsarist government to return to his homeland. In the 20s he returned to Italy again, but now lived in Sorento. It is noteworthy that already in these years Mussolini was in power in Italy, who adhered to fascist doctrines.
12. During his life he was nominated 5 times for Nobel Prize on literature.
13. Gorky was still a walker, despite the fact that throughout his life he had several wives, he also had plenty of mistresses. This cannot be taken away. He enjoyed success with women.
14. Gorky's granddaughters Daria and Marfa are still alive. By the way, Marfa communicated very closely with Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, and married Lavrentiy Beria’s son. Daria still plays at the Vakhtangov Theater, despite her advanced age.
15. Often, people close to the writer were given cute nicknames. He affectionately called his son's wife Nadezhda Vvedenskaya Timosha. The nickname was born after my daughter-in-law got her hair cut at a hairdresser. Immediately after styling, the hair looked quite beautiful, but the next day the hair stuck out like the coachman Timofey’s. That’s what they called her in the Timosha family.
16. Maxim Gorky was friends with English writer Herbert Wells. In 1920, Herbert visited the USSR and stayed in the house of the writer, who at that time was cohabiting with Maria Ignatievna Zakrevskaya - Benckendorff - Budberg. The loving Maria Ignatievna spent one of the nights with Herbert Wells. Gorky was madly infatuated with this lady that he even forgave her for her betrayal and continued his relationship with her.
17. Russian writers of the 19th century were mostly his personal enemies: he hated Dostoevsky, he despised Gogol as a sick person, he laughed at Turgenev.
18. One of the many pieces of evidence that Gorky was poisoned by Stalin, and perhaps the most convincing, albeit indirect, belongs to B. Gerland and was published in No. 6 of the Socialist Messenger in 1954. B. Gerland was a prisoner of the Gulag in Vorkuta and worked in the camp barracks together with Professor Pletnev, also exiled. He was sentenced to death for the murder of Gorky, later commuted to 25 years in prison. She wrote down his story: “We treated Gorky for heart disease, but he suffered not so much physically as morally: he did not stop tormenting himself with self-reproaches. He no longer had anything to breathe in the USSR; he passionately strove to return to Italy. But the distrustful despot in the Kremlin was most afraid open speech famous writer against his regime. And, as always, he came up with an effective remedy at the right time. It turned out to be a bonbonniere, yes, a light pink bonbonniere, decorated with a bright silk ribbon. She stood on the night table by the bed of Gorky, who loved to treat his visitors. This time he generously gave sweets to the two orderlies who worked with him, and ate a few sweets himself. An hour later, all three began to experience excruciating stomach pains, and an hour later, death occurred. An autopsy was immediately performed. Result? It lived up to our worst fears. All three died from poison."
19. The official cause of death of Maxim Gorky was pneumonia. But it is not without reason that there are versions that several people were involved in his death. Genrikh Yagoda was interrogated in this case, who was also accused of murdering the writer’s son, Maxim. The reason for this could be Genrikh Yagoda’s love for Maxim’s wife, Nadezhda Vvedenskaya. And the elimination of Gorky, who was dangerous to power, may have been ordered by Stalin. Suspicions also fall on Maria Budberg, Maxim Gorky’s mistress, who spent time next to him last hours his life. But what actually happened is still unknown; only guesses and assumptions remain.

On the eve of the 150th anniversary of M. Gorky, the book “The Mystery of Gorky’s Death: Documents, Facts, Versions” was published

Text: Pavel Basinsky (writer)
Photo: www.proznanie.ru

On the eve of the 150th anniversary of M. Gorky, which is expected March 28 next year, published by AST publishing house important book. Anyone interested in the fate of the writer should familiarize themselves with it. It is called “The Mystery of Gorky’s Death: Documents, Facts, Versions” and prepared by the Gorky sector of IMLI.

The book's executive editor is a leading contemporary Lydia Spiridonova. So this is a publication that you can absolutely trust, and not just another book with a subjective interpretation.

the version that Gorky did not die a natural death, but was killed by someone and for some reason under mysterious circumstances, was first voiced in 1938

at the famous Moscow trial in the case of the “right-Trotskyist bloc”, where several people were accused, among other things, of murdering not only Gorky, but also his son Maxima Peshkova. Among those accused for this “crime” were a major party leader, a representative of the Leninist Guard N.I. Bukharin, Gorky's personal secretary P.P. Kryuchkov, former manager NKVD Genrikh Yagoda and four doctors: D. D. Pletnev, L. G. Levin, I. N. Kazakov and A. I. Vinogradov. The latter died in pre-trial detention before the trial. Yagoda, Bukharin, Kryuchkov, Levin and Kazakov were sentenced to capital punishment and executed. Doctor Pletnev died in the camp in 1941.

And this is not the entire list of those killed in connection with the mystery of Gorky’s death.

So, in the same 1938, Kryuchkov’s father and his wife were shot. Native sister, unable to bear it, died in a mental hospital. Yagoda's wife was executed I. L. Averbakh and her older brother, literary critic and one of the leaders of RAPP L. L. Averbakh. Like Yagoda, he was a person especially close to Gorky. And this is not a complete martyrology yet. After the “cult of personality” was exposed, all these people were posthumously rehabilitated. Only Yagoda, who was posthumously charged with crimes of a different kind, was denied rehabilitation. The question of the possible murder of Gorky was removed from the agenda. According to the conclusions of the medical commission, which was headed by academician E. I. Chazov, the innocence of the doctors who treated the terminally ill writer in June 1936 was proven. But to kill Gorky in the presence of 17 doctors without them noticing would be unthinkable.

Nevertheless, subsequently the question of the possible murder of Gorky was raised more than once. And it was raised not only by journalists or authors of books about Gorky that were far from scientifically thorough. So,

in the murder of Gorky on orders Stalin our greatest linguist was convinced,

recently passed away. In 1936 he was still a child. But his father, the writer Vsevolod Ivanov, was very close to Gorky, who was aware of what was really happening at the state dacha Gorki-10, where June 18 Gorky died in 1936. His mother also knew Gorky personally. Tamara Ivanova, actress, translator and memoirist, author very interesting book“My contemporaries as I knew them.” And in the Ivanov family there was complete conviction that Gorky did not die a natural death, but was murdered.

Modern Gorky researchers, including leading Gorky scholars, are divided into two camps. Some, as stated in the annotation of the book “The Mystery of Gorky’s Death,” are convinced that the writer died a natural death from pneumonia (as was recorded in official documents published in Soviet newspapers, and this was official version his death before the 1938 trial). Others believe that Gorky was “helped” to die. But in that case

Wasn’t the 1938 trial, at least in that part where it dealt with the “murder” of Gorky, a complete falsification?

And is it necessary to reconsider the point of view on this process?

In a word, the question of Gorky’s death is not at all exclusively a question of the biography of this writer. And not only because after this death many, including obviously innocent people, were destroyed. The question of Gorky's death is historical problem. Gorky, of course, knew too much about the real political situation in the USSR in the 30s and, in particular, about Stalin’s relations with his party entourage. Yes, he praised the Solovetsky camp and the White Sea-Baltic Canal. But this does not mean that he was completely sincere about this, as in his numerous articles-hymns about Stalin and punitive authorities, which he also sang. When Gorky fell mortally ill,

Stalin with Molotov And Voroshilov came to see him three times. Once - late at night with a demand to accept them.

This was such an incomprehensible act that the doctors did not allow Stalin to see Gorky, for which they may have subsequently paid. For some reason I urgently left France to see Gorky, but for some reason I didn’t have time to find Gorky alive.

There are many other questions that have no answers.
The book “The Mystery of Gorky’s Death” at least sheds light on the atmosphere that reigned in the writer’s house on the eve of his death. There are memories of people who surrounded the writer in last days, hours and minutes. This is Gorky's only legal wife E. P. Peshkova, his secretary P. P. Kryuchkov, beloved woman M. I. Budberg, nurse Chertkov Olympics and others. In this book, the memoirs of the doctors who treated Gorky were published for the first time. One of the most important publications is suicide notes the writer, made by his hand or dictated. They are also published for the first time.

My point of view is this.

Whether Gorky was killed or not, we will never know.

There are such tricky questions, the answers to which give rise to new questions. And so on ad infinitum. But this question cannot be removed either. We need to figure it out.

A day is a small life, and you have to live it as if you were supposed to die now, and you were unexpectedly given another day.

