My universities. “My universities Very brief summary m bitter my universities

We invite you to familiarize yourself with the autobiographical work created in 1923 and read its summary. “My Universities” was written by Maxim Gorky (pictured below). The plot of the work is as follows.

Alyosha goes to Kazan. He wants to study and dreams of going to university. However, life did not turn out at all as planned. You will learn about the further fate of Alexey Peshkov by reading the summary. “My Universities” is a work in which the author describes his youth. This is part of an autobiographical trilogy, which also includes “Childhood” and “In People.” The trilogy ends with the story "My Universities". A summary of the chapters of its first two parts is not presented in this article.

Life with the Evreinovs

Alexey realized when he arrived in Kazan that he would not have to prepare for university. The Evreinovs lived very poorly and could not feed him. In order not to dine with them, he left home in the morning and looked for a job. And in bad weather, the main character of the work “My Universities” sat in the basement, located not far from their apartment. The summary, like the story itself, is dedicated to the period of Gorky’s life from 1884 to 1888.

Meeting Gury Pletnev

Students often gathered in the vacant lot to play gorodki. Here Alyosha became friends with Gury Pletnev, a printing employee. Having learned how difficult life was for Alyosha, he offered to move in with him and begin preparing to become a rural teacher. However, nothing came of this venture. Alyosha found refuge in a dilapidated house inhabited by the urban poor and hungry students. Pletnev worked at night and earned 11 kopecks per night. Alyosha slept on his bed when he went to work.

The narrator, Alexey Peshkov, ran to a nearby tavern for boiling water in the morning. During tea, Pletnev read funny poems and told news from the newspapers. Then he went to bed, and Alyosha went to the Volga pier to earn money. He carried loads and sawed wood. This is how Alyosha lived from winter until the end of summer.

Derenkov and his shop

Let us describe further events that make up a brief summary. “My Universities” continues with the fact that in the fall of 1884, one of the students with whom the narrator was familiar brought him to Andrei Stepanovich Derenkov. It was the owner of a grocery store. Even the gendarmes had no idea that revolutionary-minded young people were gathering in Andrei Stepanovich’s apartment; forbidden books were kept in his closet.

Alyosha quickly became friends with the owner of the shop. He read a lot and helped him in his work. In the evenings, high school students and students often gathered. Their gathering was noisy. These were different from those with whom Alexey lived in Nizhny. They, like him, hated the well-fed, stupid life of the bourgeoisie, and wanted to change the existing order. Among them were revolutionaries who remained to live in Kazan after returning from Siberian exile.

Visiting revolutionary circles

New acquaintances lived in anxiety and worries about the future of Russia. They were worried about the fate of the Russian people. It sometimes seemed to Peshkov that his own thoughts were heard in their speeches. He participated in the circle meetings they held. However, these mugs seemed “boring” to the narrator. He sometimes thought that he knew life better than most of his teachers. He had already read about much of what they talked about, he had experienced much of it himself.

Work at Semenov's pretzel establishment

Alyosha Peshkov, soon after meeting Derenkov, went to work at a pretzel establishment run by Semenov. He began to work here as an assistant baker. The establishment was located in the basement. Alyosha had never worked in such unbearable conditions before. I had to work 14 hours a day in mud and stifling heat. Semyonov's workers were called "arrestants" by his housemates. Alexey Peshkov could not come to terms with the fact that they endured the bullying of their tyrant owner so resignedly. He read forbidden books to the workers secretly from him. I wanted to give hope to these people that a completely different life is possible, Alexey Peshkov (M. Gorky). "My Universities", a summary of which in the format of one article can only be given in general terms, continues with a description of the secret room.

Secret room in a bakery

Alyosha from Semenov’s bakery soon went to work for Derenkov, who opened a bakery. The income from it was supposed to be used for revolutionary purposes. Here Alexey Peshkov puts bread in the oven, kneads the dough, and early in the morning, having filled a basket with rolls, he delivers the baked goods to apartments and takes the rolls to the student canteen. All this is described by Maxim Gorky (“My Universities”). The summary that we have compiled should make it clear to the reader that already in his youth Gorky developed an interest in revolutionary activity. Therefore, we note that under the rolls he had leaflets, brochures, books, which he distributed discreetly along with the baked goods to whomever he should.

The secret room was located in the bakery. People came here for whom buying bread was just an excuse. This bakery soon began to arouse suspicion among the police. Policeman Nikiforitch began to “circle like a kite” around Alyosha. He asked him about the visitors to the bakery, as well as about the books that Alexey was reading, and invited him to his place.

