In 1906, the Russian Bolshevik writer Maxim Gorky traveled to the United States where he was given a warm welcome. Gorky had it all. He was a financially successful author, editor, and playwright, who supported an anti-tsarist revolutionary Social Democratic Party (SDP, who would eventually become the Bolsheviks), and contributed to liberal appeals to the government for civil rights and social reform. He was even arrested and spent time in Russia’s infamous Peter and Paul Prison.
On his release, Gorky completed a successful tour of Europe, before heading across the Atlantic to America in April 1906. His political positions were very popular in the United States. He was scheduled to tour New York, Washington (where a visit was planned with President Theodore Roosevelt), Boston, and Chicago while raising funds for the SDP.
But then a scandal hit. It turned out the woman accompanying Gorky on tour was not actually married to him. She was Maria Andreyeva, a star of the Moscow Art Theatre. Sure, Andreyeva was an ardent SDP member herself. And sure, Gorky had been amicably separated from his wife for years, unable to get a divorce from the tsarist-supporting Russian Orthodox Church. In Russia and other countries they had been to they were even considered to have a common-law marriage. But none of that mattered when New York City newspaper The World decided to play up their “illicit” relationship to sell papers.
Gorky and Andreyeva were thrown out of their Manhattan hotel, where they had initially been given an entire floor. Two other hotels then refused them service. They remained in the states for 6 months by staying in private homes but the public shunned them and the trip barely raised US$10,000. By the end of 1906 Gorky was staying in Capri where he stayed until 1913.
The scandal in America had interesting repercussions. Gorky remained famous as an author, and became a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. When the Bolsheviks took Russia he initially went back, before being exiled due to opposition to many Bolshevik policies. He eventually returned but soon fell afoul of authorities again and was placed under unannounced house arrest. His death of pneumonia continues to have questions around it. This did not stop the Soviets from promoting hi a great Soviet writer who emerged from the common people. His name graces many streets, villages, stamps, and even a Gorky Museum in Moscow. Which had no mention of Andreyeva or his later unofficial wife, Moura Buberg.
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