M. Gorky’s correspondence with Kazan children

Abstract

This article honors M. Gorky, the renowned proletarian writer, and considers his correspondence with Kazan schoolchildren and students of the Kazan Technical Plant in the 1920s and 1930s. So far, these letters have received little attention from researchers, but their value for raising young Soviet citizens in line with the new trends of Soviet education and state ideology is undeniable. Here, M. Gorky’s epistolary heritage and journalistic statements are analyzed, and 12 letters written to him by Kazan children are studied. The letters are available in the A.M. Gorky Archive of the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (AG IWL RAS) and introduced for the first time into the scholarly discourse. The analysis shows that M. Gorky was always considerate and thoughtful towards his young addressees so that he became a mentor to the younger Soviet generation. The survey reveals that the children’s letters have a rich informational and source potential. They provide a better insight into the psychological and social image of the Soviet people in the 1920s and 1930s. The results obtained are relevant to future studies on the epistolary and journalistic heritage of M. Gorky and add considerably to our understanding of the historical and literary process of that epoch. The epistolary materials involved in the study should be of interest to anyone curious about the Soviet period.