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165-572: The cemetery came into existence with the establishment of the city of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century. With the death of Peter's sister, Natalya Alexeyevna , in 1716, Peter instructed that she be buried in the grounds of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery , which was under development at that time. In 1717 Natalya Alexeyevna was interred in the Church of St Lazarus,

330-572: A European great power . It served as a capital of the Tsardom of Russia , and the subsequent Russian Empire, from 1712 to 1918 (being replaced by Moscow for a short period of time between 1728 and 1730). After the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks moved their government to Moscow. The city was renamed Leningrad after Lenin's death in 1924. It was the site of the siege of Leningrad during

495-596: A final decision on this is made by voting of the Odesa City Council . Monuments of Maxim Gorky are installed in many cities. Among them: On 6 December 2022 the City Council of the Ukrainian city Dnipro decided to remove from the city all monuments to figures of Russian culture and history , in particular it was mentioned that the monuments to Gorky, Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lomonosov would be removed from

660-757: A financially successful author, editor, and playwright, Gorky gave financial support to the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), as well as supporting liberal appeals to the government for civil rights and social reform. The brutal shooting of workers marching to the Tsar with a petition for reform on 9 January 1905 (known as the "Bloody Sunday" ), which set in motion the Revolution of 1905 , seems to have pushed Gorky more decisively toward radical solutions. He became closely associated with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov 's Bolshevik wing of

825-521: A fortress at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, which was later called Ingermanland . The small town of Nyen grew up around the fort. Before the 17th century, this area was inhabited by Finnic Izhorians and Votians . The Ingrian Finns moved to the region from the provinces of Karelia and Savonia during the Swedish rule. There was also some Estonian , Karelian , Russian and German population in

990-520: A lavish funeral on her death in 1803, and for requiem services in the following years. On his own death in 1809 he was interred next to her in the church. Numerous other members of the Sheremetev family were interred in the vaults over the years, as were those of other important Russian noble houses. Between 1835 and 1836 the church was completely rebuilt by architect L. Ya. Tiblen at the commission of Count D. N. Sheremetev. The roof and floors were replaced,

1155-400: A naming act that established an official spelling; even in his own letters he used diverse spellings, such as Санктьпетерсьбурк ( Sanktpetersburk ), emulating German Sankt Petersburg , and Сантпитербурх ( Santpiterburkh ), emulating Dutch Sint-Pietersburgh , as Peter was multilingual and a Hollandophile. The name was later normalized and russified to Санкт-Петербург. A former spelling of

1320-492: A new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south. Constructivism was rejected in favour of a more pompous Stalinist architecture . Moving the city centre further from the border with Finland, Stalin adopted a plan to build a new city hall with a huge adjacent square at the southern end of Moskovsky Prospekt , designated as the new main street of Leningrad. After the Winter (Soviet-Finnish) war in 1939–1940,

1485-577: A new plan in 1737. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka . It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty building and are now known as Nevsky Prospect (which is considered the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Avenue . Baroque architecture became dominant in

1650-572: A paid informer. Before his death from a lingering illness in June 1936, he was visited at home by Stalin, Yagoda, and other leading communists, and by Moura Budberg , who had chosen not to return to the USSR with him but was permitted to stay for his funeral. The sudden death of Gorky's son Maxim Peshkov in May 1934 was followed by the death of Maxim Gorky himself in June 1936 from pneumonia. Speculation has long surrounded

1815-413: A personal friend of Vladimir Lenin after they met in 1902. He exposed governmental control of the press (see Matvei Golovinski affair). In 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary Academician of Literature, but Tsar Nicholas II ordered this annulled. In protest, Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Korolenko left the academy. From 1900 to 1905, Gorky's writings became more optimistic. He became more involved in

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1980-509: A rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed but is evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716, Peter the Great appointed Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. The style of Petrine Baroque , developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace , Kunstkamera , Peter and Paul Cathedral , Twelve Collegia , became prominent in

2145-521: A sarcastic saying: Destroy homosexuality and fascism will disappear." Gorky was a strong and sincere supporter of such Stalinist policies as usage of forced labour, collectivization and " dekulakization " and the show trials against the saboteurs of the Plan, but being a propagandist for such policies wasn't his main role; he was regarded as an "ideological asset" to personify the myth of the "proletarian culture" and bring literature, as Tovah Yedlin writes, under

2310-449: A sensational success and his career as a writer began. Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice (though he worked hard on style and form) than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalisation, but also their inner spark of humanity. Gorky's reputation grew as

2475-499: A similar statement that such "legends" represent "the essence of reality", but if the boy existed, it would be impossible for Gorky to "take the boy with him" even with his reputation of a "great proletarian writer": for example, Gorky had to spend over 2 years to free Julia Danzas . Gorky also helped other political prisoners (not without the influence of his wife, Yekaterina Peshkova ). For example, because of Gorky's interference Mikhail Bakhtin 's initial verdict (5 years of Solovki)

2640-555: A strong dislike of Gumilev, but he nevertheless promised to do something. He could not keep his promise because the sentence of death was announced and carried out with unexpected haste, before Gorky had got round to doing anything." In October, Gorky returned to Italy on health grounds: he had tuberculosis . In July 1921, Gorky published an appeal to the outside world, saying that millions of lives were menaced by crop failure. The Russian famine of 1921–22 , also known as Povolzhye famine, killed an estimated 5 million, primarily affecting

2805-452: A strong staff on my road, which was neither even nor easy. I believe that Jewish wisdom is more all-human and universal than any other; and this not only because of its immemorial age...but because of the powerful humaneness that saturates it, because of its high estimate of man." He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and was arrested many times. Gorky befriended many revolutionaries and became

2970-432: A unique literary voice from the bottom stratum of society and as a fervent advocate of Russia's social, political, and cultural transformation. By 1899, he was openly associating with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement, which helped make him a celebrity among both the intelligentsia and the growing numbers of "conscious" workers. At the heart of all his work was a belief in the inherent worth and potential of

3135-556: Is Agustín de Betancourt , originally interred in the Smolensky Lutheran Cemetery with a columnar monument designed by Auguste de Montferrand . Betancourt's remains and monument were transferred to the Lazarevskoe Cemetery in 1979, where the monument has undergone restoration. The remains and funerary monuments of architect Jean-François Thomas de Thomon and mathematician Leonhard Euler had been transferred from

3300-472: Is always weak-willed and subject to emotions and moods." Gorky's best-known publication of the period were concerning antisemitism , written in response of the severe Tsarist repressions against the Jews, and an essay "Two Souls", which contrasted "the passive East" with "the active West" and promoted the values of European culture and progress and urged Russia break free from the "Eastern-Asiatic" "soul" and encouraged

3465-492: Is combined with the city's Russian heritage. Another nickname of Saint Petersburg is "The City of the White Nights" because of a natural phenomenon which arises due to the closeness to the polar region and ensures that in summer the night skies of the city do not get completely dark for a month. The city is also often called the "Northern Palmyra ", due to its extravagant architecture. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans ,

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3630-448: Is still named Leningrad . Having passed the role of capital to Petersburg, Moscow never relinquished the title of "capital", being called pervoprestolnaya ('first throned') for 200 years. An equivalent name for Petersburg, the "Northern Capital", has re-entered usage today since several federal institutions were recently moved from Moscow to Saint Petersburg. Solemn descriptive names like "the city of three revolutions" and "the cradle of

