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real name is Alexy Pieschkov, but he is only known by his nom-de-plume: Gorky (bitter). Bitter indeed were the days of his childhood.

He was born in 1869, in the town of Nijni-Novogrod, in the workshop of a painter-varnisher.

His grandfather was an officer in one of the regiments in Siberia, and treated the soldiers so cruelly, that even the Tsar, NicolaeNicolas [sic] I.—who was notorious for severity—dismissed the veteran from the service.

By his action this tyrant forced Gorky’s father to leave the parental home in Tobolsk.