The most active ally of the disease is the despondency of the patient.

How can you not trust a person? Even if you see that he is lying, believe him, that is, listen and try to understand why he is lying?

A. M. Gorky with his son
Maksim Gorky (Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov) was born on March 29, 1868. His father was a cabinetmaker (according to another version, the manager of the Astrakhan office of the shipping company I.S. Kolchin), and his mother was the daughter of the owner of a dye shop. He was orphaned at the age of nine, and his grandmother had a decisive influence on him.

“Due to exceptionally difficult living conditions, disagreements and complex contradictions in views on reality with the populists who took over Derenkov’s bakery, the death of his grandmother, the arrest and death of people close to him, Gorky experienced mental depression, which he later described in the story “An Incident in the Life of Makar” " On December 12, 1887, in Kazan, Gorky tried to commit suicide.

Having bought an old revolver at the market, Maksim Gorky at eight o’clock in the evening on the banks of the Kazanka River near the Fedorovsky Monastery he shot himself in the chest.” “The bullet missed the heart, only slightly hitting the lung. The wounded man was brought first to the police station, and then to the zemstvo hospital.”
From December 12 to 21, Gorky was in this hospital. In March 1888, at Romas’s suggestion, he left Kazan...” January 2 1888 years after the failed assassination attempt suicide discharged from the zemstvo hospital.

In his short essay “On the Harm of Philosophy,” Gorky artistically, colorfully, but apparently quite truthfully describes mental illness which he suffered in 1889—1890 years. However, it is unlikely that Gorky himself believed that philosophy made him mentally ill, although cosmogonic delusional ideas or ideas play a large role in Gorky’s delirium.

Gorky's friend, who lectured him on philosophy, loved bread sprinkled with a thick layer of quinine; he poisoned himself repeatedly until he finally poisoned himself with indigoid in 1901. After two lectures, Gorky fell ill. And maybe even earlier! Already at the second lecture of Vasilyev Gorky „

In this chaos of gloomy disunity, in a silent whirlwind of torn bodies, Hatred and Love move majestically, opposing each other, indistinguishably similar to one another, a ghostly, bluish radiance pours out from them, reminiscent of the winter sky on a sunny day, and illuminates everything that moves with a deathly monochromatic light ".

„after a few days I felt that my brain melts and boils, giving rise to strange, fantastic thoughts visions and pictures. A feeling of melancholy, sucking life out, overtook me, and I began to fear madness. But I was brave, I decided to go to the end of fear, and this is probably what saved me".

There follows a whole series of fantasies, which Gorky experienced partly hallucinatorily, and of which the most interesting, since it contains a “description” of eternity, is the following:

„

“A naked woman came up to me with bird legs instead of feet, golden rays emanating from her breasts. So she poured handfuls of burning oil on my head, and, flaring up like a clump of cotton wool, I disappeared.”

In addition to visual hallucinations, Gorky at this time had clearly expressed auditory hallucinations, which were so intense that they caused him to make noisy speeches:

„

I am inexpressibly ashamed, I despise myself."

A very important symptom that completes the picture of Gorky’s illness, which we are trying to reproduce here based on excerpts from “On the Harm of Philosophy,” is sharp dreamlike stupor, leading to the fact that Gorky, while working, suddenly forgets himself and his surroundings and unconsciously introduces into his work elements that are completely alien to it, which are not in direct or indirect connection with it, as happens in a dream, where the most impossible contradictory facts are connected in one unit. Here is what Gorky says:

„

And fantasies and visions take possession of Gorky more and more:

To these extravagant antics of unbridled imagination, to dreamlike stupor, hallucinations, obsessions, actions and deeds are sometimes added:

Reality, the world of actual phenomena, at times ceases to exist completely for Gorky:

My soul was in great pain. And if two years ago I had not been convinced personal experience"How humiliating is the stupidity of suicide, I would probably use this method of treating a sick soul" .

(Delirium febrile ). This diagnosis is supported by the characteristic combination of symptoms (fantasies, illusions, hallucinations, the affect of fear), which we have already pointed out, illustrating them with excerpts from Gorky’s description of his illness, dreamlike stupor and fever. Kraepelin briefly characterizes febrile delirium as delirium, “accompanied by a more or less sharp dreamlike stupor, an unclear, often perverted assimilation of the environment and fantastic experiences, sometimes also quite strong anxiety with a fearful or cheerful mood.”