3795-765: Is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow . It is situated on the River Neva , at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea . The city had a population of 5,601,911 residents as of 2021, with more than 6.4 million people living in the metropolitan area . Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As

3960-639: Is Αγία Πετρούπολη, Agia Petroupoli ). Saint Petersburg has been traditionally called the "Window to Europe" and the "Window to the West" by the Russians. The city is the northernmost metropolis with more than 1 million people in the world, and is also often described as the " Venice of the North" or the "Russian Venice" due to its many water corridors, as the city is built on swamp and water. Furthermore, it has strongly Western European-inspired architecture and culture, which

4125-541: The Beloselsky-Belozersky , Trubetskoy , Volkonsky and Naryshkin ancient noble houses were located here, as were those of some of the prominent merchant dynasties such as the Demidovs and Yakovlevs. Art historian Nikolai Vrangel  [ ru ] wrote "It was as if all those who had once formed a close circle of court society gathered here after death. A whole epoch, a whole world of obsolete ideas, almost all

4290-639: The Gold Star sign was installed in April 1985. In October 1946 some territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland , which had been annexed into the USSR from Finland in 1940 under the peace treaty following the Winter War , were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District . These included the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948). Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over

4455-606: The Great Northern War , Peter the Great captured Nyenskans and soon replaced the fortress. On 27 May [ O.S. 16 May] 1703, closer to the estuary (5 km (3 mi) inland from the gulf ), on Zayachy (Hare) Island , he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress , which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia; in some years several Swedish prisoners of war were also involved under

4620-518: The Leningrad Affair (1949–1952), a notable event in the postwar political struggle in the USSR . It was a product of rivalry between Stalin's potential successors where one side was represented by the leaders of the city Communist Party organization – the second most significant one in the country after Moscow. The entire elite leadership of Leningrad was destroyed, including the former mayor Kuznetsov ,

4785-759: The Leningrad Military District of the Russian Armed Forces . The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site . Saint Petersburg is home to the Hermitage , one of the largest art museums in the world, the Lakhta Center , the tallest skyscraper in Europe , and was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro 2020 . The name day of Peter I falls on 29 June, when

4950-685: The Narva Triumphal Arch . In 1825, the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after Nicholas assumed the throne. By the 1840s, neoclassical architecture had given way to various romanticist styles, which dominated until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider ( Mariinsky Palace , Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace , Nicholas Palace , New Michael Palace ) and Konstantin Thon ( Moskovsky railway station ). With

5115-557: The OGPU ) who vested interest in spying on Gorky, and two other OGPU officers, Semyon Firin and Matvei Pogrebinsky , who held high office in the Gulag . Pogrebinsky was Gorky's guest in Sorrento for four weeks in 1930. The following year, Yagoda sent his brother-in-law, Leopold Averbakh to Sorrento, with instructions to induce Gorky to return to Russia permanently. Gorky's return from Fascist Italy

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5280-544: The October Revolution , which led to the end of the social-democratic provisional government , the transfer of all political power to the Soviets , and the rise of the Communist Party . After that the city acquired a new descriptive name, "the city of three revolutions", referring to the three major developments in the political history of Russia of the early 20th century. In September and October 1917, German troops invaded

5445-521: The October revolution " used in the Soviet era are reminders of the pivotal events in national history that occurred here. Petropolis is a translation of a city name to Greek, and is also a kind of descriptive name: Πέτρ- is a Greek root for 'stone', so the "city from stone" emphasizes the material that had been forcibly made obligatory for construction from the first years of the city (a modern Greek translation

5610-570: The Perestroika . The essays call Lenin a tyrant for his senseless arrests and repression of free discourse, and an anarchist for his conspiratorial tactics; Gorky compares Lenin to both the Tsar and Nechayev . He was a member of the Committee for the Struggle against Antisemitism within the Soviet government. In 1921, he hired a secretary, Moura Budberg , who later became his mistress. In August 1921,

5775-611: The Russian Empire changing jobs frequently, experiences which would later influence his writing. Gorky's most famous works are his early short stories " Chelkash ", " Old Izergil ", and " Twenty-six Men and a Girl " (written in the 1890s); plays The Philistines (1901), The Lower Depths (1902) and Children of the Sun (1905); a poem, " The Song of the Stormy Petrel " (1901); his fictional autobiographical trilogy, My Childhood, In

5940-492: The Russian Orthodox Church observes the memory of apostles Peter and Paul . The consecration of the small wooden church in their names (its construction began at the same time as the citadel) made them the heavenly patrons of the Peter and Paul Fortress , while Saint Peter at the same time became the eponym of the whole city. When in June 1703 Peter the Great renamed the site after Saint Peter, he did not issue

6105-571: The Second World War , the most lethal siege in history. In June 1991, only a few months before the Belovezha Accords and the dissolution of the USSR , voters supported restoring the city's original appellation in a city-wide referendum . As Russia's cultural centre, Saint Petersburg received over 15 million tourists in 2018. It is considered an important economic, scientific, and tourism centre of Russia and Europe. In modern times,

6270-545: The Soviet period , the cemetery became a place of interest for its elaborate funerary monuments and the graves of historically important figures. In 1932 it was declared the "Necropolis of the eighteenth century" and became part of the State Museum of Urban Sculpture  [ ru ] . Graves deemed less significant were cleared away, while monuments and remains considered more artistically or historically important were moved into

6435-604: The West Estonian archipelago and threatened Petrograd with bombardment and invasion. On 12 March 1918, Lenin transferred the government of Soviet Russia to Moscow, to keep it away from the state border. During the Russian Civil War , in mid-1919 Russian anti-communist forces with the help of Estonians attempted to capture the city, but Leon Trotsky mobilized the army and forced them to retreat back to Estonia . On 26 January 1924, five days after Lenin's death, Petrograd

6600-461: The emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and an Industrial Revolution , the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously developed on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth; it became one of the largest industrial cities in Europe, with a major naval base (in Kronstadt ),

6765-502: The siege of Leningrad , with repair work beginning in 1944. It reopened several years later, and serves as an exhibition hall for funerary monuments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Eighty-two monuments are now located in the Church of St Lazarus, thirty-three of which have been brought from other locations. Many of the early burials were those of the associates of Peter the Great. These included military figures such as Field Marshal Boris Sheremetev and General Adam Veyde , and

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6930-435: The 1920s and 1930s, the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs . Constructivist architecture flourished around that time. Housing became a government-provided amenity ; many "bourgeois" apartments were so large that numerous families were assigned to what were called "communal" apartments ( kommunalkas ). By the 1930s, 68% of the population lived in such housing under very poor conditions. In 1935,

7095-586: The Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The siege lasted 872 days, or almost two and a half years, from 8 September 1941 to 27 January 1944. The Siege of Leningrad proved one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of a major city in modern history . It isolated the city from food supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga , which could not make it through until

