In this blog post, I reflected on the significance of Maxim Gorky’s “Mother” by focusing on the themes of revolution and religion, the ideological education of workers, women’s lives and the revolution, and the issues of power and oppression as depicted in the work.
Maxim Gorky’s real name was Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov, and he was born on March 28, 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod. Born into a poor family, he had to endure the hardships of life firsthand from a young age. When Gorky was three years old, his father died of cholera, and his mother also passed away the year he turned eleven, after she had remarried. Left an orphan, he was raised by his maternal grandparents and earned money from a young age by doing various jobs, such as running errands for a store or washing dishes at a restaurant.
Due to poverty, illness, and the class distinctions of the Russian Empire, Gorky was unable to attend school regularly. He learned to read and write from his mother, attended school briefly afterward, and learned the Bible and prayers from his maternal grandfather. At that time in Russia, scholarship and education developed alongside the spread of the Bible, so education and academic research were almost synonymous with the duties of the clergy. Gorky also attended a school taught by clergy; he reportedly recalled a conversation with the local bishop—who summoned him privately for a heart-to-heart talk—as his fondest memory from his school days. I believe this experience provides a crucial clue to understanding the religious concepts that appear alongside the image of Jesus and the theme of revolution in ‘Mother’.
Gorky dropped out of school due to measles, and in 1884, at the age of sixteen, he went to Kazan intending to enroll at Kazan University. At the time, the Russian Empire had set aside a certain percentage of university enrollment slots to allow non-nobles to receive higher education, but Kazan University reduced that quota, and Gorky was denied admission. He subsequently worked at a port in the Kazan region, where he met young people of his own age who held revolutionary ideas; he also suffered a severe emotional crisis when his maternal grandparents, who had raised him, passed away that same year.
It was during this period that Gorky began writing creatively for the first time, including poetry. In 1889, at the age of twenty-one, he was imprisoned for his involvement in the revolutionary activities of students at Kazan University. After his release, he traveled through southwestern Russia, working various jobs and meeting a wide range of people along the way. These experiences later formed the foundation for his hyperrealist works, which centered on the poor and the working class. As he published works depicting the harsh lives and violent incidents of society’s marginalized members—such as dockworkers and wandering Gypsies—he first used the pen name “Gorky,” and through these works, he began to make a name for himself as Maxim Gorky in the Russian literary world.
In 1902, after publishing the play ‘From the Bottom’, which featured the poor as its protagonists, he was appointed a member of the Literary Department of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. However, the imperial court revoked his appointment on the grounds that Gorky was under police surveillance. Members of the Imperial Academy, including Anton Chekhov, formally protested this incident—in which those in power sought to suppress the artist’s literary achievements for political reasons—and Chekhov even went so far as to resign from the Imperial Academy.
Gorky witnessed the 1905 Revolution, and it was during this time that he first met Lenin and began to interact with him. He then began writing ‘Mother’ in 1906. However, during this process, his daughter Katya died of meningitis at the age of five, and Gorky himself contracted tuberculosis and went to Italy for recuperation. He remained in Italy until 1913, publishing many works, including ‘Mother’, and returned to Russia just before the outbreak of World War I, where he played a leading role in revolutionary literature, such as by publishing an anthology of proletarian writers.
He continued to devote his efforts to publishing revolutionary literature even during the Communist Revolution, and after the Communist Revolution succeeded in 1919 and the Russian Empire collapsed, he was tasked by the People’s Commissariat for Trade and Production with acquiring and managing the vast cultural treasures left behind by the Russian imperial family and the nobility. However, he did not agree with the ideological divisions among the revolutionaries who had led the Communist Revolution at the time, nor with the power struggles within the revolutionary camp, which had split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Ultimately, after the civil war ended in 1921, he left the Soviet Union and settled in Europe; when Lenin died in 1924, he departed for Italy, where he lived for nearly a decade.
However, in 1932, he returned to the Soviet Union under Stalin’s rule and established himself as a powerful figure in the literary world, receiving the Order of Lenin and becoming the first president of the Soviet Writers’ Union. In 1936, he passed away from a respiratory illness that had plagued him throughout his life, and his unfinished novel, ‘The Life of Klima Samgina’, was first published posthumously in 1937.
To understand ‘Mother’, it is also necessary to examine the literary movement known as Socialist Realism. The term “Socialist Realism” is believed to have first appeared in 1932 and was proclaimed as the official cultural and artistic policy of the Soviet Union at the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. Maksim Gorky organized and presided over this Writers’ Congress, and ‘Mother’ is recognized as a work that exemplifies the defining characteristics of Socialist Realism.