Gorky undoubtedly suffered from feverish delirium, which, thanks to Gorky’s passion for cosmogonic fantasies, received especially rich food and flourished magnificently, perhaps longer than it would have been under other, less favorable conditions.

Gorky sought advice from a psychiatrist and reports how the psychiatrist treated him, thus giving us the opportunity to judge the psychiatric science of that time in its application in practice.

„.

“And the little babe is very useful for you.” .

I purposely quote the entire passage where Gorky draws a psychiatrist, because historical value this passage. Oddly enough, but long before the emergence and spread of Freudian psychoanalysis (the book “Studien uber Hystherie”, which Freud wrote together with Joseph Breuer and which served as the basis and starting point of psychoanalysis, was published only in 1895), attributing to the sexual sphere, in fact psychosexual disorders, main role in the development of mental illness, there was a view among Russian psychiatrists that sex life takes an active part in the formation of a healthy and sick psyche of a person, and the psychiatrist who gave Gorky advice insists (!) on him having "a woman who is more greedy for love play" assuring him that it would be useful to him!

Gorky mentions many times that his sex drive was poorly developed in his youth, explaining this partly to hard physical labor, partly to his passion for literature and science. Dr. I. B. Galant (Moscow)psychiatry. ru › book _ show . php...

In 1918, Maxim Gorky published in the newspaper " New life"an article condemning the consequences of the Bolshevik coup in the country: "No, the proletariat is not generous and not fair, but the revolution was supposed to establish possible justice in the country... If the internecine war had been that Lenin had grabbed the petty-bourgeois hair of Miliukov, and Miliukov would have ruffled Lenin’s lush curls... But it’s not gentlemen who fight, it’s serfs. And you won't be happy to see how healthy forces countries are dying, mutually destroying each other. And thousands of people walk along the streets and, as if mocking themselves, shout: “Long live the world!”

“Here medicine is innocent...” This is exactly what doctors Levin and Pletnev, who treated the writer in the last months of his life and were later brought in as defendants in the trial of the “right-wing Trotskyist bloc,” initially claimed. Soon, however, they “admitted” deliberately incorrect treatment...

...and even “showed” that their accomplices were nurses who gave the patient up to 40 injections of camphor per day. But how it really was consensus No.

Historian L. Fleischlan directly writes: “The fact of Gorky’s murder can be considered immutably established.” V. Khodasevich, on the contrary, believes in the natural cause of the death of the proletarian writer.

On the night when Maxim Gorky was dying, a terrible thunderstorm broke out at the state-owned dacha in Gorki-10.

The autopsy of the body was carried out right here, in the bedroom, on the table. The doctors were in a hurry. “When he died,” recalled Gorky’s secretary Pyotr Kryuchkov, “the doctors’ attitude towards him changed. He became just a corpse for them... They treated him terribly. The orderly began to change his clothes and turned him from side to side, like a log. The autopsy began. .. Then they began to wash the insides. They sewed up the cut somehow with simple twine. They put the brain in a bucket..."

This bucket, intended for the Brain Institute, was personally carried by Kryuchkov to the car. In Kryuchkov’s memoirs there is a strange entry: “Alexei Maksimovich died on the 8th.” But Gorky died on June 18...

The writer’s widow Ekaterina Peshkova recalls:

"June 8, 6 pm. Alexey Maksimovich's condition has deteriorated so much that the doctors, having lost hope, warned us that a near end is inevitable... Alexey Maksimovich is in a chair with his eyes closed, with his head bowed, leaning on one thing or another hand pressed to his temple and leaning his elbow on the arm of the chair.

The pulse was barely noticeable, uneven, breathing became weaker, the face and ears and limbs of the hands turned blue. After a while, when we entered, hiccups began, restless movements of his hands, with which he seemed to be moving something away or taking something off..."

“We” are the closest family members: Ekaterina Peshkova, Maria Budberg, Nadezhda Peshkova (Gorky’s daughter-in-law), nurse Chertkova, Pyotr Kryuchkov, Ivan Rakitsky - an artist who lived in Gorky’s house. For all those present, it is certain that the head of the family is dying.

