ABSTRACT
Stalin knew that Maxim Gorky, whom he had proclaimed the ‘great proletarian writer’, was a longtime friend of Kamenev whom he planned to parade, together with Zinoviev, as ‘enemies of the people’ in a staged show trial in the summer of 1936. Stalin also knew that Gorky would voice objections to the trial. Many years of living in Italy had helped Gorky lose touch with the reality of the Soviet Union. After his return to the Soviet Union in May 1933, Gorky for some time supported Stalin. For instance, in an article ‘If the enemy does not surrender, he should be destroyed’, Gorky had justified the Prompartia show trial. Stalin ordered three million copies of this article to be printed. Gorky also praised the ‘Menshevik Union Bureau’ show trial held in 1931.1
Stalin hoped to use Gorky’s pen for self-aggrandizement. Yagoda organized Gorky’s visits to specially selected prisons and camps that would impress him favorably with the Soviet penal system. Initially, Gorky was misled. He visited the Solovky prison camp in the north of Russia and wrote a favorable article, describing the ‘good’ conditions there for reforming criminals.2 After visiting the prison camps engaged in the construction of the Belomor-Baltic Canal, Gorky also approved the use of forced labor in the growing Soviet prison camp system, the Gulag. Gorky’s apologetic writings have led some historians to accuse him of contributing to Stalin’s ‘spiritual enslavement of the country’.3
