The Anatomy of Revolution: “The Ill-Timed Thoughts” by M. Gorky in “New Life”

Abstract

Purpose. In this article, one of the brightest publicist compositions of M. Gorky - «Untimely thoughts» is being considered. The main platform, where the author’s essays was being publicized, is the «New life» newspaper, which was established with V. A. Desnitsky in April of 1917 and closed by personal disposition of V. I. Lenin in July of 1918. After closing of the newspaper, in 1920 the author decided to publish separate book, augmented it with essays from another cycle «Revolution and culture» and exchanged chronological principle of positioning of the material with thematic one. Results. In this article is pointed, that, as a result of changes, the book has loosed some features, inherent to journalistic discourse with it linear time sequence, but gained new features, which have amplified artistic-publicistical speech of the text, which took more generalized meaning along with the documentary material. Gaining of balance between an entinema and an example as a way to expand the material have been became the important principle of the book’s poetics. Artistic method, discovered by L. N. Tolstoy in «Anna Karenina» and «Resurrection», made Gorky able to demystificate thesis about humanin character of events of 1917-1918 years and occupy objective view on the revolution, avoiding influence of Bolshevik’s press and defamation, peculiar to counterrevolution publications. Conclusion. Also, true anatomical view on the Russian revolution haven’t deliver Gorky from utopical hope for culture as a remedy for the social rescue. In this utopia, prerequisites of the future union between Gorky and Bolsheviks, which caused ambiguous reaction of descendants, already appeared.