"Man, that's the truth!" - The Lower Depths (1902)
Alexei Peshkov, son of the carpenter Maxim Peshkov, was born in Nizhny Novgorod and drifted through Russia's lower depths as a dockhand and a tramp before becoming Maxim Gorky with the short story "Makar Chudra" in 1892. Before 1917 he was the Bolsheviks' greatest patron, but in 1917 and 1918 he attacked Lenin's violence in "Untimely Thoughts", and that quarrel was not a final break. He left for Italy in 1921 because of tuberculosis and settled in Sorrento; the most widely repeated account dates his definitive return to October 1932, while Basinsky dates it 9 May 1933. After returning he glorified Stalin, endorsed collectivization and the labour-camp system, and died at Gorki on 18 June 1936 after a long illness; the rumours of poisoning were never confirmed.
Career timeline
1892–1917Rises from tramp-laborer to world fame; funds the Bolsheviks
1917–1921'Untimely Thoughts' in Novaya Zhizn — open criticism of revolutionary violence
1921–1933Lives abroad in Sorrento, nominally for his health
1932–1936Returns; first head of the Writers' Union, codifies socialist realism
From Azerbaijani Enlightener to a Head of the Soviet State
When oil magnate Taghiyev tried to silence him at the 1906 Teachers' Congress, Narimanov renounced his scholarship and declared: "I will not be silenced for despicable metal while comrades shed blood against the tsarist yoke."
A teacher, physician, and writer, Narimanov opened a public reading room in Baku and produced some of the earliest works of Azerbaijani realist literature. After joining Hummet in 1905, he entered revolutionary politics, led the government of Soviet Azerbaijan from 1920, and later became a co-chairman of the USSR Central Executive Committee. His attempt to join national emancipation to socialism brought him into tension with centralizing nationalities policy; after his death in 1925, he was interred in the Kremlin Wall.
Career timeline
1890Teacher in Kizil-Ajili village, Borchaly district
1891–1902Teacher at Baku private progymnasium; founded and ran the 'Narimanov Reading Room' (1894)
1895–1899Published plays and fiction incl. Bahadur and Sona (1896) and Nadir Shah (1899); translated and staged Gogol's The Government Inspector (1896)
1905Joined the Muslim Social Democratic organisation Hummet
1908Graduated from Novorossiysk University medical faculty, licensed physician
1909–1914Arrested and exiled to Astrakhan for 5 years; practised medicine, organised Muslim theatre, chaired the Council of People's Universities
1917Member of the Baku Bolshevik committee, editor of the newspaper Hummet
1918Commissar for Municipal Economy, Baku Council of People's Commissars
1919Head of the Near East Department, RSFSR People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs
1920–1922Chairman of the Azerbaijani Revolutionary Committee and Council of People's Commissars; concurrently People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (1920–1921)
1922Chairman of the Union Council, ZSFSR (Mar–Dec); member of the Soviet delegation to the Genoa Conference
1922–1925Chairman of the USSR Central Executive Committee — one of the formal heads of the Soviet state
1923–1925Candidate member, Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
The Machist philosopher-economist of Gosplan who proposed a genetic-teleological planning synthesis
Under OGPU interrogation (1930), he denied guilt, declaring that "theoretical discussion of all questions of politics and economics cannot be forbidden to any Soviet citizen, whatever their political biography."
Philosopher, economist, translator. Co-produced the first complete Russian translation of Marx's Capital (1907–1909) and as a leading Machist openly rebutted Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. From 1921 at Gosplan he and Groman developed a genetic-teleological planning methodology grounded in Bogdanov's tektology, and he first proposed a 15-year General Plan. Arrested 1930, sentenced to five years; returned to Moscow 1935 to translate, died of pneumonia 1939. Rehabilitated 1990.
Career timeline
1896–1904Joined RSDLP; studied at Moscow University (expelled) and Berlin University philosophy; arrested and exiled twice
1904–1907Bolshevik; delegate to 4th RSDLP Congress; editorial board of central organ Party News
1907–1909First complete Russian Capital (3 vols), co-translated with Skvortsov-Stepanov
1908–1911Leading Machist voice; published essays on realist worldview; publicly rebutted Lenin's critique
1917Editor of Novaya Zhizn; co-founder and ideologist of RSDLP (Internationalists); left RSDLP in summer
1921–1927Gosplan: deputy chair of economic-statistical section (1924), chair of labor-culture section and presidium member (1927)
1926–1929With Groman, genetic-teleological planning synthesis; differential equation for industrial growth; first 15-year General Plan proposal
1930–1935Stalin's public condemnation, then arrested in 'Union Bureau of Mensheviks' case; 5 years; released early 1932, exiled
1935–1939Returned to Moscow; translated Eckermann and Montaigne; died of pneumonia 1939, rehabilitated 1990
The revolutionary who ordered the Kremlin shelled, and the proletarian writer who published thirty books
On 24 January 1924, Arosev signed a receipt for the Lenin Institute: 'a glass jar containing the brain, the heart of Ilyich, and the bullet extracted from his body.' 'I am personally responsible for its complete integrity and safekeeping.'
The son of a Kazan tailor, he was recruited into Bolshevism in 1907 by his childhood friend Vyacheslav Molotov. During the October 1917 uprising he sat on the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee and gave the order to shell the Kremlin; during the Civil War he chaired the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal of Ukraine, spearheading the Red Terror. In 1934 he became the first chairman of VOKS, building the institutional framework for Soviet cultural diplomacy, after serving as ambassador to Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, and France. A prolific proletarian writer (more than thirty novels, plays, and memoirs), he was noted for an autobiographical style that probed the inner psychology of Party life. But in 1937 he was arrested and shot the following year; rehabilitated in 1956.
Career timeline
1907Joined RSDLP (Bolsheviks)
1917.10Member, Moscow MRC; ordered shelling of the Kremlin
1918Commissar, Glavvozdukhflot (Red Air Fleet)
1920Chairman, Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal of Ukraine
1921–1927Deputy Director, Lenin Institute; Cheka/OGPU; diplomat in France, Sweden
1927–1928USSR Plenipotentiary to Lithuania
1929–1933USSR Plenipotentiary to Czechoslovakia
1934–1937Chairman, VOKS (All-Union Society for Cultural Relations)
On 21 January 1930, at the Lenin memorial meeting in the Bolshoi Theatre, Mayakovsky read the third part of his long poem *Vladimir Ilyich Lenin*. Stalin, seated in the government box, applauded the poet warmly. Three months later Mayakovsky was dead by his own hand.
The loudest voice of Russian Futurism, he forged the new regime's language through ROSTA-window posters and long poems. Yet his late satires on bureaucracy met hostility from the literary establishment and state; he died by suicide in 1930.
Career timeline
1912–1915Russian Futurism and *A Cloud in Trousers*
1917–1921Revolutionary poetry and ROSTA-window agitprop posters
1923Founded LEF and worked in the avant-garde
1924Published the long poem *Vladimir Ilyich Lenin*
1925–1926Travelled through Mexico, Cuba and the United States; wrote American poems
1929–1930Wrote *The Bedbug* and *The Bathhouse*; died by suicide
