Contenu du sommaire : Maksim Gor'kij (1868 - 1936) cinquante ans après

Michel Heller, Gor'kii and the lies. The essential quality of a Russian writer occupying the throne of "master of thought", since Belinskii, was the "edinobozhie" , that is a fanatical dedication to an idea. M. Gor'kii often changed ideas and "gods", but always remained within the framework of an unvarying outline : a researcher of truth (god), bearer of collective energy, entrusted with the expression of mass desires as opposed to the mass, to the crowd that does not understand its own interests. The strong and the weak, the strong leading the weak. Since the weak do not want to go anywhere, they must be drawn into motion, given a "golden dream", a beautiful lie. The truth, within Gor'kii's conception is a force hostile to humanity, an obstacle to progress. For the first time, Gor'kii explained this conception in a "poetical tale" "About the canary that was lying and the woodpecker who loved truth", published in 1893. The article describes the evolution of this conception in Gor'kii's work, till the end of his life, till his articles glorifying Stalinist terror and the concentration camps.

Jean Bonamour, Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé and the reception of Gor'kii in France. 1900-1905. Gor'kii was but little known in France when E.M. de Vogüé published about him an article (Revue des Deux Mondes, August 1, 1901). Success came quickly mixed with various discussions : Nietzscheism, "decadence", social background in Russia. It is within this context that E.M. de Vogiié suggests an outline of a literary analysis - or auto-analysis of his own appreciation as a reader - which inserts Gor'kii within the series of great classics sketched in The Russian novel. Faithful to the ideas of Joseph de Maistre, he sees in Gor'kii's "revolt" a phase of the eternal European romanticism but also a harbinger of the coming social upheavals. When including the future first Soviet writer into a "Slavophile", and already nostalgic vision of the nineteenth-century Russia, Vogüé becomes one of the promoters of the "secularization" of the "Russian myth." This secular version, very remote from the message that The Russian novel purported to present, will enjoy great success after the war and the revolution.

Michel Aucouturier, Gor'kii and the Marxist literary criticism before the Revolution. The first pro-Marxist or Marxists critics of Gor'kii's work (Solov'ev-Andreevich, Divil'kovskii, Vorovskii) mainly defend the "heroic figure" that Gor'kii has introduced into literature and his Nietzschean ethics of the will to live against the attacks of Populists (Mikhailovskii). The problem of his aesthetics will arise only in connection with the novels Mat' and Ispoved' (1907-1908) in which Vorovskii sees a voluntary sacrifice of the artist to the publicist, thus noting the divorce between aesthetic and ideological values. For its justification, he formulates the theory of the "lag of artistic ideology in relation to scientific ideology" which implicitly questions the generally admitted definition of Gor'kii as a "proletarian writer." Among certain Marxist publicists and critics (for instance, the Menshevik R. Grigor'ev) we thus see the emergence of the theme of "Gor'kii, petty -bourgeois writer," "flesh of the flesh of Okurov," which will be taken up immediately after the Revolution by part of the "proletarian" criticism hostile to Gor'kii. According to the author of the article Gor'kii's example illustrates the frailty of certain key-notions of the Marxist literary criticism.

André Siniavski, M. Gor'kii's novel Mať, first model of socialist realism. In the Soviet historiography, Mat' has been rightly considered as the first model of socialist realism, with its prototype of positive hero. The author notes the appearance of rhetoric that taints the portrait of that hero. He discovers also in this novel the existence of an underlying element: the affinity between the revolutionary ideology and Christian religion. This betrays Gor'kii's yearning to believe in a god. As far as he is concerned, socialism and marxism are a matter of faith rather than that of reflection. In Mat' one already sees the thread that will lead to Ispoveď and to bogostroitel'stvo.

Jutta Scherrer, Gor'kii - Bogdanov. An appraisal of unpublished correspondence. The author traces the course of Gor'kii's relationship with Bogdanov as it emerges from his correspondence, to dale unpublished, with the philosopher and political figure during the years 1908-1910, a period marking the first crisis within the Bolshevik fraction - the bitter struggle between its main leaders of the moment, Lenin and Bogdanov. Gor'kii actively adopts a position in favor of the latter: for him Bogdanov's political and cultural vision represents a real and coherent alternative to Lenin's "orthodoxy". This article aims to give no more than a brief account of Bolshevism in the early years of its development : other, more important elements drawn from the collection of documents are analysed in a forthcoming publication.

Leonid Heller, Gor'kii and Zamiatin. This article is a first approach to the long occulted history of the relations between Gor'kii and Zamialin. Gor'kii's influence on Zamiatin, their affinities, their close cooperation in the years following the revolution, their divergences from the mid-1920's on - such are the problems studied here. The comparison between the two writers leads us to a better understanding of each writer's stance, sometimes full of contradictions. These questions result in an essential interrogation: Gor'kii and Zamiatin are seen and described in their evolution as writers belonging to two opposite models, confronted both with their own literary creation and the socio-cultural reality of their time.

Georges Nivat, Gor'kii and the "mechanical citizens". The article analyses Gor'kii's play, Somov i drugie within two contexts. The first is that of the year 1930, of the first great Stalinist trials, of the momentous part played by Gor'kii's articles in framing up an hysterical campaign against the "traitors"-engineers and the so-called "Industrial party". A close analysis of the Pravda and of Gor'kii's statements allows to outline this "witch hunt". The play was intended to serve as an illustration of the "plot of the engineers." The second context is that of Gor'kii's former works, such as his 1904 and 1906 plays staging engineers. The renewed use of Gorkian longlived themes and of his pet aversions is striking. It would seem that the author finally refused to allow the performance of his play. Was this due to remorse or for fear of a failure ? Does the "music teacher" who at the end of the play is arrested together with the "plotters" embody Gor'kii's own ambiguous position ?

Michel Niqueux, Gor'kii's death : testimonies and assumptions. Submitting to a critical examination the testimonies of L. Aragon regarding the death of Gor'kii, the official medical reports and the relations of the writer with Stalin, the author establishes a series of facts that throw a doubt on the version of Gor'kii's natural death and on that of medical murder. Everything seems to point to the fact that, despite his pledges of allegiance, Gor'kii represented an obstacle to Stalin's policy after the murder of Kirov, and that Stalin wanted to prevent Gor'kii from meeting with Aragon and Gide.

Irène Sorlin, Folklore, ethnography and history. V. la. Propp's work and Soviet research. Folkloric studies which developed in Russia since nearly two centuries have been subjected to a decisive and important reorientation - concerning historians as well as ethnologists - with the rise of typological analysis. The name of Propp, main promoter of this research, is often quoted in the West where nevertheless most of his work remains unexploited. Typological analysis considers folklore - as well as the language - as a continuously re-elaborated form. The versions at our disposal - belatedly transcribed - reveal no trace whatsoever of the conditions that produced the tales but this basis did exist and can be found by comparison with other traditions that are collected by ethnology. Similar socio-economic conditions induce neighboring structures which remain in force, while the significance ascribed to each of their elements changes when economic relations are transformed.