Mikhail Romas

Mikhail Antonovich Romas, by nickname, was a broad-chested, big man with a thick thick beard and a shaved head in the Tatar style, who was among many other people in the bakery. He usually sat in the corner and silently smoked his pipe. Mikhail Antonovich, together with the writer Galaktionovich, recently returned from Yakut exile. He settled in Krasnovidovo, a Volga village located not far from Kazan. Here Romas opened a shop where he sold cheap goods. He also organized an artel of fishermen. Mikhail Antonovich needed this in order to conduct revolutionary propaganda among the peasants more discreetly and more conveniently, as noted by Maxim Gorky (“My Universities”). The summary takes the reader to Krasnovidovo, where Peshkov decided to go.

Alyosha goes to Krasnovidovo

In 1888, in June, during one of his visits to Kazan, Romas invited Alyosha to go to his village to help with trade. Mikhail Antonovich also promised to help Peshkov study. Naturally, Maksimych, as Alexey was often called now, agreed to this. He did not give up his dreams of teaching. In addition, he liked Romas - his quiet persistence, calmness, silence. Alexei was curious to know what this hero was silent about.

A few days later Maksimych was already in Krasnovidovo. He talked for a long time with Romas on the first evening after his arrival. Alexey really enjoyed the conversation. Other evenings followed, when, with the shutters tightly closed, a lamp was lit in the room. Mikhail Antonovich spoke, and the peasants listened to him attentively. Alyosha settled in the attic, studied diligently, read a lot, walked around the village, talked with local peasants.

Fire

Gorky continues to describe the events of his life in the autobiographical story “My Universities”. A summary of the work introduces readers to the main ones.

The local rich people and the elder were hostile and suspicious towards Romas. At night they waylaid him, tried to blow up the stove in his hut, and then, by the end of summer, they burned Romasya’s shop with all his goods. Alyosha was in the attic when it caught fire and first of all rushed to save the box in which the books were located. He almost burned himself, but he thought of jumping out of the window, wrapped in a sheepskin coat.

Parting words from Romas

Romas decided to leave the village soon after this fire. Saying goodbye to Alyosha on the eve of departure, he told him to look at everything calmly, remembering that everything passes, everything changes for the better. At that time, Alexei Maksimovich was 20 years old. He was a strong, big, awkward young man with long hair, and it no longer stuck out in curls in different directions. His high-cheekboned, rough face could not be called beautiful. But it transformed when Alexey smiled.

Childhood: life with the Kashirins

When Peshkov, the hero of the work “My Universities” (Gorky), the summary of which interests us, was a little boy, a cheerful young employee of the Kashirins, Tsyganok (grandmother’s stepchild), once told him that Alyosha was “small, but angry.” And this was true. Peshkov was angry with his grandfather when he offended his grandmother, with his comrades if they mistreated those who were weaker, with his masters for greed, for their gray, boring life. He was always ready for battle and argument, protested against what humiliated human dignity and interfered with life.

Gradually, Alexei began to realize that his grandmother’s wisdom was not always correct. This woman said that you need to firmly remember the good and forget the bad. However, Alyosha felt that one should not forget him, one must fight him, if bad things destroy a person and ruin his life. Gradually, attention to man, love for him, and respect for work grew in his soul. He looked everywhere for good people and became deeply attached to them when he found them. So, Alyosha was attached to his grandmother, to the cheerful and smart Gypsy, to Smury, to Vakhir. I met him when I was working at the fair, and at Romas, and at Derenkov, and at Semenov, Gorky (“My Universities”). The chapter-by-chapter summary introduces only the main characters, so we have not described them all. Alyosha made a solemn promise to himself to serve these people.

As always, books helped him understand a lot of things in life, explained them, and Alexey began to take literature more and more seriously and more demandingly. For the rest of his life, from childhood, he carried into his soul the joy of his first acquaintance with the works of Lermontov and Pushkin, and always remembered his grandmother’s songs and fairy tales with special tenderness...

Reading books, Alexey Peshkov dreamed of becoming like their heroes, wanted to meet such a “simple, wise man” in his life so that he would lead him onto a clear, wide path, on which there would be truth, straight and firm, like a sword.