7260-517: The Bolsheviks, and the founder of the increasingly canonical " socialist realism ". Source: Turner, Lily; Strever, Mark (1946). Orphan Paul; A Bibliography and Chronology of Maxim Gorky . New York: Boni and Gaer. pp. 261–270. In Kharkiv Gorky Park was renamed Central Park of Culture and Recreation in June 2023. In Odesa in June 2023 a Historical and Toponymic Commission proposed renaming its Gorky Park to Park of Children's Dreams,

7425-576: The Congress of Writers to be rewritten, and in his account of the visit, Kaganovich reported that Gorky's "mood [was] apparently not very good", and that the "aftertaste" with which Gorky was critical about some life aspects in the USSR "reminded [him] of Comrade Krupskaya ", Lenin's wife who supported the Right Opposition , and that Kamenev seemingly had "an important role in shaping" Gorky's "moods"; Kaganovich also proposed to heavily edit Gorky's attack on

7590-620: The Court Physician Robert Erskine . The cemetery's exclusivity made it a desirable burial site, and many of the leading figures and families of St Petersburg acquired plots. Among them were the academics Mikhail Lomonosov and Stepan Krasheninnikov ; playwrights Denis Fonvizin and Yakov Knyazhnin ; architects Ivan Starov , and Andrey Voronikhin ; statesmen and politicians Alexander Stroganov , Nikolay Mordvinov , Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky and Sergei Witte ; and military officers such as Vasily Chichagov . The family vaults of

7755-627: The German words Sankt and Burg . In March 1917, during the February Revolution Nicholas II abdicated for himself and on behalf of his son, ending the Russian monarchy and over three hundred years of Romanov dynastic rule . On 7 November [ O.S. 25 October] 1917, the Bolsheviks , led by Vladimir Lenin , stormed the Winter Palace in an event known thereafter as

7920-571: The Highest Stage of Capitalism , with Lenin's criticisms of Kautsky removed from the text. After the February Revolution, Gorky visited the headquarters of the Okhrana on Kronversky Prospekt together with Nikolai Sukhanov and Vladimir Zenisinov. Gorky described the former Okhrana headquarters, where he sought literary inspiration, as derelict, with windows broken, and papers lying all over

8085-598: The Neva River, and a seaport on the Baltic. The names of Saints Peter and Paul , bestowed upon the original city's citadel and its cathedral (from 1725 – a burial vault of Russian emperors) coincidentally were the names of the first two assassinated Russian emperors, Peter III (1762, supposedly killed in a conspiracy led by his wife, Catherine the Great ) and Paul I (1801, Nikolay Alexandrovich Zubov and other conspirators who brought to power Alexander I ,

8250-563: The Organising Committee of the Union and demands to let Leopold Averbakh , the leader of RAPP who was executed in 1937, speak at the congress. After his arrest in the beginning of 1935, Kamenev wrote a letter to Gorky: "We didn't talk with you about politics, and when I told you about the feeling of love and respect for Stalin..., about my readiness to sincerely work with him, that all feelings of resentment and anger burned out in me — I told

8415-660: The Russian boureoisie to participate "in the work of reform". Although the Okhrana , the secret police, had failed to find a legal pretext to close the journal, the government decided to do it in January 1917, but these plans failed because of the February Revolution . Gorky distrusted it at first, but in Spring became cautiously optimist about it. In Summer, Gorky's publishing house published one of Lenin's most famous writings, Imperialism,

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8580-484: The Russian liberals" in Lenin's words; later he wrote a series of anti-war publications, but succeeded in publishing only one of them, in which he appealed to feelings of international brotherhood and cooperation; one of the articles was confiscated by the censor, and another was condemned and led the journal being confiscated after being published. While not being a strong " defeatist " like Lenin, Gorky supported "a speedy end of

8745-581: The Smolensky Lutheran Cemetery in 1940 and 1956 respectively. During the Second World War the museum carried out inspections of the city's monuments and carried out some repair and restoration work. Large scale restoration work was carried out after the ending of the Siege of Leningrad , with the museum opening to the public in 1952. The Church of St Lazarus ( Russian : Церковь Праведного Лазаря )

8910-493: The Socialist Realism writers earlier attacked by Gorky, published an answer to him, in which he dismissed his line of criticizing the officially acclaimed Socialist Realism writers while supporting such ostensible enemies of Communism as D. S. Mirsky . David Zaslavsky published an ironic response to Gorky's article defending Demons , in which he accused Gorky in connivance in the formation of the "counter-revolutionary intelligentsia " and directly compared his "liberal position" with

9075-549: The Soviet era, many historic architectural monuments of the previous centuries were destroyed by the new regime for ideological reasons. While that mainly concerned churches and cathedrals, some other buildings were also demolished. On 1 December 1934, Sergey Kirov , the Bolshevik leader of Leningrad, was assassinated under suspicious circumstances, which became the pretext for the Great Purge . In Leningrad, approximately 40,000 were executed during Stalin's purges. During World War II, German forces besieged Leningrad following

9240-552: The Soviet regime were rather difficult: while being Stalin's public supporter, he maintained friendships with Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin , the leaders of the anti-Stalin opposition executed after Gorky's death; he also hoped to ease the Soviet cultural policies and made some efforts to defend the writers who disobeyed them, which resulted in him spending his last days under unannounced house arrest. Born as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov on 28 March [ O.S. 16 March] 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod , Gorky became an orphan at

9405-442: The Soviet vice-premier, Alexei Rykov asking him to tell Leon Trotsky that any death sentences carried out on the defendants would be "premeditated and foul murder." This provoked a contemptuous reaction from Lenin, who described Gorky as "always supremely spineless in politics", and Trotsky, who dismissed Gorky as an "artist whom no-one takes seriously". He was denied permission by Italy's fascist government to return to Capri, but

9570-504: The Soviet–Finnish border moved northwards. Nevsky Prospekt with Palace Square maintained the functions and the role of a city centre. In December 1931, Leningrad was administratively separated from Leningrad Oblast . At that time it included the Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District , Krasnoselsky District , Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944). During

9735-458: The Turbins were allowed for staging; Gorky took Andrei Platonov to the "writers' brigades" after he was made unable to be published because of his work critical of the collectivization, although Gorky rejected his "pessimistic" texts; with Gorky's intervention, Bukharin became one of the keynote speakers on the Writers' Congress and proclaimed Boris Pasternak , who was denounced by the Stalinist party critics as "decadent", to be "first poet" of

9900-416: The USSR. Gorky was not a supporter of artistic pluralism and diversity among writers and agreed that some censorship had to be inevitable, often being dismissive and rigid of creative experiments; however, Gorky was concerned with the bureaucratization of the Union of Writers and tried to oppose the increasing pressure on writers and attacked the party-sanctioned authors and them achieving the highest ranks in

10065-407: The Volga and Ural River regions. Gorky left Russia in September 1921, for Berlin. There he heard about the impending Moscow Trial of 12 Socialist Revolutionaries , which hardened his opposition to the Bolshevik regime. He wrote to Anatole France denouncing the trial as a "cynical and public preparation for the murder" of people who had fought for the freedom of the Russian people. He also wrote to

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10230-400: The Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s–1780s, the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments. However, it was not until 1850 that the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Annunciation Bridge , was allowed to open. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769–1833) became

10395-425: The World, My Universities (1913–1923); and a novel, Mother (1906). Gorky himself judged some of these works as failures, and Mother has been frequently criticized; Gorky thought of Mother as one of his biggest failures. However, there have been warmer appraisals of some of his lesser-known post-revolutionary works such as the novels The Artamonov Business (1925) and The Life of Klim Samgin (1925–1936);

