Lenin to Gorky: No God-building on my watch

(Maxim Gorky circa 1906)

Much to Lenin’s dismay, his "friend" Maxim Gorky had embraced an idea called “God-building.”

For Gorky (“Gorky” meaning “bitter” in Russian – not his real name, but a pseudonym he adopted to reflect his initial journalistic “determination to speak the bitter truth”), this notion of God-building was an optimistic stretch.  After all, his youth had not been an easy one.  Wikipedia reports that Gorky became an orphan at age nine, ran away from home at age 12, and attempted suicide at age 19.  He later began to write “incessantly” because he viewed literature “as a moral and political act that could change the world.”

His characters, like Gorky himself, struggled mightily to “resolve contradictory feelings of faith and skepticism, love of life and disgust at the vulgarity and pettiness of the human world.”  Not a small task…

For Gorky, “God-building” became an attempt to resolve such primordial angst.  In an October 1907 Social Democrat article called Maxim Gorky on Religion and Socialism, this quote from Gorky is presented:  “Religious feeling, as I understand it, is a joyous and proud feeling of harmonious unity existing between man and universe.”  (So far, so good – except, perhaps, for the “proud” part…)  Gorky then continues with his own spin (and don’t we all to some extent?) on how religion tends to evolve:  “It is created by that inherent tendency towards synthesis, which is common to all men” (i.e. man creates God, rather than the other way around).

Gorky then adds a strong dash of what he calls pathos to this God-building recipe.  And, voila!  What ensues is “…an onward march towards spiritual perfection” which all but those “with sluggish livers” can

relish.  Lenin’s own liver must have been more than a tad out of kilter when Gorky’s God-building notions came down the hepatic pike.  Here’s a whiff of Lenin’s allergic reaction to Gorky's ideas:  Whatever are you doing?  This is simply terrible, it really is!  …any religion idea, any idea of any god at all, any flirtation even with a god, is the most inexpressible foulness... 

        

Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_Gorky

http://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/social-democrat/1907/10/gorky.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/nov/00mg.htm

Copyright March 28, 2012 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved