Maxim Gorky biography
Profile
Writer Maxim Gorky was born Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov on March 28, 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. Born into poverty, his assumed name, Gorky, means "bitter." He spent time as a political exile and was initially an open critic of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Gorky later became the first president of the Union of Soviet Writers. He died suddenly while under medical treatment, possibly by the orders of Joseph Stalin, on July 18, 1936, in Gorki Leninskiye, Moscow, Russia.