10560-439: The abortive 1905 Russian Revolution , Gorky wrote the play Children of the Sun , nominally set during an 1862 cholera epidemic, but universally understood to relate to present-day events. He was released from the prison after a European-wide campaign, which was supported by Marie Curie , Auguste Rodin and Anatole France , amongst others. Gorky assisted the Moscow uprising of 1905 , and after its suppression his apartment

10725-508: The acting mayor Pyotr Sergeevich Popkov, and all their deputies; overall 23 leaders were sentenced to the death penalty, 181 to prison or exile (rehabilitated in 1954). About 2,000 ranking officials across the USSR were expelled from the party and the Komsomol and removed from leadership positions. The Leningrad Metro underground rapid transit system , designed before the war, opened in 1955 with its first eight stations decorated with marble and bronze . However, after Stalin's death in 1953,

10890-439: The age of eleven. He was brought up by his maternal grandmother and ran away from home at the age of twelve in 1880. After an attempt at suicide in December 1887 he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing. As a journalist working for provincial newspapers he wrote under the pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида (Jehudiel Khlamida). He started using

11055-412: The area. At the end of the 17th century, Peter the Great, who was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, wanted Russia to gain a seaport to trade with the rest of Europe. He needed a better seaport than the country's main one at the time, Arkhangelsk , which was on the White Sea in the far north and closed to shipping during the winter. On 12 May [ O.S. 1 May] 1703, during

11220-411: The assistance of "Kremlin's doctors" Pletnyov and Lev Levin using substances developed at a special NKVD laboratory in Moscow . In Soviet times, before and after his death, the complexities in Gorky's life and outlook were reduced to an iconic image (echoed in heroic pictures and statues dotting the countryside): Gorky as a great Soviet writer who emerged from the common people, a loyal friend of

11385-440: The author of the first nickname of Petersburg which he called Петри ( Petri ). It took some years until the known Russian spelling of this name finally settled. In 1740s Mikhail Lomonosov uses a derivative of Greek: Πετρόπολις (Петрополис, Petropolis ) in a Russified form Petropol ' (Петрополь). A combo Piterpol (Питерпол) also appears at this time. In any case, eventually the usage of prefix " Sankt- " ceased except for

11550-437: The book's value as of a work of art. His experiences in the United States—which included a scandal over his travelling with his lover (the actress Maria Andreyeva ) rather than his wife—deepened his contempt for the "bourgeois soul". From 1906 to 1913, Gorky lived on the island of Capri in southern Italy , partly for health reasons and partly to escape the increasingly repressive atmosphere in Russia. He continued to support

11715-401: The boy with him. The boy was executed after Gorky left. Gorky left the room in tears, and wrote in the visitor book "I am not in a state of mind to express my impressions in just a few words. I wouldn't want, yes, and I would likewise be ashamed to permit myself the banal praise of the remarkable energy of people who, while remaining vigilant and tireless sentinels of the Revolution, are able, at

11880-508: The boy's identity, and that the story isn't supported by documents: "In the Solovki Museum... information about the real boy was not found; this story is considered to be a legend." Dmitry Bykov in his biography of Gorky wrote that whether or not did the boy exist, "mass consciousness is structured in such a way that the boy is needed, and it is no longer possible to erase him from Gorky's biography"; Gorky's biographer Pavel Basinsky makes

12045-404: The cemetery from churches and burial grounds that were in the process of being demolished. Today the cemetery operates as a museum, displaying the funerary sculpture of a wide range of important artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Burials began in 1717 when Natalya Alexeyevna , the sister of Peter the Great , was interred in the burial vault of the Church of St Lazarus, from which

12210-475: The cemetery took its name. During the early years of its existence it required the Emperor's permission to allow burials in the cemetery, making it the chosen location for the burial plots of St Petersburg's elite. By the end of the eighteenth century burial was extended to the wealthy merchant class, in exchange for the payment of large sums of money. The wealthy and powerful commissioned tombstones and monuments from

12375-466: The cemetery, beginning a long association with the Sheremetev family. Other military compatriots of Peter were also interred here, including Adam Veyde and Avtonom Golovin . By the middle of the eighteenth century the Lazarevskoe Cemetery contained about 5,000 burials. The church was rebuilt and expanded between 1787 and 1789, with the addition of a small sacristy at the northern end, and refectory on

12540-471: The church and cemetery complex remained popular sites for the St Petersburg elites, and many noble families established their family plots here. By the early nineteenth century the cemetery was becoming full, and new cemeteries were opened in the monastery complex. The last burials in the Lazarevskoe Cemetery took place in the early twentieth century, and the cemetery was closed to new burials in 1919. During

12705-453: The circumstances of his death. Stalin and Molotov were among those who carried Gorky's urn during the funeral. During the Bukharin trial in 1938 (last of the three Moscow Trials ), one of the charges was that Gorky was killed by Yagoda 's NKVD agents. According to several historians, Gorky and his son were poisoned by NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda on the orders from Stalin and possibly with

12870-671: The city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences , University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great. In 1725, Peter died at age fifty-two. His endeavors to modernize Russia had been opposed by the Russian nobility . There were several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his son. In 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia , Saint Petersburg

13035-400: The city authorities arranged for the mayoral elections and a referendum upon the city's name, when the original name Saint Petersburg was restored. The turnout was 65%; 66.13% of the total count of votes went to Anatoly Sobchak , who became the first directly elected mayor of the city . Meanwhile, economic conditions started to deteriorate as the country tried to adapt to major changes. For

13200-496: The city authorities until December 2010, when after the statement of President Dmitry Medvedev , the city decided to find a more appropriate location for this project. In the same year, the new location for the project was relocated to Lakhta , a historical area northwest of the city centre, and the new project would be named Lakhta Center . Construction was approved by Gazprom and the city administration and commenced in 2012. The 462 m (1,516 ft) high Lakhta Center has become

13365-522: The city during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Italian Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace . In the 1760s, Baroque architecture was succeeded by neoclassical architecture . Established in 1762, the Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg ruled that no structure in the city could be higher than

13530-873: The city has the nickname of being "the Northern Capital of Russia" and is home to notable federal government bodies such as the Constitutional Court of Russia and the Heraldic Council of the President of the Russian Federation . It is also a seat for the National Library of Russia and a planned location for the Supreme Court of Russia , as well as the home to the headquarters of the Russian Navy , and

13695-415: The city was renamed Leningrad in January 1924. The referendum on restoring the historic name was held on 12 June 1991, with 55% of voters supporting " Saint Petersburg " and 43% supporting " Leningrad ". The turnout was 65% . Renaming the city Petrograd was not an option. This change officially took effect on 6 September 1991. Meanwhile, the oblast whose administrative center is also in Saint Petersburg

13860-511: The city's name in English was Saint Petersburgh . This spelling survives in the name of a street in the Bayswater district of London, near St Sophia's Cathedral , named after a visit by the Tsar to London in 1814. A 14 to 15-letter-long name, composed of the three roots , proved too cumbersome, and many shortened versions were used. The first General Governor of the city Menshikov is maybe also

