My Universities

This book covers Gorky's life in Kazan from 1884 to 1888, when he turned twenty. It's divided between his time at work in a bakery where young people, who opposed the tsar would meet, and after a suicide attempt, a period working on a fruit farm collective. The collective is set up to counter the

Show More

high prices of kulak peasants.
Gorky emphasises the apathy, violence and vindictiveness of peasant life. The lot of the peasant is not as Tolstoy would have one believe. They do not display simple virtues and they are not kind. Gorky's tough experiences in his first twenty years produces disillusion with the philosophies and argument he reads about and hears from enthusiastic students

Show Less