Socialist Realism is based on the belief that culture and art should belong to the masses, not to a small elite class, and should serve as a tool for spreading socialist ideology to the masses. In this genre of literature, a certain archetypal structure is repeatedly employed.
First, the protagonist receives an order from the Party to travel to a remote region and carry out a task. This task typically involves infrastructure projects related to construction or production, such as building and operating factories, dams, power plants, or reservoirs. For this reason, such works are sometimes referred to as “Socialist Realist production novels.” Due to the nature of the construction work, the protagonist is often a young man.
The region where the protagonist arrives is technologically, economically, and ideologically backward, and the villagers do not trust him. The local officials are bureaucratic and refuse to cooperate with the protagonist. At this point, a respected and virtuous village elder recognizes the protagonist’s sincerity, offers his help, and acts as a mentor to guide him. The villagers also gradually open up and begin to accept the protagonist.
Thereafter, with the help of the villagers, the protagonist carries out his mission while rooting out structural problems such as corrupt officials and bureaucratic obstacles. Just before the mission is completed, a natural disaster or accident occurs, and the protagonist averts the disaster through heroic efforts. In this process, the mentor who had been assisting the protagonist often sacrifices himself. Finally, once the task is completed, a celebration or commemorative event is held, and the protagonist delivers a moving speech in memory of the mentor who made the ultimate sacrifice. The story concludes with the protagonist marrying the woman he loves and succeeding the mentor’s position.
Looking at this structure, it becomes clear that Socialist Realism incorporates many elements of the coming-of-age novel. It can also be viewed as the story of a young protagonist who has just entered society, successfully completing the first major task of his life and finding his place in society. On the other hand, the narrative in which the protagonist leaves home to embark on an adventure in a distant land for the sake of the task bears a resemblance to the plot structures of many folk tales. Although Socialist Realism was a cultural and artistic movement intentionally created for ideological purposes, it also contained elements of popular genres with which many people could relate.
Socialist Realism originated during the Stalin era and developed into the fundamental cultural and artistic movement across the entire communist bloc. The portrayal of the “enemy” who obstructs the protagonist’s mission varied depending on the era and political climate, and the nature of the mission and the hardships faced by the protagonist also changed as the bloc experienced historical events such as World War II. However, from Stalin’s death until the 1980s, the basic plot and characteristics of Soviet Socialist Realist novels remained largely unchanged.
However, ‘Mother’ was published in 1907. At that time, the Communist Revolution had not yet taken place, the Soviet Union had not yet been established, and the term “Socialist Realism” did not even exist. Nevertheless, ‘Mother’ exhibits characteristics in many respects that would later come to define the archetype of early Socialist Realist novels.
In “Mother,” the protagonist carrying out the mission is the mother, while her son, Pavel, can be understood as a mentor who was first politicized and initiated the revolutionary movement. After Pavel is imprisoned, in Part 2, the mother travels to a remote region with a female revolutionary who is her son’s comrade; she politicizes the rural people and engages in agitation activities at factories in other regions. Although tasks related to construction or production do not appear in the novel, these would later become defining features of Socialist Realism during the Stalin era.
Rather, what is significant in ‘Mother’ is how Pelageya Vlasova—an ordinary working-class Russian woman and a mother—begins participating in revolutionary activities driven by her maternal love for her son, and in the process, comes to understand the contradictions of society and awakens to her own reality. Although she begins as a mother simply following her son, the story’s focus shifts to her journey of self-discovery as she comes to realize her identity as a worker and becomes politically conscious.
Set against the backdrop of ‘Mother’ is the 1905 Revolution, the first popular revolution to sweep across all of Russia. The 1905 Revolution erupted in the wake of Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and marked the beginning of the collapse of the Russian Empire. The Russian Empire had poured all its financial resources into the Russo-Japanese War but ultimately suffered defeat. Starving commoners marched to the front of the imperial palace, carrying portraits of the emperor and crosses, pleading with him for bread. However, the Russian imperial court sent in troops to open fire on the unarmed civilians. This was the “Bloody Sunday” incident of January 22, 1905.
This incident sparked an uprising of angry citizens throughout Russia, and the 1905 Revolution continued into the following year. As a result, the Russian imperial court brought about structural changes in Russian society, including the establishment of the State Duma, the country’s first legislative body. ‘Mother’ depicts how these social changes began with the transformation of a single individual from the working class.
