One day, I was in Agranov’s office when Pogrebinsky burst in. He was the same old Cheka who was nationally known for founding two employment communes for ex-prisoners, and who had a particularly close friendship with Gorky. Pogrebinsky told us that he had just returned from Gorky’s villa on the outskirts.
“Someone has brought the whole thing down,” he complained, “and no matter how much I tried to persuade Gorky, he always just avoided writing the book.” Aglanov agreed with him that someone must have “brought the whole thing down. In fact, it was only Stalin and the heads of the NKVD who were too unaware of Gorky and too underestimated.
Gorky was not as naive and childish as they thought. The sharp eye of a man of letters gradually gave him insight into everything that was happening around him. He knew the Russian people and could read their faces like an open book, looking into their inner world and finding out what was disturbing and panicking them. The thin, waxen faces of the workers, the trains of shed cars on the railroads carrying the “rich peasants” to Siberia (which appeared from Time to time outside the windows of Gorky’s luxurious compartment) made Gorky realize that behind Stalin’s false sign of socialism there was hunger, slavery and brutal tyranny everywhere.
What hurt Gorky the most was the growing wave of siege against the old Bolsheviks. Many of the persecuted old members of the party had formed a deep friendship with Gorky long before the revolution. In 1932, he was extremely disturbed and puzzled by the arrest of Kamenev, whom he had always respected, and told Yagoda of this opinion. When Stalin heard about it, he hurriedly ordered the release of Kamenev to Moscow in order to dispel the famous Writer‘s suspicions. As far as I know, thanks to Gorky’s intervention, several other old Bolsheviks were also spared from further imprisonment or exile. But the writer was not relieved by this; he knew that there were many other old party members who had suffered from the torment of the Tsar in the past and were now persecuted by Stalin, and he could not tolerate this. He often approached Yagoda, Yenukidze or other powerful people to vent his accusations and to express his growing disappointment and dissatisfaction with Stalin.
Between 1933 and 1934, a large number of opposition members were arrested, and not a word was said about this. One day, when Gorky was out walking, he ran into a strange woman whose husband, he learned after talking, was an old Bolshevik he had known before the revolution. The woman asked for Gorky’s help because she and her daughter, who had tuberculosis, were threatened with expulsion from Moscow. When Gorky inquired about the reason for the deportation, he learned that her husband had already been sentenced to five years in prison and had now served two years in a concentration camp.
Gorky immediately took action. He first called Yagoda, who replied that the NKVD had no authority to release her without a central order. Gorky went back to Yenukidze, who then went to Stalin for instructions. This time, Stalin was reluctant to be “generous”: he was already angry with Gorky for repeatedly interceding on behalf of the opposition members. He only agreed not to deport the woman and her daughter, and firmly refused the request for the early release of her husband.
Tensions between Gorky and Stalin grew, and by the beginning of 1934 even Stalin himself probably realized that the book he had longed for was not going to be published.
As a result, the NKVD tightened its blockade on Gorky, allowing only a few carefully selected people to approach the writer. If Gorky proposed to meet someone who was not welcome by the “authorities”, he was immediately sent out of Moscow. At the end of the summer of 1934, as in previous years, Gorky applied to go abroad to Italy for the winter, but was refused by the government. Following Stalin’s instructions, the doctors explained to Gorky that the best place to spend the winter was now not Italy, but the Crimea, in view of his state of health. As for Gorky’s own opinion, there was no need to respect it now: he, the biggest Soviet writer, belonged to the state, and therefore Stalin alone had the right to decide all matters concerning his interests.
As the saying goes, “Even if a sheep has scabies, it’s okay to have wool.” If you can’t get a book, it’s better to get an article …… So Yagoda, on Stalin’s orders, conveyed to Gorky a request: the October Revolution was coming, and Gorky was asked to write an article about Lenin and Stalin for Pravda. Stalin. The heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were convinced that this time the writer would not be able to refuse the “order” of the Central Committee. However, Yagoda was disappointed: Gorky once again showed a principled approach that was far beyond their expectations.
After this, as far as I know, Stalin made another, probably the last, effort to use Gorky’s prestige for his own benefit. It happened in December 1934, shortly after Zinoviev and Kamenev were falsely accused of planning the murder of Kirov and were arrested. Yagoda conveyed to Gorky the instructions of the Central Committee: Gorky was to write an article for Pravda denouncing personal terror. Stalin believed that in the eyes of the people Gorky’s article would become a manifesto of the writer against the “Zinovievists”. Gorky, of course, understood the essence of the problem. He refused to carry out the instructions conveyed by Yagoda and said: “I will denounce not only individual terror, but state terror!”
Later, once again, and in writing, Gorky formally applied to the government to issue him a passport to leave the country for Italy. It goes without saying that this request was again denied to him. If he had been allowed to go to Italy, he would probably have written a book of some kind, but it would not have been the book that Stalin had hoped for. Thus the world-famous writer became Stalin’s prisoner until his death in June 1936.
After Gorky’s death, the NKVD officers found some treasured notebooks among his belongings. After reading them, Yagoda was furious and cursed, and finally muttered: “A wolf is a wolf after all, and even if it is well fed it always wants to run to the forest!”
These notes of Gorky have not been published to this day.
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