"Universities" by Gorky

Thoughts about higher education were left far behind. Alyosha never managed to get there. “My Universities” (a summary will not replace the work itself) ends with a description of how he “wandered through life” instead of studying at the university, got to know people, gained knowledge in circles of revolutionary-minded youth, thought a lot and believed more and more in the fact that man beautiful and great. Life itself became his university. This is exactly what he talked about in his third, with which we introduced the reader, describing its brief content - “My Universities”. You can read the original work in about 4 hours. Let us recall that the autobiographical trilogy consists of the following stories: “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities”. The summary of the last work describes 4 years of the life of Alexei Peshkov.

The matured Alexey Peshkov goes to Kazan to prepare for entering the university. This idea was instilled in him by high school student Nikolai Evreinov, who lived in the same attic with Alyosha and often saw him with a book. To begin with, he offered to live with their family.

Alyosha's grandmother saw him off and advised him not to be angry, not to be arrogant, and not to judge people poorly. Saying goodbye to her, the hero acutely felt that he would never see the “sweet old woman” again, who, in fact, replaced his mother.

In Kazan he stayed with Nikolai's family: his mother, a widow, and her two sons. They all lived on meager pensions. Alexey saw that it was difficult for a poor mother to feed three healthy boys. At first he tried to help - he peeled potatoes, but he saw the lack of money frozen in his eyes, and “every piece of bread lay like a stone on his soul.” Then Alyosha began to leave home so as not to have dinner, he sat in the basement, realizing that the university was a fantasy and it would be better if he went to Persia.

Schoolchildren gathered in a vacant lot and played gorodki. Alyosha was charmed by Guriy Pletnev. He was poor, dressed poorly, but could play any musical instrument. He offered to live with him and train together to become rural teachers. Pletnev worked at night as a proofreader in a printing house, and Alyosha slept on his bed. Gurin slept during the day, and Alyosha went to the Volga in the hope of earning at least something.

The house in which they lived was called “Marusovka”. It was a slum inhabited by students, prostitutes and the half-mad. The senior policeman in this quarter was Nikiforich - he looked very closely at the motley public. Therefore, in the winter, people were arrested for trying to set up a secret printing house, and Alexei was given a secret assignment for the first time. However, when Alyosha later tried to study the works of J. Stuart Millie with Chernyshevsky’s notes in a circle, he was bored. He was more drawn to the Volga, where for the first time the hero, rescuing cargo from a sunken barge together with the men, “felt the heroic poetry of labor.”

After some time, Alyosha met Andrei Derenkov, who was the owner of a grocery store and had the best library of prohibited books in all of Kazan. The shop did not bring in much income, and Derenkov decided to open a bakery. He was a “populist”, so all profits from the sale went to help those in need. Alexey Peshkov kneaded the dough, put the bread in the oven, and in the morning he delivers the rolls to apartments and to the student canteen, so that along with the rolls he could discreetly distribute books, brochures, and leaflets. But more people still came to the bakery, where there was a secret room, and this aroused suspicion among the police. Therefore, Nikiforitch kept inviting Alyosha to visit him in order to find out who was really coming to them.

Alyosha himself did not understand the controversy well, he was offended that they did not take him seriously, calling him a “nugget” or “son of the people,” and they also laughed that he read a lot of books. Perhaps because of this, he “was seized by an unbearable itch to sow the reasonable, the good, the eternal.” He met the weaver Nikita Rubtsov, who at first ridiculed the young man, but then, after listening to his thoughts about life, began to treat him like a father, even calling him by his first name and patronymic. Rubtsov had an insatiable greed to know.

However, Nikifyroch’s efforts were crowned with success - after his observations, Guriy Pletnev was arrested, and Nikiforych’s wife said that it was he who tracked down Gurochka, and now he’s catching Alyosha, so you can’t believe a single word he says and be careful. The policeman convinced Alyosha that it is pity that destroys people: it was precisely because of his pity for people, they say, that Pletnev disappeared.

Alexey himself, feeling that he saw no meaning in his life, decided to kill himself. He tried to describe the motive in the story “An Incident in the Life of Makar,” but it came out awkward and devoid of inner truth. Then he bought a revolver with four cartridges at the market, shot himself in the chest, hoping to hit his heart, but he shot himself in the lung, and a month later, very embarrassed, he worked in the bakery again.