14025-542: The coal industry, one of whom, Pyotr Osadchy, had visited Gorky in Sorrento . In contrast to his attitude to the trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries , Gorky accepted without question that the engineers were guilty, and expressed regret that in the past he had intervened on behalf of professionals who were being persecuted by the regime. During the visit, he struck up friendships with Genrikh Yagoda (deputy head of

14190-410: The common people, and wrote a series of important cultural memoirs, including the first part of his autobiography. On returning to Russia, he wrote that his main impression was that "everyone is so crushed and devoid of God's image." The only solution, he repeatedly declared, was "culture". With Russia entering World War I in 1914 and the outburst of patriotism Gorky became devastated; shortly after

14355-409: The control of the party, becoming officially praised as "the founder of Socialist Realism in literature". However, in her political biography of Gorky she also describes his various conflicts with the official cultural policies and the increasing pressure on him towards the end of his life; during his last years, he supported friendly relations with Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin , the leaders of

14520-693: The court society of Elizabeth, Catherine and Paul were buried in the small space of the Lazarevskoe cemetery". The remains and monuments of Jean-François Thomas de Thomon , mathematician Leonhard Euler and engineer Agustín de Betancourt , all originally interred in the Smolensky Lutheran Cemetery , were transferred to the Lazarevskoe Cemetery in 1940, 1956 and 1979 respectively. Citations References 59°55′23″N 30°23′14″E  /  59.92306°N 30.38722°E  / 59.92306; 30.38722 Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg , formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad ,

14685-527: The destruction of the Rheims Cathedral , Gorky wrote Andreeva: "All this is so terrible that I am unable to express even one one-hundredth of my heavy feelings, which are perhaps best described in words such as world catastrophe, the downfall of European culture." At first, Gorky along with the other writers signed a protest against the "barbarism of the Germans", blaming them for the war, "the despicable paper of

14850-483: The early 1920s that the cemetery become a museum displaying the sculpture of funerary monuments, a proposal that the Leningrad city administration, Lensovet agreed to. Work began on studying and recording the details of the memorials, and in 1932 it was declared a museum and part of the State Museum of Urban Sculpture  [ ru ] , but remained generally closed to visitors. The head of its administration from 1932

15015-458: The evenings from the lack of adequate shelter and food, but even in the middle of the day. Most tellingly, Solzhenitsyn and Dmitry Likhachov document a visit, on 20 June 1929 to Solovki , the "original" forced labour camp, and the model upon which thousands of others were constructed. Given Gorky's reputation, (both to the authorities and to the prisoners), the camp was transformed from one where prisoners (Zeks) were worked to death to one befitting

15180-471: The filthy venom of power", crushing the rights of the individual to achieve their revolutionary dreams. Gorky wrote that Lenin was a "cold-blooded trickster who spares neither the honor nor the life of the proletariat. ... He does not know the popular masses, he has not lived with them". Gorky went on to compare Lenin to a chemist experimenting in a laboratory with the only difference being the chemist experimented with inanimate matter to improve life while Lenin

15345-588: The first tallest skyscraper in Russia and Europe outside of Moscow. Maxim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексей Максимович Пешков ; 28 March [ O.S. 16 March] 1868 – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky ( Максим Горький ), was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism . He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature . Before his success as an author, he travelled widely across

15510-470: The first stone building in the monastery complex, and from which the cemetery took its name. The location soon became the burial site for other members of Peter's family and court, and became the most prestigious burial ground in the city, requiring Peter's personal permission to be interred there. The remains of Natalya Alexeyevna and other members of the imperial family were reinterred in the monastery's Annunciation Church soon after their original burial, but

15675-531: The first time since the 1940s, food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. This dramatic time was depicted in photographic series of Russian photographer Alexey Titarenko . Economic conditions began to improve only at the beginning of the 21st century. In 1995, a northern section of the Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line of the Saint Petersburg Metro

15840-553: The floor. Having dinner with Sukhanov later the same day, Gorky grimly predicted that revolution would end in "Asiatic savagery". Initially a supporter of the Socialist-Revolutionary Alexander Kerensky , Gorky switched over to the Bolsheviks after the Kornilov affair . In July 1917, Gorky wrote his own experiences of the Russian working class had been sufficient to dispel any "notions that Russian workers are

16005-400: The formal official documents, where a three-letter abbreviation "СПб" ( SPb ) was very widely used as well. In the 1830s Alexander Pushkin translated the "foreign" city name of "Saint Petersburg" to the more Russian Petrograd (Russian: Петроград , IPA: [pʲɪtrɐˈgrat] ) in one of his poems. However, it was only on 31 August [ O.S. 18 August] 1914, after

16170-426: The former capital of Imperial Russia , and a historically strategic port , it is governed as a federal city . The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress , and was named after the apostle Saint Peter . In Russia , Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with the birth of the Russian Empire and Russia's entry into modern history as

16335-474: The former enemies of proletariat". For other writers, he urged that one obtained realism by extracting the basic idea from reality, but by adding the potential and desirable to it, one added romanticism with deep revolutionary potential. For himself, Gorky avoided realism. His denials that even a single prisoner died during the construction of the aforementioned canal was refuted by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who claimed thousands of prisoners froze to death not only in

16500-411: The foundations redone and the walls rebuilt to an increased height. By the completion of the work in May 1836 the church had been fundamentally redesigned, only retaining the floorplan of the original. Further repair works in 1845 and 1867 altered the iconostasis and renewed the paintings. Burials continued to take place in the church vaults, with the last being Ekaterina Vasilyevna Dashkova, the widow of

16665-426: The grass and was now chopping off branches, leading Gorky to write that he was "stubborn as a mole, and apparently as blind as one too". Gorky's relations with the Bolsheviks became strained, however, after the October Revolution . One contemporary recalled how Gorky would turn "dark and black and grim" at the mere mention of Lenin. Gorky wrote that Vladimir Lenin together with Leon Trotsky "have become poisoned with

16830-467: The head of the city administration . The title of the city head was changed from "mayor" to "governor". In 2000, Yakovlev won re-election. His second term expired in 2004; the long-awaited restoration of the broken subway connection was expected to finish by that time. But in 2003 Yakovlev suddenly resigned, leaving the governor's office to Valentina Matviyenko . The law on election of the City Governor

16995-417: The human person. In his writing, he counterposed individuals, aware of their natural dignity, and inspired by energy and will, with people who succumb to the degrading conditions of life around them. Both his writings and his letters reveal a "restless man" (a frequent self-description) struggling to resolve contradictory feelings of faith and scepticism, love of life and disgust at the vulgarity and pettiness of

17160-537: The human world. In 1916, Gorky said that the teachings of the ancient Jewish sage Hillel the Elder deeply influenced his life: "In my early youth I read...the words of...Hillel, if I remember rightly: 'If thou art not for thyself, who will be for thee? But if thou art for thyself alone, wherefore art thou'? The inner meaning of these words impressed me with their profound wisdom...The thought ate its way deep into my soul, and I say now with conviction: Hillel's wisdom served as