Chapter 1 of Part 1 describes the life of Pelageya Vlasova, the mother. She and those around her mindlessly repeat an inhuman existence devoid of hope or joy, simply because that is how they have always lived.
Life had always been that way—it flowed slowly and steadily, like a murky current, year after year, and the whole of life was bound by firm, time-honored customs, thinking the same thoughts and doing the same things day in and day out. And no one tried to change that life.
What particularly stands out in this passage is the final sentence: “No one tried to change their life.” This critique of a reality in which workers do not even consider changing their own lives is directly linked to the theme of the “Mother’s” awakening.
Around the time of the 1905 Revolution, a cultural agitation movement known as “proletarian culture,” or “Proletkult,” began in Russia, driven by the awareness that the proletariat and workers needed their own distinct culture, separate from that of the bourgeoisie. “Consciousness-raising” was considered a central tenet of this movement.
One of the key figures of this period was Alexander Bogdanov. A physician and science fiction writer, he believed that social revolution could not occur without a corresponding cultural revolution. He argued that developing a new culture required people who understood what culture and content entailed; therefore, the revolutionary intelligentsia must take the lead, creating new science, philosophy, and art to lay a new foundation for proletarian culture.
Therefore, the goal of the proletarian cultural movement was to help workers realize their proletarian class identity and consciously struggle for both cultural and social revolution. Workers who recognized their class identity and fought for the revolution were called “awakened,” “conscious,” or “enlightened” workers. In early 20th-century Russia, theater was the most popular genre within proletarian culture and served as a tool for this consciousness-raising. Workers participating in proletarian theater troupes took pride in viewing themselves as “awakened workers” or “conscious workers.” Gorky, too, attempted cultural agitation in several of his works to awaken class consciousness among workers and encourage them to participate in the revolution.
In ‘Mother’, Gorky describes the workers’ dire reality in detail in Part 1, Chapter 1. The workers are mired in poverty and a life of hardship, finding no other escape except through destructive behavior.
On their days off, young men would return home late at night—their clothes torn, covered in mud and dust, their faces bruised—either boastfully recounting how they had punched their colleagues out of spite, or feeling dejected, filled with rage, or crying in anger, drunk and in a pitiful state, unhappy and miserable.
This depiction serves as a device for raising the consciousness of the working class, while simultaneously showcasing Gorky’s distinctive naturalistic literary style.
The 19th-century French writer Émile Zola wrote many works denouncing the miserable reality of workers. Zola objectively observed human beings and depicted what they were like in their natural or barbaric state before acquiring education, culture, and manners. The view held by 19th-century educators and sociologists was that humans are inherently influenced by nature and are savage by nature, but are reborn as human beings through culture, refinement, and education.
Émile Durkheim also believed that humans are born with both a selfish, antisocial nature—akin to that of animals—and a moral, social nature, and that they can be reborn as rational beings through the power of education, culture, and refinement. Durkheim referred to this process as “socialization.” Ultimately, in 19th-century Europe, the idea that human nature was cruel, animalistic, selfish, and antisocial was widely held, and this gave rise to the literary movement known as naturalism.
Naturalist literature depicts people fighting, tearing each other apart, killing or being killed, and acting selfishly and cruelly—without mincing words, but rather portraying these scenes exactly as they are. In Chapter 2 of Part 1 of ‘Mother’, the scene where the father, Mikhail Blazov, attempts to strike his son Pavel, and Pavel stands up to his father, is also a prime example of Gorky-style naturalism.
When Pavel was fourteen, Blazov tried to drag him around by his hair. But Pavel, holding a heavy hammer in his hand, replied curtly.
“Don’t touch me….”
“What?” his father asked, approaching his tall, slender son like a shadow falling upon a birch tree.
“I will!” Pavel replied to his father. “I won’t take this anymore….”
And he swung the hammer.
In this scene—where the father abuses his son for no reason, and the son, having reached his limit, picks up a hammer and physically confronts his father—anger and hostility take precedence over love or filial duty between parent and child. The violent and ruthless reality of life is laid bare. Gorky consistently depicts such raw and violent scenes of life in many of his works.
Of course, in this scene, Pavel does not kill his father with the hammer. He is merely acting in self-defense. Later, his father, Mikhail Blazov, dies of a hernia, and Pavel lives quietly with his mother, reading books on the labor movement and political consciousness, which lead him to undergo an ideological transformation. The first sign of this transformation is the painting of Christ.
What I find particularly interesting while reading ‘Mother’ is that revolution and religion are not portrayed as complete opposites. Rather, in the work, the language of revolution and the language of religion intersect, and we can see the image of Christ overlapping with the ideals of the revolutionaries.