Among the visitors to the “secret room” stood out a large, broad-chested man nicknamed Khokhol, who had just returned from exile in Yakutia, organized a fishing artel and opened a shop with inexpensive goods in order to quietly conduct revolutionary propaganda among local peasants. His name was Mikhail Antonovich Romas and he lived not far from Kazan. One day he invited Alyosha (who was now increasingly called Maksimych) to be his assistant. He admitted that men, especially rich men, do not love him, and Alyosha will also have to experience this dislike. He told about himself that the son of a Chernigov blacksmith was a train oiler in Kyiv and there he met revolutionaries, after which he organized a self-education circle, and for this he was arrested and imprisoned for two years, and then exiled to the Yakut region for ten years.

Alexey settled down to live in the attic; in the evening they talked for a long time. After the suicide attempt, Alexey’s attitude towards himself decreased; he was ashamed to live. But Romas showed delicacy in this matter and seemed to “straighten” him, simply opening the door to life. They met two men - Kukushkin and Barinov. Both were local merry fellows, empty-headed people who were not liked in the village. And Mikhail Antonich was able to win them over. Alyosha and Khokhol lived with the son of a local rich man, Pankov, who separated from his father because he married not by his will, but out of love, for which his father cursed him and now, passing by his son’s new house, he fiercely spat on him. But Alyosha felt a hidden hostility from this man, although he, along with Kukushkin and Barinov, listened to Mikhail Antonich’s stories about the structure of the world, about the life of foreign states, about world revolutions.

Pankov rented out a hut to Romasya, and added a shop to it against the wishes of the rich people of the village, and they hated him for it, but he was indifferent to it. When they opened the shop, Alyosha was waiting for Romas to start working with the men. Life in the village turned out to be difficult, and the men were incomprehensible. For example, the young man was offended by their attitude towards women. He walked around the village, talked with the peasants, convincing them that the people must learn to take power from the king. Therefore, the headman and local rich men were hostile to Khokhl: they tried to attack him more than once, they put a log of gunpowder in the stove, and by the end of the summer they set fire to a shop with goods. Alyosha tried to save the goods, but when everything around was on fire, he rushed to the attic to save his books. When the books were safe outside the window, a barrel of kerosene exploded, cutting off the path to salvation. Then the young man grabbed his mattress and pillow and jumped out the window. He remained intact, only his leg was sprained.

Romas, realizing that they would not allow him to live peacefully in the village, sold the rest of the goods to Pankov and left for Vyatka. Before leaving, I told Alexey not to rush to judge anyone, because that’s the easiest thing to do. After some time, Romas himself again ended up in exile in the Yakut region in the case of the People's Law organization. And Alyosha, who was “filled with lead by melancholy” when a person close to him left, rushed around the village, like a little kitten that had lost its owner. Together with Barinov, he walked around the villages where they worked for rich men: threshing, digging potatoes, clearing gardens. They always felt hidden hostility towards themselves and in the fall they decided to leave the village.

Barinov persuaded Alexei to go to the Caspian Sea. They got a job on a barge going from Nizhny Novgorod to Astrakhan. However, the inventor and dreamer Barinov spoke about their misadventures in the village so picturesquely that in Simbirsk the sailors very unkindly offered to let them off the barge onto the shore, since they were “unsuitable people” for them. They had to travel as “hares” to Samara, where they hired a job on a barge, and a week later they safely reached the shores of the Caspian Sea and there they joined a small fishing artel in the Kalmyk fishery Kabankul-bai.

Alexey Peshkov’s dream of going to university never came true, at least not yet. But life became a real university, filled with many events that helped the young man gain a true understanding of the surrounding reality.

And now Alyosha was leaving for Kazan. He dreamed of university, wanted to study, but life did not turn out at all as he thought.
Arriving in Kazan, he realized that he would not have to prepare for university - the Evreinovs lived very poorly and could not feed him. In order not to dine with them, he left home in the morning, looked for work, and in bad weather holed up in the basement, not far from the Evreinovs’ apartment.

In this vacant lot, young students often gathered to play gorodki. Here Alyosha met and became friends with printing employee Guriy Pletnev. Having learned how difficult his life was, Pletnev invited Alyosha to move in with him and train to become a rural teacher. True, nothing came of this venture, but Alyosha found refuge in a large dilapidated house, inhabited by hungry students and the urban poor. Pletnev worked at night and earned eleven kopecks a night, and when he went to work, Alyosha slept on his bed.

In the mornings, Alyosha ran to a nearby tavern for boiling water, and during tea, Pletnev told newspaper news and read funny poems. Then he went to bed, and Alyosha went to work on the Volga, to the pier: sawing wood, carrying loads. This is how Alyosha lived through winter, spring and summer.

