RUSSIA: Advice from Gorky

Since the Red Revolution, Russian newspapers have developed from the surreptitious pamphlets of Tzaral days into voluminously leafy formats. Russian newspaper circulation has mounted from a few thousand copies daily to several millions. Recently the editor of the Worker’s and Peasant’s Correspondent, the special organ of Soviet rabkors (local correspondents), sought to discover the reaction of a great prerevolutionary Russian man of letters to the new Soviet Journalism. Wrapping up a bundle of representative Soviet newspapers the editor despatched them to famed novelist-playwright Maxim Gorky,* now sojourning in Italy. Reply:

“To the Comrade Rabkors:

“Many of you like to moralize. This kind of activity is not profitable. It is better to kill with ridicule. A harsh word must be hurled out abruptly, like a blow; but in passing judgment you must remember that you are judging comrades whose life is very hard and who as yet do not understand the enormous demands of the present historic time. It is hard for them to understand this, because they haven’t the time to learn.

“Not all fools are ignorant because they are lazy; some might have been wise, but time was lacking. The roads that I have traveled are filled with the wrecks of those who did not have enough time to make themselves real men and some of them were more gifted than I. These wrecks I shall never forget.

“I give you a hearty handclasp. I wish courage to all of you and close friendship. Stand close together and learn to aid one another to live through these grave hours and days.

(Signed) “MAXIM GORKY

“Sorrento, Italy.”

*The nom de plume of Alexei Maximovich Pyeshko, son of a dyer, onetime bootmaker, famed for his Defoe-esque novels and for his great drama, The Lower Depths.