The Mother by Maxim Gorky

The Mother by Maxim Gorky was my first novel. I think I read it during Class VII vacations. I remember very little of what I read then: A meek mother who committed herself for the cause espoused by her only son. The son and his other factory worker friends were fighting injustice. My sympathies were completely with the mother and son. In the end, the mother is waylaid. Her anguished portrait in which she is seen distributing pamphlets in a crowd was my final impression from the book.

When I read the book again this week, I knew a little more. The story has the Russian revolution of 1905 as its backdrop. The workers' lot had remained unchanged generation after generation. The workers broke under the burden of labour and gross exploitation. In the evenings, they would get drunk at the tavern and get into a brawl with one another. Women were in much more pitiable condition, living in the constant terror of being beaten up by their husbands. Alongside the economic conditions that were getting worse, the moral fabric of the society was also tearing apart. The worker had lost dignity as well as sympathy in the eyes of the factory owners. Workers, in currying favour with the superiors, were harming the interests of their fellow workers.

The mother's son, Pavel, and other revolutionaries were fighting the injustice meted out to them at the hands of the factory owners who colluded with authorities. They were inspired by the workers' struggle in different parts of the world. They mixed among the proletariat, educated them, exchanged forbidden books, printed pamphlets, eluded the notice of the authorities who day by day were making things difficult for them. Secret meeting were held, ideas discussed, plans delineated,  and new men and women indoctrinated. They formed a party and called themselves Socialist Democrats. They made stirring speeches defying authority and establishment.

Gorky’s evocative portrayal of the proletarian unrest, the underground movements, the pamphleteering fervour, the arrest and the trial gets you into the heart of the story. As you open the book, the thick smoke rising from the factory chimneys pervades the mental space and you can feel the stifling stench of the Russian winter air. A spirited youth, a worker by day and a revolutionary by night, escaping arrest by pulling the wool over the authorities' eyes as he goes about distributing the proscribed pamphlets, gives you an insider account of a revolutionary's life. Love is spurned and lovers are too stern upon themselves. Anything that shackles and distracts on the path of revolution is renounced. Besides, the novel has the force of Gorky’s personal conviction about the cause espoused by the workers.

You are placed at a point in time when workers scattered across geographies tuned in to a grand political cause and dreamt of a benign world order. Even Pelageya Nilovna Vlasova, the illiterate mother of Pavel, was convinced of the path chosen by her son and went on to inspire others.

For the first time in history, a socio-economic movement begot a Crusade-like zeal. The idea of the brotherhood of workers became a living faith. There was no place for God to make people accept their fate. He was an invention of the rich to subjugate the poor. Overthrowing the corrupt establishment that  at its best goes against the masses was to usher in the era of social justice and equal opportunity. The workers who till the soil, build factories, and produce goods deserved control over the means of production. They would make laws that would be binding upon all. Private property, the root of all evil, was to be eradicated. The movement was known as communism: a classless and moneyless social order.

Alas, communism ended up as a grand vision without adequate means for its fulfilment. While all negatives were addressed, the real outcome depended on the positive efforts. After the old edifice was razed to ground, experimental structures were being offered and people were expected to adopt them. People pinned their hopes on to their leaders. And, leaders don't come from heaven. When these leaders came to power, they built an impregnable bureaucracy, this time supposedly of the people, by the people but self-serving and an autocratic one like never before. All systems corrupt when there is no system of checks and balances to regulate it. Communism met with the same fate.

Communism led to armed struggle and murders. Various combat groups were formed which over a time also fought amongst themselves. In 1980s one-third of the world population was under communist regime. But, as with every movement, the disillusionment set in here too. What do you call these: Dissolution of Soviet Union, the totalitarian regime of North Korea with the lowest human rights index, China’s economic shift towards State capitalism that succeeded in alleviating poverty; disillusionment or distortion?

My rating: 8/10