17325-694: The ideological enemies, namely Kamenev and Zinoviev : "Next thing you know you'll be calling for publication of White Guard writers", as Korney Chukovsky summarized in his diary; Gorky's second answer to Zaslavsky was not published. During the officially organized campaign against the composer Dmitry Shostakovich , Gorky wrote a letter to Stalin in defense of the composer, demanding a "careful" treatment of him and calling his critics "a bunch of mediocre people, hack-workers" "attack[ing] Shostakovich in every possible way." Such sources as Romain Rolland 's diary demonstrate that because of Gorky's refusal to blindly obey

17490-514: The incarnation of spiritual beauty and kindness". Gorky admitted to feeling attracted to Bolshevism, but admitted to concerns about a creed that made the entire working class "sweet and reasonable – I had never known people who were really like this". Gorky wrote that he knew the poor, the "carpenters, stevedores, bricklayers", in a way that the intellectual Lenin never did, and he frankly distrusted them. During World War I, his apartment in Petrograd

17655-826: The invitation of Mark Twain and other writers. An invitation to the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt was withdrawn after the New York World reported that the woman accompanying Gorky was not his wife. After this was revealed all of the hotels in Manhattan refused to house the couple, and they had to stay at an apartment in Staten Island . During a visit to Switzerland, Gorky met Lenin, who he charged spent an inordinate amount of his time feuding with other revolutionaries, writing: "He looked awful. Even his tongue seemed to have turned grey". Despite his atheism , Gorky

17820-420: The lake froze. More than one million civilians were killed, mainly from starvation. There were incidents of cannibalism, with around 2,000 residents arrested for eating other people. Many others escaped or were evacuated, so the city became largely depopulated. On 1 May 1945 Joseph Stalin , in his Supreme Commander Order No. 20, named Leningrad, alongside Stalingrad , Sevastopol , and Odesa , hero cities of

17985-543: The latter is considered by some as Gorky's masterpiece and has been viewed by some critics as a modernist work. Unlike his pre-revolutionary writings (known for their "anti-psychologism") Gorky's later works differ, with an ambivalent portrayal of the Russian Revolution and "unmodern interest to human psychology" (as noted by D. S. Mirsky ). He had associations with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov , both mentioned by Gorky in his memoirs. Gorky

18150-468: The literary bureaucracy. Such Stalin's closest associates as Lazar Kaganovich opposed Gorky and Bukharin in their efforts against the increasing party control of literature, and Kaganovich in his letters to Stalin wrote about Gorky's ideological faults and the ostensible influence of the Opposition on him. For example, Kaganovich and several Politburo members visited Gorky and demanded his keynote speech for

18315-550: The members of the Organising Committee and publish it so it wouldn't circulate illegally. Another act which concerned the Politburo was Gorky's support of the members of the RAPP , the former party institution to control literature the members of which fell out of favour after its disbandment; Kaganovich wrote about Gorky supporting the RAPP-led campaign against Stalin's hand-picked leadership of

18480-545: The most prominent Russian sculptors. The cemetery includes funerary monuments by Ivan Martos , Mikhail Kozlovsky , Vasily Demut-Malinovsky , Andrey Voronikhin , Fedot Shubin , Fyodor Tolstoy and other masters. By the nineteenth century the cemetery was becoming overcrowded, and the first of the new cemeteries in the Lavra, the Tikhvin Cemetery , was opened in 1823. Burials in the Lazarevskoe Cemetery became less frequent in

18645-594: The national pantheon in Paris." The Lazarevskoe and Tikhvin Cemeteries, as well as the Volkovo Cemetery , were designated as the sites for development. Those memorials thought to have low historical or artistic interest were cleared away, while those considered to have higher historical or artistic interest were brought from other cemeteries across the city, quite often without the remains that they commemorated. One such example

18810-432: The nineteenth century, and in the twentieth century occurred in only exceptional cases. One of the last people to be interred was Count Sergei Witte in 1915, and in 1919 the cemetery was closed to new burials. During the Soviet period the cemetery was closed and placed under state protection, administered by the society "Old Petersburg" ( Russian : «Старый Петербург» ). The People's Commissariat for Education proposed in

18975-443: The official Soviet idea of "transformation through labour". Gorky did not notice the relocation of thousands of prisoners to ease the overcrowding, the new clothes on the prisoners (used to labouring in their underwear), or even the hiding of prisoners under tarpaulins, and the removal of the torture rooms. The deception was exposed when Gorky was presented with children "model prisoners", one of who challenged Gorky if he "wanted to know

19140-534: The opposition movement, for which he was again briefly imprisoned in 1901. In 1904, having severed his relationship with the Moscow Art Theatre in the wake of conflict with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko , Gorky returned to Nizhny Novgorod to establish a theatre of his own. Both Konstantin Stanislavski and Savva Morozov provided financial support for the venture. Stanislavski believed that Gorky's theatre

19305-410: The opposition which were executed after Gorky's death, and he could be sympathetic to the centrist and Right Opposition in general; both Bukharin and Kamenev had been friends with Gorky since 1920s. Paola Cioni noted that although there are traits of a conflict in the relations between Stalin and the state and Gorky, it is uncertain when this conflict was provoked by psychological motives, and when it

19470-416: The original name, Sankt-Peterburg , was returned by citywide referendum. Today, in English the city is known as Saint Petersburg . Local residents often refer to the city by its shortened nickname, Piter (Russian: Питер , IPA: [ˈpʲitʲɪr] ). After the October Revolution the name Red Petrograd (Красный Петроград, Krasny Petrograd ) was often used in newspapers and other prints until

19635-421: The party, with Bogdanov taking responsibility for the transfer of funds from Gorky to Vpered . It is not clear whether he ever formally joined, and his relations with Lenin and the Bolsheviks would always be rocky. His most influential writings in these years were a series of plays on social and political themes, most famously The Lower Depths (1902). While briefly imprisoned in Peter and Paul Fortress during

19800-484: The perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. From the 1960s to the 1980s many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts; while the functionalist apartment blocks were nearly identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre to live in separate apartments. On 12 June 1991 , simultaneously with the first Russian SFSR presidential elections ,

19965-493: The poet Nikolay Gumilev was arrested by the Petrograd Cheka for his monarchist views. There is a story that Gorky hurried to Moscow, obtained an order to release Gumilev from Lenin personally, but upon his return to Petrograd he found out that Gumilev had already been shot – but Nadezhda Mandelstam , a close friend of Gumilev's widow, Anna Akhmatova wrote that: "It is true that people asked him to intervene. ... Gorky had

20130-642: The policies of Stalinism, he had lost the Party's goodwill and spent his last days under unannounced house arrest. With the increase of Stalinist repression and especially after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, Gorky was placed under unannounced house arrest in his house near Moscow in Gorki-10 (the name of the place is a completely different word in Russian unrelated to his surname). His long-serving secretary Pyotr Kryuchkov had been recruited by Yagoda as

20295-480: The post-war decades, partially according to pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan for Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. In 1953, Pavlovsky District in Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory, including Pavlovsk, merged with Leningrad. In 1954, the settlements Levashovo , Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad. Leningrad gave its name to

20460-594: The preservation of its historical and architectural environment became controversial. After 2005, the demolition of older buildings in the historical centre was permitted. In 2006, Gazprom announced an ambitious project to erect a 403 m (1,322 ft) skyscraper (the Okhta Center ) opposite to Smolny , which could result in the loss of the unique line of Petersburg landscape. Urgent protests by citizens and prominent public figures of Russia against this project were not considered by Governor Valentina Matviyenko and