In the fall of 1884, one of his student acquaintances brought Alexei Peshkov to Andrei Stepanovich Derenkov, the owner of a small grocery store. No one, not even the gendarmes, suspected that revolutionary-minded youth were gathering in the owner’s apartment behind the shop, and that banned books were kept in the closet.

Very soon Alyosha became friends with Derenkov, helped him in his work, and read a lot. “I had a library, mostly of banned books,” Derenkov later said. “And I remember, Alexey Maksimovich sat in the closet from morning until late at night and voraciously read these books...”

In the evenings, students and high school students usually came here. It was a “noisy gathering of people”, completely different from those with whom Alyosha lived in Nizhny. These people, just like Alyosha, hated the dull, well-fed life of the bourgeoisie, and dreamed of changing this life. Among them were revolutionaries who remained to live in Kazan after returning from Siberian exile.

His new acquaintances lived in “continuous anxiety about the future of Russia”, about the fate of the Russian people, and Alyosha often thought that his thoughts were heard in their words. He attended the circles they ran, but the circles seemed “boring” to him, sometimes it seemed that he knew the life around him better than many of his teachers, and he had already read and experienced a lot of what they said...

Soon after meeting Derenkov, Alyosha Peshkov hired himself as a baker’s assistant at Semenov’s pretzel establishment, which was located in the basement. Never before had he had to work in such unbearable conditions. They worked fourteen hours a day, in stifling heat and dirt. The housemates called Semenov's workers "prisoners." Alyosha could not come to terms with the fact that they endured the bullying of the tyrant owner so patiently and meekly. Secretly from the owner, he read forbidden books to the workers; he wanted to instill in these people hope for the possibility of a different life.

“Sometimes I succeeded,” he said, “and seeing how swollen faces were illuminated by human sadness, and eyes flashing with resentment and anger, I felt festive and proudly thought that I was “working among the people,” “enlightening” them "

Alyosha soon left Semenov's bakery to join Derenkov, who opened a bakery. The income from the bakery was to be used for revolutionary purposes. And so Alexey Peshkov kneads the dough, puts the bread in the oven, and early in the morning, having filled a basket with rolls, he carries them to the student canteen and delivers them to apartments. Under the rolls he has books, brochures, leaflets, which he discreetly distributes along with the rolls to whomever is appropriate.

There was a secret room in the bakery; those for whom buying bread was only an excuse came here. Soon the bakery began to arouse suspicion among the police. Around Alyosha, policeman Nikiforich began to “circle like a kite,” asking him about the visitors to the bakery, about the books he was reading, inviting him to his place.

Among the many people who visited the bakery was “a large, broad-chested man, with a thick, bushy beard and a Tatar-style shaved head”; His name was Mikhail Antonovich Romas, nicknamed “Khokhol”. He usually sat somewhere in the corner and silently smoked a pipe. Together with the writer Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko, he had just returned from exile in Yakutia, settled not far from Kazan, in the Volga village of Krasnovidovo, and opened a shop with cheap goods there and organized a fishing artel. He needed all this for this. in order to more conveniently and discreetly conduct revolutionary propaganda among the peasants.

On one of his visits to Kazan in June 1888, he invited Alexei Peshkov to go to him. “You will help me in trading, it will take you a little time,” he said, “I have good books, I will help you study - do you agree?”

Of course, Maksimych, as Alexei was now often called, agreed. He never stopped dreaming of studying, and he liked Romas - he liked his calmness, quiet perseverance, silence. With some anxious curiosity I wanted to know what this bearded hero was silent about.

A few days later, Alexey Peshkov was already in Krasnovidovo and on the first evening after his arrival had a long conversation with Romas. “For the first time I felt so seriously comfortable with a person,” he said. And then there were other good evenings, when the shutters were tightly closed, the lamp was lit, Romas spoke, and the peasants listened to him attentively. Alyosha settled in a room in the attic, read a lot, studied, walked around the village, met and talked with peasants.
The headman and local rich people were suspicious and hostile towards Romas - they lay in wait for him at night, tried to blow up the stove in the hut where he lived, and by the end of summer they set fire to the shop with all the goods. When the shop caught fire, Alyosha was in his room in the attic and first of all rushed to save the box with books; I almost burned myself, but I decided to wrap myself in a sheepskin coat and throw myself out of the window.

Soon after the fire, Romas decided to leave the village. On the eve of his departure, saying goodbye to Alyosha, he said: “Look at everything calmly, remembering one thing: everything passes, everything changes for the better. Slowly? But it is durable. Look everywhere, feel everything, be fearless..."

Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov was twenty years old at that time. He was a big, strong, awkward, blue-eyed young man. He grew his hair longer, and it no longer stuck out in curls in different directions. His rough, high-cheekboned face was ugly, but it always transformed with light when he smiled - “as if lit up by the sun,” as my grandmother said.

When Alyosha was still a little boy, Tsyganok - a young and cheerful employee of the Kashirins, his grandmother's adopted child - once said to him: “You are small, but angry,” and this was in fact true. Alyosha was angry with his grandfather when his grandfather offended his grandmother, with his comrades if they offended someone weaker than themselves, with his masters - for their boring, gray life, for their greed. He was always ready for an argument and a fight, rebelled against everything that humiliated a person, that prevented him from living, and gradually he began to understand that his grandmother’s wisdom was not always correct. She said: “You always remember the good, and just forget what’s bad,” but Alyosha felt that the “bad” should not be forgotten, that we must fight it, if this “bad” ruins life, destroys a person. And alongside this, attention to man grew in his soul, respect for his work, love for his restless spirit. In life, he looked for good people everywhere, found them and became deeply attached to them. He was so attached to his grandmother, to the smart and cheerful Gypsy, to his dear comrade Vakhir, to Smury. He met good people when he worked at the fair, in Semenov’s bakery, at Derenkov’s, at Romas’s... And he made a solemn promise to himself to serve people honestly.

Books, as always, explained and helped to understand a lot in life, and Alyosha Peshkov began to take literature more and more demandingly and more seriously. From childhood and throughout his life, he carried in his soul the joy of his first meeting with the poems of Pushkin and Lermontov; I always remembered my grandmother’s tales and songs with special tenderness...

Reading books, he dreamed of being like the heroes of one or another of them, dreamed that he would meet such a hero in life - “a simple, wise man who would lead him onto a broad, clear path” and on this path there would be truth, “ hard and straight, like a sword."

Far behind were his dreams of university, which Alyosha could never get into. Instead of studying at the university, he “wandered through life,” got to know people, studied in circles of revolutionary-minded youth, thought a lot and believed more and more that he was a great and wonderful person. So life itself became his “university”.
And he spoke about this much later in his third autobiographical book “ My universities».

My housemate, high school student N. Evreinov, persuaded me to enter Kazan University. He often saw me with a book in my hands and was convinced that I was created by nature to serve science. My grandmother accompanied me to Kazan. Lately I have been moving away from her, but then I felt that I was seeing her for the last time.

In the “half-Tatar city” of Kazan, I settled in the cramped apartment of the Evreinovs. They lived very poorly, “and every piece of bread that fell to my share was like a stone on my soul.” High school student Evreinov, the eldest son in the family, due to his youthful egoism and frivolity, did not notice how difficult it was for his mother to feed three healthy guys on a meager pension. “His brother, a heavy, silent high school student, felt it even less.” Evreinov liked to teach me, but he had no time to seriously engage in my education.

The harder my life was, the more clearly I understood that “a person is created by his resistance to the environment.” The piers on the Volga helped me feed myself, where I could always find cheap work. The dozens of pulp novels I read and what I myself experienced drew me into an environment of movers, tramps and swindlers. There I met a professional thief, Bashkin, a very smart man who loved women to bits. Another acquaintance of mine is the “dark man” Trusov, who dealt in stolen goods. Sometimes they crossed the Kazanka into the meadows, drank and talked “about the complexity of life, about the strange confusion of human relationships” and about women. I lived with them several such nights. I was doomed to follow the same road as them. The books I read got in my way and aroused my desire for something more significant.

Soon I met student Gury Pletnev. This dark, black-haired young man was full of all sorts of talents, which he did not bother to develop. Gury was poor and lived in the cheerful slum "Marusovka", a dilapidated barracks on Rybnoryadskaya Street, full of thieves, prostitutes and poor students. I moved to Marusovka too. Pletnev worked as a night proofreader in a printing house, and we slept on the same bed - Gury during the day, and me at night. We huddled in the far corner of the corridor, which we rented from the fat-faced pimp Galkina. Pletnev repaid her with “cheerful jokes, playing the harmonica, and touching songs.” In the evenings I wandered through the corridors of the slum “looking closely at how people new to me lived” and asking myself an insoluble question: “Why all this?”

