Born in 1868 of obscure parents, Alxie Maximovich Peshkov (Maxim Gorkey in later life) rose from an orphanand a tramp to the very pinnacle of success as a Russian writer. His early life among the lowly and exploted people of Nizhni Novogorod where he was born, brought him into intimate touch with the brutal reality of living conditions in pre-revolutionary Russia. In the midst of his own hard life, he took a keen interest in books and read whatever came to his hands, for Gorky had hardly had any formal schooling worth the name. The dark and dreavy existence of the people around him had profound effect on him. This led to two things. One was his involveent in revolutionary activities into which the seething discontent all over Russia erupted at the time.

Another effect was that his literary genius was aroused by the enormity of suffering that he saw everywhere. Soon he became a temendously popular writer. He was elected to the Academy od Sciences in 1902 but the Czar annulled his election. His role as a revolutionary led to his imprisonment more than once. He had toleave the country after the failure of the 1905 Uprising. He visited England and the United States before he returned to ussia in 1913. It was now that he became friendly with Lenin who too was in exile at that time. The greatness of Gorky as an author is that he transforms the workaday lives of the common people into literature of the highest kind. In tis, he set the trend for progressive writers in Soviet Russia and elsewhere. Lenin has said that Gorky "was an outstanding literary genius who has done much.... on behalf of the world proletarian movement".

His writings have been widely translated and include stories, plays, novels and autobiographical works; perhaps, the best known is his novel "Mother". Altough he adopted the pseudonym of 'Gorky' (meaning 'the bitter one'), the totality of his message does not reflect embitterment. Amidst the cruelties and injustices that he found, Gorky sensed an aspiration for better things and a higher life, an aspiration that found fulfilment in the October Revolution of 1917. Gorky was held in the highest esteem in post-revolutionary Russia and continued to write until his death in 1936.

The Posts and Telegraphs Department considers it a privilage to honour tis great literary exponent of socialist realism by issuing a special postage stamp to commemorate his birth centenary.

Source : Information Folder issued by Indian Posts & Telegraph Department, Government of India