My Universities

Published in 1923, My Universities is the third volume of Gorky’s autobiography, recording his life from 1884 to 1888 when he was twenty.

Frustrated in his desire to become a university student. Gorky seeks an education in clandestine discussions with revolutionaries and in arguments with religious fanatics and eccentric schoolteachers. He encounters a bewildering variety of people, from aimless drifters to half-demented visionaries: from the consumptive atheist Shaposhnikov, with his pathological hatred of God, to theological students who hold orgies in brothels and Klopsky, the despicable Tolstoyan who seduces two sisters.

Throughout this volume, Gorky repeatedly stresses his disenchantment with the workers and peasants with their apathy, drunkenness and inertia. He submits himself to a ruthless self-analysis, and describes his attempted suicide. In common with My Childhood and My Apprenticeship, My Universities offers incidents of enormous breadth and variety and writing of rare power and intense conviction.