For these “future and former people,” Gury played the role of a kind wizard who could amuse, console, and give good advice. Pletnev was respected even by the senior policeman of the district, Nikiforich, a dry, tall and very cunning old man, hung with medals. He kept a watchful eye on our slum. Over the winter, a group was arrested in Marusovka, trying to organize an underground printing house. It was then that “my first participation in secret affairs” took place - I carried out Gury’s mysterious order. However, he refused to bring me up to date, citing my youth.

Meanwhile, Evreinov introduced me to a “mysterious man” - a student at the teacher’s institute, Milovsky. A circle of several people gathered at his home to read a book by John Stuart Mill with notes by Chernyshevsky. My youth and lack of education prevented me from understanding Mill's book, and I was not interested in reading it. I was drawn to the Volga, “to the music of working life.” I understood the “heroic poetry of labor” on the day when a heavily loaded barge hit a stone. I entered a team of loaders unloading goods from a barge. “We worked with that drunken joy, sweeter than only the embrace of a woman.”

Soon I met Andrei Derenkov, the owner of a small grocery store and the owner of the best library of banned books in Kazan. Derenkov was a “populist”, and the proceeds from the shop went to help those in need. It was in his house that I first met Derenkov’s sister Maria, who was recovering from some nervous illness. Her blue eyes made an indelible impression on me - “I couldn’t talk to such a girl, I didn’t know how to talk.” In addition to Marya, the withered and meek Derenkov had three brothers, and their household was run by “the cohabitant of the eunuch householder.” Every evening, students gathered at Andrei’s, living “in a mood of concern for the Russian people, in constant anxiety about the future of Russia.”

I understood the problems that these people were trying to solve and at first I was enthusiastic about them. They treated me patronizingly, considered me a nugget and looked at me like a piece of wood that needed processing. In addition to the Narodnaya Volya students, Derenkov often saw “a large, broad-chested man, with a thick thick beard and a Tatar-style shaved head,” very calm and silent, nicknamed Khokhol. He recently returned from ten years of exile.

In the fall I had to look for work again. She was found in the pretzel bakery of Vasily Semenov. It was one of the most difficult periods of my life. Because of the hard and abundant work, I could not study, read or visit Derenkov. I was supported by the knowledge that I was working among the people and enlightening them, but my colleagues treated me like a jester telling interesting tales. Every month they visited the brothel as a group, but I did not use the services of prostitutes, although I was terribly interested in gender relations. “Girls” often complained to my comrades about the “clean public,” and they considered themselves better than the “educated” ones. I was sad to hear this.

During these difficult days I became acquainted with a completely new idea, although hostile to me. I heard it from a half-frozen man whom I picked up on the street at night, returning from Derenkov. His name was Georges. He was the tutor of the son of a certain landowner, fell in love with her and took her away from her husband. Georges considered labor and progress useless and even harmful. All a person needs to be happy is a warm corner, a piece of bread and the woman he loves next to him. Trying to comprehend this, I wandered around the city until the morning.

The income from Derenkov’s shop was not enough for all the sufferers, and he decided to open a bakery. I started working there as a baker's assistant, and at the same time I made sure that he didn't steal. I had little success with the latter. Baker Lutonin loved to tell his dreams and touch the short-legged girl who visited him every day. He gave her everything he stole from the bakery. The girl was the goddaughter of the senior policeman Nikiforich. Maria Derenkova lived at the bakery. I waited on her and was afraid to look at her.

Soon my grandmother died. I learned about this seven weeks after her death from a letter from a cousin. It turned out that my two brothers and sister with their children were sitting on my grandmother’s neck and eating the alms she collected.

Meanwhile, Nikiforich became interested in both me and the bakery. He invited me to tea and asked me about Pletnev and other students, and his young wife made eyes at me. From Nikiforitch I heard a theory about an invisible thread that comes from the emperor and connects all the people in the empire. The Emperor, like a spider, feels the slightest vibration of this thread. The theory impressed me very much.

I worked very hard, and my existence became more and more meaningless. At that time I knew an old weaver, Nikita Rubtsov, a restless and intelligent man with an insatiable thirst for knowledge. He was unkind and sarcastic with people, but he treated me like a father. His friend, the consumptive mechanic Yakov Shaposhnikov, a Bible scholar, was an ardent atheist. I couldn’t see them often, work took up all my time, and besides, I was told to keep a low profile: our baker was friends with the gendarmes, whose headquarters were across the fence from us. My work also lost its meaning: people did not take into account the needs of the bakery and took all the money from the cash register.