When Ekaterina Pavlovna approached the dying man and asked: “Do you need anything?” - Everyone looked at her with disapproval. It seemed to everyone that this silence could not be broken. After a pause, Gorky opened his eyes and looked around at those around him: “I was so far away, it’s so difficult to return from there.”

And suddenly the mise-en-scene changes... New faces appear. They waited in the living room. Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov enter the resurrected Gorky with a cheerful gait. They had already been informed that Gorky was dying. They came to say goodbye. Behind the scenes is the head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda. He arrived before Stalin. The leader didn't like it.

“Why is this guy hanging out here? So that he wouldn’t be here.”

Stalin behaves like a master in the house. He scared Genrikh and intimidated Kryuchkov. "Why so many people? Who is responsible for this? Do you know what we can do to you?" The “owner” has arrived... The leading party is his! All relatives and friends become only corps de ballet.

When Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov entered the bedroom, Gorky came to his senses so much that they started talking about literature. Gorky began to praise women writers, mentioned Karavaeva - and how many of them, how many more will appear, and everyone needs to be supported... Stalin playfully besieged Gorky: “We’ll talk about the matter when you get better. You’ve decided to get sick, get better soon. Or maybe at home If there is wine, we would drink a glass to your health."

They brought wine... Everyone drank... As they left, at the door, Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov waved their hands. When they came out, Gorky allegedly said: “What good guys! How much strength they have...”

But how much can you trust these memories of Peshkova? In 1964, when asked by American journalist Isaac Levin about Gorky’s death, she answered: “Don’t ask me about that! I won’t be able to sleep for three days...”

The second time Stalin and his comrades came to the mortally ill Gorky on June 10 at two o’clock in the morning. But why? Gorky was sleeping. No matter how afraid the doctors were, Stalin was not allowed in. Stalin's third visit took place on June 12. Gorky did not sleep. The doctors gave us ten minutes to talk. What were they talking about? ABOUT peasant uprising Bolotnikov... We moved on to the situation of the French peasantry.

It turns out that on June 8, the main concern of the Secretary General and Gorky, who returned from the other world, was writers, and on the 12th, French peasants became the main concern. All this is somehow very strange.

The leader’s visits seemed to magically revive Gorky. It was as if he did not dare to die without Stalin’s permission. This is incredible, but Budberg will say this directly: “He essentially died on the 8th, and if not for Stalin’s visit, he would hardly have returned to life.”

Stalin was not a member of the Gorky family. This means that the attempted night invasion was out of necessity. And on the 8th, and the 10th, and the 12th, Stalin needed or straight Talk with Gorky, or a steely confidence that such a frank conversation would not take place with someone else. For example, with Louis Aragon traveling from France. What would Gorky say, what statement could he make?

After Gorky’s death, Kryuchkov was accused of having “killed” Gorky’s son, Maxim Peshkov, with doctors Levin and Pletnev, on Yagoda’s instructions, using “sabotage methods of treatment.” But why?

If we follow the testimony of other defendants, the political calculations were made by the “customers” - Bukharin, Rykov and Zinoviev. In this way, they allegedly wanted to speed up the death of Gorky himself, carrying out the task of their “leader” Trotsky. Nevertheless, even at this trial there was no talk of the direct murder of Gorky. This version would be too incredible, because the patient was surrounded by 17 (!) doctors.

One of the first to speak about the poisoning of Gorky was the emigrant revolutionary B.I. Nikolaevsky. Allegedly, Gorky was presented with a bonbonniere containing poisoned sweets. But the candy version doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Gorky did not like sweets, but he loved to treat them to guests, orderlies and, finally, his beloved granddaughters. Thus, it was possible to poison anyone around Gorky with sweets, except himself. Only an idiot could plan such a murder. Neither Stalin nor Yagoda were idiots.

There is no evidence of the murder of Gorky and his son Maxim. Meanwhile, tyrants also have the right to the presumption of innocence. Stalin committed enough crimes to pin one more on him - unproven.

The reality is this: on June 18, 1936, the great Russian writer Maxim Gorky died. His body, contrary to the will to bury him next to his son in the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent, was cremated by order of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and the urn with the ashes was placed in the Kremlin wall.

At the request of the widow E.P. Peshkova was refused by a collective decision of the Politburo to give her part of the ashes for burial in her son’s grave...