Gorky – that was the name of Nizhny Novgorod till 1990. The writer Maxim Gorky (real name – Alexey Peshkov) was born here and lived here for about 25 years. In the city there are a lot of sights connected with the life and works of the writer. It is possible to learn about Maxim Gorky from tours of three museums: Museum of Gorky’s childhood ("Kashirin's Lodge"), Gorky's Museum Apartment and Gorky Literature Museum.
Museum website: museumgorkogo.ru/en
By visiting "Kashirin's Lodge", we will move to pages of the famous autobiographical work of the writer – ‘The Childhood’. The museum is a live illustration both to Gorky’s works and to his biography. A chest, a samovar, the tile furnace, birches, the dye-house, a big wooden cross under which one of characters (Gipsy) died … Here the obsolete words, metaphors, epithets used in the text will become clear.
Gorky's Museum Apartment will tell more about the life of the famous writer Maxim Gorky, whose works were translated into 16 languages already at the beginning of the XX century. Here, in the house of baron Kirshbaum, on the former Martynovskaya Street (nowadays – Semashko St.), the writer, together with the family, rented an apartment from 1902 to 1904. There are more than 1500 original exhibits, ten rooms among which there is a big dining room (the meeting place of the city intellectuals where M. Gorky, L. Andreyev, E. Chirikov and others read the extracts of their novels, where Fedor Shalyapin's voice sounded in the evenings), Gorky's office (creative laboratory of the writer), F. Shalyapin's room ("the museum in the museum”, where the writer's friend stayed in 1903).
The general impression about Gorky’s life and creativity can be obtained by visiting the Gorky Literary Museum – the s.c. Burmistrov' mansion, the action scene in Rukavishnikov’s "The cursed family". Each room of the museum has its unique atmosphere. Recently, on March 28, 2018 (the 150th anniversary of the writer) the new room was open in the museum: "New life. Maxim Gorky and the first Russian revolution". There is a mimeograph, the purchase of which lead to Gorky 's arrest in 1901, among unique exhibits of the room.