From Nikiforich I learned that Guriy Pletnev was arrested and taken to St. Petersburg. Discord arose in my soul. The books I read were imbued with humanism, but I did not find it in the life around me. The people that the students I knew cared about, the embodiment of “wisdom, spiritual beauty and kindness,” did not actually exist, because I knew another people - always drunk, thieving and greedy. Unable to bear these contradictions, I decided to shoot myself with a pistol bought at the market, but I didn’t hit my heart, I only punctured my lung, and a month later, completely embarrassed, I was working in a bakery again.

At the end of March, Khokhol came into the bakery and invited me to work in his shop. Without thinking twice, I got ready and moved to the village of Krasnovidovo. It turned out that Khokhla’s real name was Mikhail Antonich Romas. He rented space for the shop and housing from the rich man Pankov. The rural rich did not like Romas: he interrupted their trade, giving goods to the peasants at a low price. The artel of gardeners created by Khokhl especially interfered with the “world-eaters”.

In Krasnovidovo I met Izot, an intelligent and very handsome man, whom all the women in the village loved. Romus taught him to read, now this responsibility has passed to me. Mikhail Antonich was convinced that the peasant should not be pitied, as the Narodnaya Volya members do, but taught to live correctly. This idea reconciled me with myself, and long conversations with Romus “straightened” me.

In Krasnovidovo I met two interesting personalities - Matvey Barinov and Kukushkin. Barinov was an incorrigible inventor. In his fantastic stories, good always won and evil was corrected. Kukushkin, a skilled and versatile worker, was also a great dreamer. In the village he was considered an empty nester, an empty person and was not loved because of the cats that Kukushkin bred in his bathhouse in order to breed a hunting and guard breed - the cats strangled other people's chickens and hens. Our host Pankov, the son of a local rich man, separated from his father and married “for love.” He was hostile towards me, and Pankov was unpleasant to me too.

At first I didn’t like the village, and I didn’t understand the peasants. Previously, it seemed to me that life on the land was cleaner than the city, but it turned out that peasant labor is very hard, and the urban worker has much more opportunities for development. I also didn’t like the cynical attitude of village boys towards girls. Several times the guys tried to beat me, but to no avail, and I stubbornly continued to walk at night. However, my life was good, and gradually I began to get used to village life.

One morning, when the cook lit the stove, there was a strong explosion in the kitchen. It turned out that Romus’s ill-wishers filled the log with gunpowder and placed it in our woodpile. Romus took this incident with his usual equanimity. I was amazed that Khokhol never got angry. When he was irritated by someone's stupidity or meanness, he narrowed his gray eyes and calmly said something simple and ruthless.

Sometimes Maria Derenkova came to us. She liked Romus's advances, and I tried to meet with her less often. Izot disappeared in July. His death became known when Khokhol was leaving for Kazan on business. It turned out that Izot was killed by a blow to the head, and his boat was sunk. The boys found the body under a broken barge.

Upon returning, Romus told me that he was marrying Derenkova. I decided to leave Krasnovidovo, but did not have time: that same evening we were set on fire. The hut and warehouse with goods burned down. I, Romus and the men who came running tried to put out the fire, but could not. The summer was warm, dry, and the fire spread through the village. Several huts in our row burned down. Afterwards the men attacked us, thinking that Romus had deliberately set fire to his insured goods. After making sure that we suffered the most and that there was no insurance, the men fell behind. Pankov’s hut was still insured, so Romus had to leave. Before leaving for Vyatka, he sold all the things saved from the fire to Pankov and invited me to move in with him after a while. Pankov, in turn, invited me to work in his shop.

I was offended, bitter. It seemed strange to me that men, individually kind and wise, go berserk when they gather in a “gray cloud.” Romus asked me not to rush to judge and promised to see me soon. We met only fifteen years later, “after Romas served another ten-year exile in the Yakut region in the case of the Narodopravtsy.”

After parting with Romus, I felt sad. Matey Barinov gave me shelter. Together we looked for work in the surrounding villages. Barinov was also bored. He, the great traveler, could not sit still. He persuaded me to go to the Caspian Sea. We got a job on a barge going down the Volga. We only reached Simbirsk - Barinov composed and told the sailors a story, “at the end of which Khokhol and I, like ancient Vikings, fought with axes with a crowd of men,” and we were politely put ashore. We rode with hares to Samara, there we hired a barge again, and a week later we sailed to the Caspian Sea, where we joined an artel of fishermen “in the Kalmyk dirty fishery of Kabankul-bai.”

Summary of Gorky's story “My Universities”