“The Risen Christ on the Road to Emmaus” is the story found in Luke 24:13–35. The two travelers heading toward Emmaus fail to recognize that the risen Christ is walking with them. They recount how Christ was executed and how, when they went to the tomb three days later, his body was gone. Christ asks them why they do not believe the prophecies that Jesus would rise from the dead, and explains in detail every passage in the Scriptures concerning him. Only when Christ breaks bread for the two travelers do they recognize him, but at that very moment, he vanishes from their sight.
Russia is a Christian nation with a thousand-year tradition, having adopted Orthodox Christianity in 988. Gorky himself learned to read and write primarily from the Bible during his brief school years and was deeply influenced by his conversations with clergymen. Given this background, it feels natural that religious elements appear in ‘Mother’, a work of revolutionary literature.
In the novel, Pavel represents the image of Jesus and is portrayed as a figure possessing inner strength alongside the theoretical logic of socialism. The Mother is portrayed as a deeply human figure, rich in maternal love and emotion, much like the Virgin Mary.
These religious characteristics are also common among the revolutionaries in the work. During the May 1 Labor Day march, Andrei states that he set out on the Way of the Cross in the name of a new God—the God of light and truth, the God of goodness and reason. Even while articulating the goals of the revolution, he employs Christian imagery such as the Way of the Cross and the crown of thorns.
In Christian culture, that which is absolutely, unchangingly good, right, and beautiful is ultimately connected to the realm of God. In Russia, in particular, the Orthodox Church was deeply ingrained in various aspects of daily life on a cultural level; therefore, when speaking of the highest truth or major changes that transform social structures, using the language of religion was likely the easiest and quickest way to convey meaning to the people.
In fact, when the Communist Revolution broke out, Russian peasants adapted traditional Christian expressions into the language of the revolution—for example, by changing the prayer phrase “Glory to God” to “Glory to Lenin.” Because these were familiar and easily understood expressions, the existing religious language could be naturally transformed into the language of the revolution.
The lyrics “Awake, arise, working people!” appear repeatedly in “Mother.” This is the “Workers’ Marseillaise,” sung during the 1905 Revolution—a song based on the French revolutionary anthem “La Marseillaise,” with the lyrics adapted into Russian. In the work, even as Pavel and Andrei are arrested, they bid farewell to their comrades, saying, “We’ll meet again, comrades!”
However, their cries are described as echoing and coming “from somewhere above, from the rooftops.” Here, we can once again discern a religious backdrop. A scene is created in which Pavel and Andrei move toward the “new God, the God of light and truth, the God of goodness and reason,” and against the backdrop of the people’s chorus, the new God seems to respond from heaven.
Music is essential during worship in the Russian Orthodox Church. The choir sings from places where the congregation cannot easily see them, such as the second floor of the church or a balcony. According to Orthodox doctrine, since God created humans in His own image, the human voice is considered to be the closest to God’s voice. Therefore, the Russian Orthodox Church does not use instruments; all hymns are sung a cappella. Furthermore, because listening to the choir’s singing during worship is meant to be the most sacred experience, the choir—modeling itself on the voices of angels—remains hidden in a high place, allowing only their voices to be heard.
Consequently, the description of the cry “Let us meet again, comrades!” coming from above against the backdrop of the “Workers’ Marseillaise” chorus reads as if it preserves the auditory structure of a Russian Orthodox service and the doctrine behind it, while merely replacing the language of expression with that of rallies and revolution.
In Chapter 29 of Part 1, when Pavel is arrested and his mother hears the news and then addresses the crowd, she, too, uses the language of religion.
“Please listen to me, for the sake of Jesus Christ! You are all people close to me…… You are all sincere people. Don’t be afraid; look around—what has happened? Our children have stepped out into the world—our own flesh and blood—for the sake of truth…… They have stepped out for the sake of everyone! For all of you, for your babies, they have taken up the Way of the Cross themselves. They have set out in search of a brighter day. Because they want a different life—one lived in truth and justice…… because they want what is good for everyone!”
In this scene, the mother steps forward before the people and raises her voice on behalf of “our children” and “our flesh and blood,” who have set out on the Way of the Cross for Jesus, truth, and justice. This portrayal of the mother evokes the characteristics attributed to the Virgin Mary in the Russian Orthodox tradition. In the Orthodox tradition, the Virgin Mary is a symbol of sacrifice and salvation; she is depicted as a being who extends her motherly love for her Son, Jesus, to all of humanity, sharing in and comforting people in their suffering.
