Happy birthday, Maxim Gorky

It is the birthday of Russian writer Maxim Gorky (1868), who became an icon as a Soviet writer and a friend of the Bolsheviks after his death in 1936, even though he had his issues with the revolutionaries during his lifetime. He was in exile for many years but returned at the invitation of Joseph Stalin. Some historians believe he was killed by Stalin's security forces.

Max Eastman was left before he was right

Max Eastman

It is the birthday of writer Max Eastman (1883), who was a prominent political activist, first for left-wing causes, then later for right-wing, anti-Communist movements. In later life, he described himself as a radical conservative. He was an avid supporter of the Harlem Renaissance. When he was 30, Eastman became editor of the socialist magazine The Masses. In his late 50s, he became a roving editor for Reader's Digest. In his 70s, he was a contributing editor to the conservative National Review.

Eastman was born in upstate New York to parents who were protestant ministers. He graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1915 and pursued a doctorate in philosophy at Columbia University but withdrew before accepting it. He studied under pragmatic philosopher John Dewey. Eastman lived in Greenwich Village with his sister and became active in the women's suffrage movement.

As editor of The Masses, he published the work of novelist Sherwood Anderson, Marxist Louise Bryant, poets Amy Lowell and Carl Sandburg, and Taos arts patron Mabel Dodge Luhan. He advocated free love and birth control, denounced America's participation in World War I, and supported socialist Jack Reed's trip to Russia to report on the Bolshevik Revolution. He created, with his sister, The Liberator magazine and published the work of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings, and Helen Keller. He lived for almost two years in the Soviet Union and watched the power plays between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky. He became Trotsky's friend. But his views of socialism began to change after his visit to Soviet Russia.

During the Depression, Eastman became critical of such socialist thinkers Karl Marx and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He became friends with British economist Friedrich Hayek and arranged for his book The Road to Serfdom (1943) to be serialized in Reader's Digest. At first, he supported Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist activism, but later criticized him as being too reactionary. Nevertheless, he grew to believe the Bolshevik Revolution had produced tyranny instead of freedom. Eastman was among the first contributing editors for the National Review and served on its Board of Associates but he eventually resigned because the magazine's pro-Christian leanings didn't jibe with his atheism. Eastman opposed the Vietnam War.

Among his books and articles are Enjoyment of Poetry (1913), The Sense of Humor (1921), Leon Trotsky: The Portrait of a Youth (1925), Since Lenin Died (1925), Marx and Lenin: The Science of Revolution (1927), Enjoyment of Laughter (1936), Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955), and Seven Kinds of Goodness (1967).

Maxim Gorky, icon of the Soviets

Maxim Gorky

It is the birthday of Russian writer Maxim Gorky (1868), who became an icon as a Soviet writer and a friend of the Bolsheviks after his death in 1936, even though he had his issues with the revolutionaries during his lifetime. As a young man, Gorky worked for newspapers throughout Russia. He wrote essays critical of the czarist regime and became a voice of the downtrodden at the bottom of society. He associated with Marxists and supported social reform, and became a personal friend of Vladimir Lenin. He wrote plays depicting the plight of the poor, most notably The Lower Depths (1902). He came to America in 1906 to help raise money for the Bolsheviks. While staying in the Adirondack Mountains, he wrote his novel, The Mother. He had a falling out with the Bolsheviks over censorship issues. He lived in exile in Capri for many years, partly because of the political climate in Russia. He returned to Russia in 1932 to stay after Joseph Stalin personally invited him to do so. The circumstances surrounding his death gave rise to speculation that he had been killed by Stalin's security forces. However, Stalin was among those who carried his coffin. Bertolt Brecht based his play, The Mother (1932) on Gorky's novel.