Vokrug Smerti Gor'Kogo: Dokumenty, Fakty, Versii

L.A. Spiridonova, et. al., eds. Vokrug smerti Gor'kogo: Dokumenty, Fakty, Versii. Moscow: IMLI Ran. Nasledie, 2001. 355 pp. Index. Photographs. Bibliography. The work under review consists of documents, memoirs and essays concerning the circumstances and causes of Maxim Gorky's death. In the introduction we read that the rationale for undertaking the publication of the work was the appearance of several new books that contained new interpretations of the causes of Gorky's death. Beginning in the 1970s, the accepted version that Gorky died of natural causes was questioned by some writers. At the same time, none of these authors were able to provide reliable documentation in support of their thesis that Gorky was murdered. With glasnost', new materials became available regarding the history of the 1930s in the Soviet Union but, instead of a scholarly investigation of sources, contend the editors, these were used to reopen the discussion on the causes of Gorky's death. In these newly published works, one reads that Gorky was poisoned on Stalin's orders and that the culprits were the members of the secret police, helped by the well-known M.I. Budberg, Gorky's companion of many years. Given these developments and the new materials available, it was felt that a well-documented work is called for, so that the story might be told wie es eigentlich gewesen. The first part of the work consists of copies of documents where one finds detailed accounts of the course of Gorky's illness in June 1936, signed by the medical experts. These were widely published in the press. There was no doubt that death came as a result of a long-term illness, for it was known that Gorky suffered from tuberculosis for many years. He was sixty-eight years old. Known in the West but not in the Soviet Union until glasnost' was the trial of 1938, the so-called Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites, where the defendants, N. Bukharin, A. Rykov, G. lagoda, P. Kriuchkov and the two prominent medical specialists who treated Gorky during his last illness, Drs. L. Levin and D. Pletnev were accused of murdering Gorky on the orders of L. Trotsky. Under torture all confessed their guilt and were executed. Here was the source of the version of the doctors-murderers valid in the Soviet Union for about half a century. With glasnost and the disclosures of documents came the posthumous rehabilitation of all mentioned above, with the exception of G. lagoda who had other sins to account for, and of Trotsky, who was not present at the trial. A detailed record of the proceedings is included in the book under review. Among Gorky specialists in Russia, the debate as to the circumstances and causes of the writer's death was reopened and led to the emergence of two camps: one maintaining that, as shown in the documents, Gorky died of natural causes, and the other that he was murdered. …

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