“HIS BEST AND WORST FRIEND.”

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17837, 4 May 1926, Page 10

“HIS BEST AND WORST FRIEND.”

MAXIM GORKI ON LENIN. AN INTERVIEW IN ROME. Maxim Gorki, the well-known Russian writer, lives now in the little island of Capri, banished by those for whose coming to power he has been working throughout his life. A few days ago Gorki came to Rome in order to visit some friends and countrymen, and I had the opportunity to talk to him (writes a correspondent of the “ Observer ”).

“Western European friends of the present regime in Russia will, I am sure, think I am biassed,” he said. “ It is now an open secret that I have placed myself in opposition to the present masters of my country. In fact, everybody knows that I had to run away, from them. It is for this reason■ that the European ‘ comrades ’ will not sympathise with what I am going to

“ Since I have been enjoying the hospitality of a foreign country I have kept aloof from politics, and followed the fortunes of my country only from a great distance. What I am now going to say does not, I think, fall within the sphere of politics, but it may, nevertheless, help to explain certain matters in that sphere. Why Bolshevism should have come to life just in Russia, or why, Fascism should have found its soil just in Italy, are matters due to deep psychological roots. These roots are not perceived by the European eye, just as they are not noticed by the very same persons who are now prophesying in the shade of the very tree grown out -of these roots. Those Russians who appreciate to-day the significance of Lenin merely in its Bolshevist aspects are as ignorant of the importance of his appearance upon the national stage as those who are now applauding it. The real significance of Lenin is to be sought in different qttarters, and once we have found them we shall get an altogether different outlook upon the great Eastern Revolution.

“ THE SOIL OF PESSIMISM.” “ Russia is the soil of pessimism. Life was no easy matter in Russia. Thq future showed no hopes, and the present was ever a sorry one —sorrow, disease, poverty, humiliation everywhere ; troubles, drink, muzzled speech, and prison. He who has not been at least once imprisoned or banished to Siberia is not a real Russian. Loneliness, derelict highways with muzsik villages hundreds of miles from

one another, grim philosophy, kancsuka, lead mines, lords and peasants, sufferers everywhere. “ Literature is always the true mirror of a people's soul. On the palette of Dosztoievskv, Turgeniev, Gonesarov, Tolstoi, and Andreiev, we always find the darkest colours; their letters weep and* complain, they speak of death, grimness of life, privations, evils. They are all pessimists. If somebody wrote a comedy it invariably turned into a tragedy. Every smile was merely a bitter, ironic frown. Nobody has yet laughed in Russia in a wholesome, healthy way. Russia has not yet produced a poet or philosopher who could offer life to the people with serenity. No writer has arisen who dared to speak in a happy strain, to proclaim faith, to be an optimist. Yet, if such a man came all would follow him. “ lie came. It was Lenin. A man appeared who had the pluck to laugh. In fact, he did not laugh. But he did proclaim hope; he encouraged to ‘ live ’ those already in stoical resignation. In the realm of Curse he spoke of Life. Ill’s was an optimistic philosophy. I should call it a * fighting optimism.’ He was the one man in Russia with daring, determination, holding out hope, and promises, always diffusing optimism. But he himself never laughed. I knew him. I was near him. I have never seen a man suffer as he suffered. It never occurred to me that a man could suffer like that.

THE POINT OF CONFLICT. “Yet we became enemies. We differed. We always differed. Now that he is dead I may admit that never before, and never since, did I love and respect a man so profoundly. But never could I fight against anybody as I fought against him. Lenin, the politician, gave the reins of power into the hands of the whole people. This is what J did not want. I did’ not belieYe —I have not changed my opinion—that the Russian peasantry, that ignorant, beastly, illiterate mob of to-day, was fit to govern. Lenin wrested the reins I of government from the hands of the intellectual and the skilled industrial classes and handed them over to those who are only now awakening from their animal state, to those who have not had the least share in the building up | of the new Russia, and who were, and, i alas! still are, ignorant. • • , .1 1 •

"This was the great clashing point . at which our ways have parted, never : to meet again. Rut, however bad this | policy may have been, and whatever | its consequences may be, still it was | undeniably Lenin who has shaken up Russia from her mortal dream. this ‘fighting optimism’ lies the true significance of Lenin. It was the only thing that could save my country. “But . that ‘fighting optimism' of Russia is nothing more ‘ than Bolshe- t

vism in Europe. Bolshevism, this political formula, has its powerful psychological roots in Russia. And without ,roots not even a flower can exist. I am not an Italian, and thus T am not able to feel where, exactly and what precisely the psychological root is of Fascism. What I do know is that a Mussolini, who very much reminds me of Lenin with his optimism and originality, could not get up in England or France on the Forum Romanum to speak from there recalling his ancient ancestors. For this reason, all those who want to copy Bolshevism, Fasicism or similar ideas must first of all find out its real -and true significance before they follow the example.”