Lenin called The Devils genius but “disgusting.” When angry, Lenin called Dostoevsky “archterrible,” but in other moments admitted that his novels had “lively pictures of reality,”23 a rare example of his ambivalence. Lenin would remind people that Nicholas I had condemned Dostoevsky to death, “pardoned” him only after a humiliating preparation for hanging, and then exiled him to hard labor. Lenin considered The House of the Dead Dostoevsky’s best book; as we remember, so did Tolstoy.
It is telling that Nicholas II never met a single great Russian writer, which he could have easily done. One of Nicholas’s favorite ways to relax was to read aloud in the evening from a novel (in Russian, English, or French) to his wife and children. He read them Tolstoy and Chekhov, but never tried to talk to the authors. Why? Maybe because of his famous reticence, which some attributed to his shyness and others characterized as secretiveness, hypocrisy, and slyness?
Apparently, Nicholas II did not like to argue and did not know how to do it. In conversations, he never contradicted others, but invariably remained true to his own convictions. It is clear that a meeting with Tolstoy would inevitably lead to confrontation. But Nicholas II preferred not to meet even with Chekhov, known for his delicacy and tact.
He certainly would not have wanted to meet Gorky, even though the writer was very popular, not only in Russia, but in the West. Gorky declared himself a socialist early on—yet his works continued to be published in mass printings. He had a romantic biography, working numerous exotic jobs (dishwasher on ships, student in an icon-painting studio, night watchman at a railroad station, extra in the theater), and walking all around Russia—which made him the idol of the public.
The paradox is that Gorky’s grandfather had been a wealthy man (who went bankrupt) while Chekhov’s grandfather had been a serf. Still, the literary roots of both writers were in the mass literature of the times.
Chekhov started out in pulp fiction magazines of the 1880s with names like Grasshopper, Alarm Clock, and Shards, where he was paid a few kopecks a line and published not only short stories but also jokes, parodies, theater reviews, and courtroom reports.
His early, “funny” pieces were Nicholas II’s favorites. The tsar was also a great fan of Chekhov’s early comedies, like The Bear and The Marriage Proposal. Lenin was more interested in the late, “serious” Chekhov.
Gorky also had a “lowbrow” literary ancestry. One of the most popular heroes of mass literature in Russia then was the fearless “bandit Churkin,” the local Robin Hood. The stories of his adventures were read until the ink wore off. The protagonists of Gorky’s early stories were tramps and rebels, similar to the heroes of the “bandit” stories. But Gorky, unlike Chekhov, was a political radical. By 1889, when he was twenty-one, Gorky was arrested for revolutionary activity.
A writer like that naturally would not find approval from Nicholas II, and the tsar was upset to learn in March 1902 that Gorky was elected an honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Nicholas II learned about it in The Citizen, Prince Meshchersky’s conservative publication (he read every issue from front page to last), where the selection—which took place under the aegis of Nicholas’s uncle, Grand Duke Konstantin (the poet K.R.), president of the academy—was described as “a challenge directed at all educated Russia of Pushkin and Karamzin, all of loyal Russia.”24
Nicholas II demanded an explanation from the minister of internal affairs and wrote “More than original” on his memorandum. He was outraged by the fact that they made an honorary academician of a writer under investigation: “In today’s confused times, the Academy of Sciences permits itself to elect such a man into its milieu.”25
The academy backtracked immediately, declaring Gorky’s election “invalid.” This must have put Grand Duke Konstantin in an awkward position, yet he could not disobey the sovereign.
Nicholas intended “to sober up at least a bit the state of the minds in the Academy.” But what he got instead, as it often happens, was a greater scandal. Among the protests, his favorite writer Chekhov, who previously avoided political gestures, refused his title as honorary academician, which had been awarded him earlier.
Chekhov’s letter to the academy was characteristic of the new situation, when public reputation and independence were more important to a writer, artist, or actor than the government’s approval. In his letter, Chekhov recalled that he was the first to congratulate Gorky on his honorary title: “I congratulated him sincerely, and now for me to recognize the election as invalid—that contradiction does not fit in my mind and my conscience.”26
All the leading papers wrote about the scandal, fueling Gorky’s popularity. Here it was, a clear sign of crisis of power: the tsar tried to punish a writer, but instead only increased his appeal.
In the final analysis, Nicholas II lost this small skirmish with Gorky. But, naturally, he did not even notice his defeat—it was about some “despicable tramp.” The revolution of 1917 was fifteen years away.
. . .
On Stalin’s order, the legend about the great friendship between Lenin and Gorky was created in the Soviet Union, based on several cleverly cropped quotes from Lenin’s writings on and to Gorky. But a close reading of the texts reveals a much more complex picture. It was not a friendship of equals. Lenin, who was two years younger, nevertheless behaved like a strict, demanding teacher dealing with his talented but errant student.
Lenin never stopped lecturing and chastising Gorky. In one letter, we find: “Why are you behaving so badly, chum? You’re overworked, tired, nerves on edge. This is unacceptable … No one to supervise you and you’ve let yourself go?” In another, “What are you doing? It’s terrible, really!”27 And so on.
In one of his articles, Lenin quotes Gorky as telling him, with an “inimitably sweet smile” in private conversation, “I know I’m a bad Marxist. We artists are all slightly irresponsible.” Lenin comments sarcastically, “It’s hard to argue with that … but then why does Gorky take on politics?”28
Lenin scolded Gorky before the Bolshevik revolution for his “ideological vacillation” and propaganda of “incorrect” (from Lenin’s point of view) philosophical theories; after the revolution, when Lenin was leader of Russia, he was irritated by Gorky’s endless attempts to save intellectuals who had offended the Bolsheviks and were threatened with prison or execution. He learned that Gorky divulged Lenin’s confidential views, expressed in private conversations with the writer, to the “counterrevolutionaries.”29 That was too much.
Their relationship ended with the Bolshevik leader pushing Gorky out of Russia in 1921, writing, “Leave, get treatment. Don’t be stubborn, I’m asking you.” As one of his Party comrades said of Lenin, “Ilyich loved anyone the party needed. Tomorrow, if that comrade should take the wrong position, Ilyich would drop all relations with him, and he would be ruthless toward him.”30
Lenin never really praised Gorky by using the lofty words he found for Leo Tolstoy or even Chernyshevsky. Gorky reluctantly admitted that. In his memoirs, quoting Lenin’s reaction to his political novel The Mother (“A very timely book”), he added, “That was the only, but extremely valued, compliment from him.”31
Lenin wrote, “Literary work should become part of the whole proletarian movement, ‘a cog and wheel’ of the one and only, great social-democratic machine.” For Lenin, culture was a political instrument. “Writers must certainly join party organizations. Publishing houses and warehouses, stores and reading rooms, libraries and various book dealers—all that must belong to the party.”