His vagabond roving in Russia in the nineties of the last century, his social awareness and his revolutionary prescience enabled him to see and understand Russia as few of his contemporaries were able to at that time. He was overwhelmed by the vastness of his native land arid by the beauty and variety of its scenery, and at the same time he was appalled by the ignorance, poverty and need less suffering of his countrymen. The social awareness in all of Gorkys work was not exceptional in Russian literature. It is to be found in the works of the poets among the Decembrists, whom Gorky called the first generation of Russian revolutionaries These poets, participants in the uprising against the monarchy and serfdom which took place on M December, 1825, were republicans at heart and looked upon thcir creative efforts as a means of serving the people and supporting their hopes in a better future. The Decembrists greatly influenced the thinking of such Russian writers as Push kin, Lermontov, Herzcn, even of Lev Tolstoy, who intend ed writing a novel about them and touched on the revo lutionary theme in War and Peace.
Even closer to Gorkys way of thinking were the nnno chintsi revolutionaries of the middle of the century, headed by Chernyshcvsky and Dobrolyubov and sup ported by outstanding writers such as Nckrasov and Sal tykovShchedrin. Men of this literary generation held wider social views and were bolder in declaring them. Russian novels of the second half of the 10th century brought fame to Russian literature. Varied us these novels were, they all sought a way out of the impasse Russian social life had come to. This applies equally to Tolstoy and to Dostoyevsky, the greatest writers of sociopsychological novels at the end of the century it also applies to Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Turgencv and Goncharov at an earlier period, Maxim Gorky cherished the social traditions of Russian classical literature.
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