20625-566: The pseudonym "Gorky" (from горький; literally "bitter") in 1892, when his first short story, " Makar Chudra ", was published by the newspaper Kavkaz (The Caucasus) in Tiflis where he spent several weeks doing menial jobs, mostly for the Caucasian Railway workshops. The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky's first book Очерки и рассказы ( Essays and Stories ) in 1898 enjoyed

20790-406: The publishing house Academia ; Gorky also made efforts to support the literary " fellow travellers " and writers who had troubles with their works being published for ideological or artistic reasons or were disapproved by the official critic. For example, in letters to Stalin he defended Mikhail Bulgakov , and partly because of Gorky, Bulgakov's plays The Cabal of Hypocrites and The Days of

20955-595: The same time, to be remarkably bold creators of culture". In a collection of academic papers about Gorky by the World Literature Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences published in 1995 it was noted that the story about the boy was first told by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The GULAG Archipelago and there was no other testimonies in support of it, that there were never details given about

21120-590: The son of their victim). The third emperor's assassination took place in Saint Petersburg in 1881 when Alexander II was murdered by terrorists (see the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood ). The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. On 1 September 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, the Imperial government renamed the city Petrograd , meaning "Peter's City", to remove

21285-631: The southern limit of the city. The most prominent neoclassical and Empire-style architects in Saint Petersburg included: In 1810, Alexander I established the first engineering higher education , the Saint Petersburg Main military engineering School in Saint Petersburg. Many monuments commemorate the Russian victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 , including the Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and

21450-525: The supervision of Alexander Menshikov . Tens of thousands of serfs died while building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate . Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, nine years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war. He referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital (or seat of government) as early as 1704. While the city

21615-463: The time of the transfer of the relics of St Lazarus. On 23 December 1718 court physician Robert Erskine was interred in the crypt, and on 26 April Peter's infant son, Tsarevich Peter Petrovich , was buried there. In 1723, the remains of Peter the Great's relatives were transferred to stone tombs in the Annunciation Church. In 1719 Peter's close associate Count Boris Sheremetev was buried in

21780-400: The truth". On the affirmative, the room was cleared and the 14-year-old boy recounted the truth – starvation, men worked to death, and of the pole torture, of using men instead of horses, of the summary executions, of rolling prisoners, bound to a heavy pole down stairs with hundreds of steps, of spending the night, in underwear, in the snow. Gorky never wrote about the boy, or even asked to take

21945-463: The truth... I loved you from the bottom of my heart"; Gorky's secretary Kryuchkov didn't register the letter in Gorky's correspondence receipt book, but the hand-written copy in the Gorky archives contains the writer's characteristic annotations in red pencil; meanwhile, as Gorky's relationship with Stalin worsened, the latter stopped visiting him and replying to his phone calls, and their formal correspondence

22110-474: The walls and ceiling were painted over. Most of the icons were removed, though many of the historical monuments were retained. With the demolition of the Lavra's Dukhovskaya Church in 1937, a number of monuments were transferred to the museum, and over the next few years the remains of several famous historical figures were transferred and interred in the Church of St Lazarus, including; Prince Ioane of Georgia , Viktor Kochubey and Ekaterina Ilyinichna Kutuzova,

22275-554: The war with Germany had begun, that Tsar Nicholas II renamed the city Petrograd in order to expunge the German words Sankt and Burg . Since the prefix "Saint" was omitted, this act also changed the eponym and the "patron" of the city from Saint Peter to Peter the Great, its founder. On 26 January 1924, shortly after the death of Vladimir Lenin , it was renamed to Leningrad (Russian: Ленинград , IPA: [lʲɪnʲɪnˈgrat] ), meaning 'Lenin City'. On 6 September 1991,

22440-432: The war and for peace without annexation or indemnities." In 1915, he launched the publishing house Parus and the magazine Letopis to spread anti-war stance and "defend the idea of international culture against all manifestations of nationalism and imperialism"; among its prominent writers were the poets Sergei Yesenin , Aleksandr Blok and Vladimir Mayakovsky . Lenin was critical of Gorky's position: "In politics Gorky

22605-686: The war. A law acknowledging the honorary title of "Hero City" passed on 8 May 1965 (the 20th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War), during the Brezhnev era . The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR awarded Leningrad as a Hero City the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal "for the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege". The Hero-City Obelisk bearing

22770-421: The western end. Most of the funding was provided by Ivan Yelagin , a prominent figure of Catherine the Great 's reign, with further funding of 1,600 rubles from Count Nikolai Sheremetev to include the grave of Borish Sheremetev and to bring the church to its present dimensions. Sheremetev, who had scandalised society by marrying Praskovia Zhemchugova , an actress and opera singer of serf origins, arranged for

22935-664: The wife of Mikhail Kutuzov . Other monuments were brought from the Feodorovskaya Lavra Church , the Smolensky Armenian Church and the Catholic Church in Tsarskoye Selo . The remains of Count Ivan Laval  [ ru ] , the father-in-law of Decembrist Prince Sergei Petrovich Trubetskoy were reburied in the church, but his monument was never installed. The church was damaged several times during

23100-463: The work of Russian social-democracy, especially the Bolsheviks and invited Anatoly Lunacharsky to stay with him on Capri. The two men had worked together on Literaturny Raspad which appeared in 1908. It was during this period that Gorky, along with Lunacharsky, Bogdanov and Vladimir Bazarov developed the idea of an Encyclopedia of Russian History as a socialist version of Diderot 's Encyclopédie . In 1906, Maxim Gorky visited New York City at

23265-481: The writer and statesman of the Arzamas Society Dmitry Dashkov , in 1890. The church was closed with the rest of the cemetery in 1923, and for a time served as a warehouse for storing monuments and gravestones brought from other cemeteries that were being demolished. With the establishment of the necropolis museum in 1932, the church interior was heavily remodelled. The iconostasis was dismantled and

23430-590: Was a major propaganda victory for the Soviets. He was decorated with the Order of Lenin and given a mansion (formerly belonging to the millionaire Pavel Ryabushinsky , which was for many years the Gorky Museum ) in Moscow and a dacha in the suburbs. The city of Nizhny Novgorod, and the surrounding province were renamed Gorky. Moscow's main park , and one of the central Moscow streets, Tverskaya, were renamed in his honour, as

23595-471: Was active in the emerging Marxist socialist movement and later supported the Bolsheviks . He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov 's Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party . During World War I , Gorky supported pacifism and internationalism and anti-war protests. For a significant part of his life he

23760-525: Was again designated as the capital of the Russian Empire . It remained the seat of the Romanov dynasty and the Imperial Court of the Russian tsars , as well as the seat of the Russian government, for another 186 years until the communist revolution of 1917 . In 1736–1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. To rebuild the damaged boroughs, a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Münnich commissioned

23925-420: Was almost entirely maintained by Gorky, with Stalin replying occasionally. Later Gorky tried to defend an issue of Dostoevsky's Demons which was prepared by Kamenev and came out after his arrest; the novel had a reputation of a "counter-revolutionary" work. As the conflict was becoming more visible, Gorky's political and literary positions became weaker. Fyodor Panferov , one of the party-sanctioned leaders of

