Gorky and Soviet Children's Literature

High-flying birds and burning hearts are typical images in the works of Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). His Song of the Falcon and Song of the Stormy Petrel were paeans to the forthcoming Revolution, and the image of Danko saving his people from the dark forest by holding his own ripped-out heart, burning like the sun, above his head is well-known to Gorky readers.

Gorky himself was all fire and flight. His brilliant humanitarian spirit soared above the world of narrow-minded politicking and for this reason he is regarded with a combination of respect, reverence, and awe in the Soviet Union by liberal and dissident thinkers as well as by orthodox communists—a rare accomplishment in a country where heroism is often determined by the ideological camp one belongs to. Though he is the acknowledged father of Socialist Realism, it is not so much Gorky's greatness as a writer, which is questionable, that Russians admire so deeply in him. Rather, it is his unique role in preserving life and culture in Bolshevik Russia. In the years directly following the Revolution, Gorky edited the only oppositionist newspaper in the country; singlehandedly preserved art works and architectural monuments from wanton destruction; saved countless lives (Lenin never refused a Gorky request for help or intervention); founded a large-scale literary translating house to save starving writers; and was a moral center around which gathered the best minds of Russia. Even in exile during NEP Gorky's influence was immense: a Who's Who of the writers of the twenties would show that virtually every writer of note regarded Gorky as something of a literary spiritual father. He maintained voluminous correspondence, reading all important literature of the day and giving valued advice to the authors. From the time of his permanent return to the Soviet Union till his death in 1936 Gorky worked indefatigably on establishing a firm basis for his brainchild—the literature of Socialist Realism.

Gorky's writing and his humanitarian pursuits are well-known in the West. Almost unknown, however, is the great role he played in fostering children's literature in the Soviet Union. In fact, if any one figure can be said to be the "father" of Soviet children's literature, it certainly has to be Gorky (an appellation which may, to some degree, exculpate him from being the undeniable father of a rather hapless brainchild—Socialist Realism). Such parentage is not to be scoffed at, for Soviet children's literature is certainly one of the richest in the world, partially because Gorky incessantly encouraged the best Soviet writers to write children's literature, partially because the best writers have naturally moved toward children's literature to avoid writing obligatory tendentious literature, and partially because it appears that a collective society shows more concern for its children (albeit sometimes for the wrong reasons) than a free-enterprise society.

Gorky's concern for the well-being of children dates back, as it naturally should, to his own childhood. In one of his acknowledged best pieces of fiction, Part One of his well-known autobiographical trilogy, appropriately entitled Childhood, we see Gorky as a sensitive child exposed to arbitrary brutality (his grandfather, for example, was given to counting the daily sins of the children and ritualistically whipping them every Saturday for the accumulated transgressions of the week) and resolved to right the wrongs of the older generation when he himself grows up. (Among his later methods, incidentally, was often to recommend to children that they read his own Childhood.)

From early in his literary career Gorky showed concern for children by organizing holiday programs for poor children in his hometown of Nizhny Novgorod (since renamed Gorky), directing children's plays, helping to select books for children's libraries, not to mention writing children's stories himself. By 1910 his role in children's lives was sufficiently respected that he was invited to speak at the Third International Conference on Family Education in Brussels. He couldn't attend, but the letter he wrote the Conference represents the first in a long series of theoretical formulations of...