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14 organisers; they took over the management of mine and factory, reducing them within three years to a state of utter bankruptcy; they were giving away millions of national money to a multitude of swindlers or jesters for the setting up of factories for the manufacture of bread from sawdust, sugar from straw, soap from turf, etc.; they were the men who, during the Soviet rule, took a bloody revenge, annihilated morality and faith, introduced inquisitorial tortures, and welcomed the unknown author of the imaginary decrees on the "nationalisation of women" and on the "Freelove Sunday" with a roar of applause.

If Gorky walks on stilts when describing characters equipped with general human psychological traits, his talent blazes up with magnificent fire when the heroes are types from Malvina or The Barefeeters &hellip; barefeeted &hellip; bare in the direct meaning of the word and transferred in their attitude to society and nationhood. The barefeeters are the outcasts of society not because they are criminals, terrorists, or anarchists. No! they are neither petty pickpockets nor slothful parasites produced as well by the town as by the village. What is there terrible in them? Such types fill at best the nightshelters, at worst prisons. We know them from the works of Chehov. Some of them are drunken dreamers, generally harmless, though sometimes given to smash windows or the faces of those with whom they disagree; others are suicidal dreamers, who brood over the unhealthy passages of their lives