24090-472: Was an opportunity to develop the network of provincial theatres which he hoped would reform the art of the stage in Russia, a dream of his since the 1890s. He sent some pupils from the Art Theatre School—as well as Ioasaf Tikhomirov , who ran the school—to work there. By the autumn, however, after the censor had banned every play that the theatre proposed to stage, Gorky abandoned the project. As

24255-576: Was being built, Peter lived in a three-room log cabin with his wife Catherine and their children. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan. By 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by

24420-553: Was built in 1717, and is located along the banks of the Monastyrka River  [ ru ] . Peter the Great's sister, Natalya Alexeyevna , had died in 1716, but Peter delayed her burial until his return from a journey abroad. The stone octahedral church, the first stone building of the Monastery, was built behind the Lavra's Annunciation Church , and was probably consecrated on 17 October 1717, shortly after Peter's return, and at

24585-518: Was changed to 6 years of exile. Gorky strongly supported efforts in getting a law passed in 1934, making homosexuality a criminal offense . His attitude was coloured by the fact that some members of the Nazi Sturmabteilung were homosexual. The phrase "exterminate all homosexuals and fascism will vanish" is often attributed to him. Writing in Pravda on 23 May 1934, Gorky said: "There is already

24750-524: Was changed, breaking the tradition of democratic election by universal suffrage that started in 1991. In 2006, the city legislature re-approved Matviyenko as governor. Residential building had intensified again; real-estate prices inflated greatly, which caused many new problems for the preservation of the historical part of the city. Although the central part of the city has a UNESCO designation (there are about 8,000 architectural monuments in Petersburg),

24915-400: Was cut off by underground flooding, creating a major obstacle to the city development for almost ten years. On 13 June 1996, Saint Petersburg, alongside Leningrad Oblast and Tver Oblast , signed a power-sharing agreement with the federal government, granting it autonomy. This agreement was abolished on 4 April 2002. In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev defeated Anatoly Sobchak in the elections for

25080-507: Was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union (USSR), being critical both of the Tsarism and of the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War and the 1920s, condemning the latter for political repressions. In 1928 he returned to the USSR on Joseph Stalin 's personal invitation and lived there from 1932 until his death in June 1936. After his return he was officially declared the "founder of Socialist Realism ". Despite this, Gorky's relations with

25245-404: Was experimenting on the "living flesh of Russia". A further strain on Gorky's relations with the Bolsheviks occurred when his newspaper Novaya Zhizn ( New Life ) fell prey to Bolshevik censorship during the ensuing civil war, around which time Gorky published a collection of essays critical of the Bolsheviks called Untimely Thoughts in 1918, which would not be republished in Russia until after

25410-413: Was having difficulty earning enough to keep his large household, and began to seek an accommodation with the communist regime. The General Secretary of the Communist Party Joseph Stalin was equally keen to entice Gorky back to the USSR. He paid his first visit in May 1928 – at the very time when the regime was staging its first show trial since 1922, the so-called Shakhty Trial of 53 engineers employed in

25575-520: Was later depicted by Viktor Govorov in his painting . On that same day Stalin left his autograph on the last page of this work by Gorky: "This piece is stronger than Goethe's Faust (love defeats death)" Voroshilov also left a "resolution": "I am illiterate, but I think that Comrade Stalin more than correctly defined the meaning of A. Gorky's poems. On my own behalf, I will say: I love M. Gorky as my and my class of writer, who correctly defined our forward movement." As Vyacheslav Ivanov remembers, Gorky

25740-483: Was not a materialist. Most controversially, he articulated, along with a few other maverick Bolsheviks, a philosophy he called " God-Building " (богостроительство, bogostroitel'stvo ), which sought to recapture the power of myth for the revolution and to create religious atheism that placed collective humanity where God had been and was imbued with passion, wonderment, moral certainty, and the promise of deliverance from evil, suffering, and even death. Though 'God-Building'

25905-412: Was permitted to settle in Sorrento, where he lived from 1922 to 1932, with an extended household that included Moura Budberg, his ex-wife Andreyeva, her lover, Pyotr Kryuchkov , who acted as Gorky's secretary (initially a spy for Yagoda) for the remainder of his life, Gorky's son Max Peshkov, Max's wife, Timosha, and their two young daughters. He wrote several successful books while there, but by 1928 he

26070-422: Was provoked by his political position. It is certain, however, that Gorky intervened on behalf of such politically persecuted individuals as the historian Yevgeny Tarle and the literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin , succeeded in making possible for the writers Yevgeny Zamyatin and Victor Serge to leave the country, tried to intercede on behalf of Karl Radek and Bukharin, and made Kamenev appointed as director of

26235-413: Was raided by the Black Hundreds . He subsequently fled to Lake Saimaa , Finland . In 1906, the Bolsheviks sent him on a fund-raising trip to the United States with Ivan Narodny . When visiting the Adirondack Mountains , Gorky wrote Mother , his probably most famous novel of revolutionary conversion and struggle; despite its success and political impact, various critics and Gorky himself were harsh of

26400-417: Was renamed Leningrad . Later many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly, with names in honour of communist figures replacing historic names given centuries before. The city has over 230 places associated with the life and activities of Lenin. Some of them were turned into museums, including the cruiser Aurora – a symbol of the October Revolution and the oldest ship in the Russian Navy . In

26565-419: Was ridiculed by Lenin, Gorky retained his belief that "culture"—the moral and spiritual awareness of the value and potential of the human self—would be more critical to the revolution's success than political or economic arrangements. An amnesty granted for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty allowed Gorky to return to Russia in 1914, where he continued his social criticism, mentored other writers from

26730-466: Was the Moscow Art Theatre . The largest fixed-wing aircraft in the world in the mid-1930s, the Tupolev ANT-20 was named Maxim Gorky in his honour. He was also appointed President of the Union of Soviet Writers , founded in 1932, to coincide with his return to the USSR. On 11 October 1931 Gorky read his fairy tale poem "A Girl and Death" (which he wrote in 1892) to his visitors Joseph Stalin , Kliment Voroshilov and Vyacheslav Molotov , an event that

26895-455: Was the historian N. V. Uspensky. A group of Soviet writers visited the cemetery in 1934, and with the support of Maxim Gorky , declared it of great cultural and historical significance. From 1935 Lensovet proposed that the Museum of Urban Sculpture collect the most significant pieces of memorial sculpture into the cemetery. During the 1930s the Soviet authorities "sought to establish a formal pantheon of dead Russian cultural heroes modelled after

27060-400: Was turned into a Bolshevik staff room, and his politics remained close to the Bolsheviks throughout the revolutionary period of 1917 . On the day after the October Revolution of 7 November 1917 , Gorky observed a gardener working the Alexander Park who had cleared snow during the February Revolution while ignoring the shots in the background, asked people during the July Days not to trample

27225-401: Was very upset: They wrote their resolution on his fairy tale "A Girl and Death". My father , who spoke about this episode with Gorky, insisted emphatically that Gorky was offended. Stalin and Voroshilov were drunk and fooling around. In 1933, Gorky co-edited, with Averbakh and Firin, an infamous book about the White Sea–Baltic Canal , presented as an example of "successful rehabilitation of

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