Viewed through the lens of Socialist Realism, this scene can also be interpreted as a moment where the mentor sacrifices herself to pass the torch to the protagonist, who then proves his capabilities. When the Mother appealed to the people to empathize with and stand alongside our children, who had set out on the Way of the Cross for Jesus, the people began to listen to her words and agree, saying, “She speaks the word of God.”
“My dear friends!” the Mother said, looking at everyone with tear-filled eyes. “Life exists for the children, and the world exists for the children……!”
“Let’s go, Nilovna! Here, take this walking stick,” Shizhov said, handing the Mother a piece of the flagpole.
The people looked at the Mother with sorrow and respect, and a murmur of sympathy followed in her wake. In the silence, Shizhov stepped aside to let the people blocking the path pass, and they silently made way for him. Then, as if drawn by an indistinct force pulling them from behind Mother, they followed her at a leisurely pace.
Turning to face the crowd in front of her own front gate, Mother bowed her head in greeting while leaning on the piece of the flagpole, and spoke quietly with a heart full of gratitude.
“Thank you…….”
Then, once again recalling her own thoughts—new thoughts that she felt had arisen within her heart—she said:
“If people hadn’t died for the glory of the Lord, our Lord Jesus Christ wouldn’t exist either…….”
The crowd looked at Mother in silence.
Even after Mother went inside, the crowd remained, chatting among themselves before slowly dispersing. In the final part of Part 1, Mother speaks to the crowd not yet as a person with a fully formed identity as a worker, but as a mother and as a believer in the Russian Orthodox Church. And that sentiment is conveyed to the crowd.
The process by which Mother fully embraces her identity as a worker and becomes politically conscious unfolds gradually in Part 2. After Pavel’s arrest, Mother begins distributing banned books, newspapers, and manifestos. In doing so, she begins to compare her revolutionary activities with her Orthodox faith and discover common ground between the two.
Unconsciously, the Mother begins to pray less, yet she thinks about Christ even more. Even though she does not speak Christ’s name directly and lives as if she did not know Him, she comes to think of those who live according to Christ’s promise, who, like Christ, view the world as the kingdom of the poor, and who seek to distribute all the world’s wealth fairly among the people.
Other characters participating in revolutionary activities alongside her also use religious language and, when addressing ordinary citizens or peasants, make heavy use of expressions characteristic of the Russian Orthodox Church. It is not until the very end of the work that the language of religion is completely replaced by the language of revolution.
In Part 2, Chapter 25, Pavel defends himself in court and declares himself a socialist.
He states that they are workers—people who, through their labor, produce everything from massive machines to children’s toys. He argues that they are people who have been deprived of the right to fight for their human dignity and now demand the freedom to struggle against all forms of power. While championing the abolition of private property, the transfer of the means of production and power to the people, and “labor for all” as their slogan, he emphasizes that they are not rioters.
This speech is modeled after the courtroom address given by Andrei Zelyabov, a revolutionary who actually participated in the assassination of Alexander II. Pavel’s speech—in which he asserts that workers create everything, from massive machines to children’s toys, through their own labor, and that they are not rioters—continues to prompt reflection on labor, human dignity, and structural social issues even today, more than a century after the Russian Empire.
However, no matter how eloquent Pavel’s speech may be in the story, the verdict has already been decided. The judges pay no attention to the worker’s speech. Pavel is sentenced to forced relocation to Siberia, and subsequently, all of his comrades are also sentenced to forced relocation.
Outside the courtroom, people recognize his mother and praise Pavel. His mother appeals once more to the gathered crowd.
“Poverty, hunger, and disease—these are the consequences labor brings to people. Everything works against us. Every day at work, we risk our very lives; we are always filthy and always deceived, while others enjoy themselves and eat their fill thanks to our labor, holding us back like dogs chained so we cannot escape. We know nothing and are terrified—we fear everything! Night is our life—a dark night!”
Now, religious vocabulary and expressions—such as Christ, the Way of the Cross, and truth—have completely vanished from the Mother’s plea. In typical Socialist Realist novels, after a mentor sacrifices himself and disappears, the protagonist takes his place and proves his capabilities. In the final section of ‘Mother’, the Mother is no longer merely a Russian citizen who believes in Christianity or the mother of a single son. Now, as a fully politicized member of the working class, she voices her own thoughts before the people.
With this process of the Mother’s politicization and her choice to take up the struggle, “Mother” draws to a close.
