The Great Courses

Lecture 15: Machiavelli examines several questions relating to the governance and reform of a republic. If someone in power makes an error, should he be punished for his mistake? Machiavelli fears that punishment discourages leaders from using their minds in creative ways. How should a leader deal with problems? In his first discourse, Machiavelli also attempts to deal with severe crises that occur in republics. He praises the Roman office of dictator because it allowed someone to take charge in exceptional circumstances, but only for a very short while. On the other hand, the attempted agrarian reforms of the Gracchi (two brothers who lived in the 2nd century B.C.) were a disaster because they tried to reconstitute a distant past, causing the bitterness of factions that led to the destruction of the republic. Machiavelli then makes a case for the freedom that comes with a knowledge of the past. He states something quite similar to what George Santayana wrote in the 20th century: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Recommended Readings: Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, translated by Julia Bondanella and Peter Bondanella, Discourse I, chapters 34–54.

Lecture 12: Although we have examined the influence of Humanist thought and ancient history on Machiavelli, it is necessary to return to this theme more precisely as we turn to his most carefully thought-out and longest book on political thought, The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy. In order for us to understand what Machiavelli is doing and why he so honors the Roman Republic, we will need to step back a bit and describe that period of history, as well as provide a broad view of how Livy understood Rome’s republican past. I will then examine the extent to which Machiavelli’s Discourses is a commentary on ancient history and whether his reading of Livy is primarily an entrée into the world of Florentine and Italian politics during Machiavelli’s own lifetime. Recommended Readings: Article by Quentin Skinner, in Machiavelli and Republicanism, Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli, et al., eds., pp. 121–141. T. J. Luce, “Introduction,” in Livy’s The Rise of Rome (Books I–V), translated by T. J. Luce, pp. ix–xxvii. Julia Bondanella and Peter Bondanella, “Introduction,” in Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, translated by Julia Bondanella and Peter Bondanella, pp. vii–xxii.

Lecture 10: Should a prince be loved or feared if indeed he cannot be both? Traditional thinkers would have chosen the former, while Machiavelli argues that the right answer is the latter. Similarly, Machiavelli asks if it is necessary or wise for a prince always to keep his word. In chapter 19, the longest of The Prince, Machiavelli draws on an extraordinary range of historical and modern examples in exploring how princes can avoid being hated. In doing so, he offers subtle lessons about how a prince today should use the past without imitating it literally. The lesson Machiavelli teaches here has applications for anyone who wants to learn from, but not be beholden to, the past. Recommended Readings: Machiavelli, The Prince, translated by Peter Bondanella, chapters 17–21.

Lecture 9: Chapter 13 contains Machiavelli’s denunciation of the common practice of his day for Italian city-states to rely on auxiliary soldiers. In his discussion in the following chapter of how a prince prepares himself for war, Machiavelli stresses practical exercises of both mind and body and the necessity of studying history. Machiavelli also lays out part of what is new in his political thought by pointing out that human weakness lessens the value of those in the past who have written of ideal, imaginary republics. Such works will not get a prince very far, for often he must act in less-than-ideal ways in order to be an effective ruler. Machiavelli also contrasts having a particular virtuous quality, such as generosity, and appearing to have it. Which is more vital for a ruler? Recommended Readings: Machiavelli, The Prince, translated by Peter Bondanella, chapters 13–16.

Lecture 11: Machiavelli explains how a prince must gain the esteem of his people. He then addresses several important issues regarding a prince’s court. One concerns advisors and how princes use them. Another is the problem of flattery. I will discuss how Machiavelli treats these two matters. Finally, Machiavelli focuses once again on contemporary Italy and its problems, most of which were, in a sense, self-inflicted. He asks if these problems are simply caused by Fortune. Although Machiavelli recognizes the role of Fortune, he also counsels how to mitigate her control over human affairs. Since 1494, Italy has seen invading armies from north of the Alps. In the last chapter of The Prince, Machiavelli famously presents a passionate exhortation for Italy to be freed from “the barbarians.” This passage was often cited during the age of Italian unification in the 19th century and made Machiavelli, along with Dante, the prophet of a united Italian state. Recommended Readings: Machiavelli, The Prince, translated by Peter Bondanella, chapters 21–26.

Lecture 6: If we are going to understand The Prince, we need to take seriously its author’s words. Hence, in this and the following five lectures, we will be “text crawling.” First, we will need to consider the original and revised dedications of the book—both to members of the Medici family. We will also consider how this work can be seen as an attempt to win the favor of the Medici so that Machiavelli could return to Florence and be of service to his beloved city. The first few chapters are often passed over rather quickly, for they are something of a catalogue of types of principalities and ways that they acquire new territory. Chapter 4 is Machiavelli’s first extended use of examples from classical antiquity to illuminate his discussion. He also makes use of the examples of the Ottoman Empire and France in his own time. We will discuss this chapter both for Machiavelli’s appeal to the past and the focus of The Prince on the present. Recommended Readings: Machiavelli, The Prince, translated by Peter Bondanella, chapters 1–5.

Lecture 7: We first look at two terms that Machiavelli uses often, virtù (“virtue”) and Fortuna (“fortune”) and what they mean when he uses them. We then approach chapter 6, which concerns new principalities conquered through the prince’s own skill. In it, Machiavelli will cite such diverse figures as Moses; Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome; Theseus, the legendary Athenian; and even Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican friar who dominated Florentine politics immediately following the expulsion of the Medici in 1494. Chapter 7, which deals with territories acquired by fortune or by the arms of others, is one of the most famous in The Prince. Here, Machiavelli introduces his readers to Cesare Borgia, often referred to as Machiavelli’s hero or role model for a modern prince. Machiavelli, while an ambassador for the Florentine Republic, had met Borgia, and certainly he admired many of Borgia’s “Machiavellian” traits. Recommended Readings: Machiavelli, The Prince, translated by Peter Bondanella, chapters 6–7.

Lecture 8: Machiavelli’s ninth chapter of The Prince examines civil principalities, leading to a discussion of the prince’s relationship with the citizens he governs. Some might be surprised by Machiavelli’s claim that it is more important for a prince to have the people than to have the nobility on his side. In chapter 11, Machiavelli takes up the particularly Italian issue of ecclesiastical principalities. After all, the popes claimed direct temporal rule over a large part of central Italy. In this context, Machiavelli makes some interesting remarks about the relationship of the Church to contemporary politics. Machiavelli creates a brief catalogue of the types of soldiers that princes make use of and makes the claim that there can be no good laws without good armies. Hence, it is essential to have the right kind of army. Recommended Readings: Machiavelli, The Prince, translated by Peter Bondanella, chapters 8–12.

Lecture 3: The word Humanism often accompanies the term Renaissance, and to understand Machiavelli, we will have to know what this cultural revival and educational program consisted of. From the very word Renaissance, we conclude that there was a rebirth of the ancient classics. Although much of the treasury of Greek literature was rediscovered during the Renaissance, the Latin classics had been read and used throughout the Middle Ages. It is these Latin works, especially the writings of the historian Livy, that Machiavelli was primarily attracted to. I will argue that the Renaissance can best be understood as an educational movement that approached and found value in the classics in new ways. Thus, Machiavelli cannot be fully understood without a knowledge of the principal tenets of Renaissance Humanist thought and practice. Recommended Readings: Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination, chapter 11, pp. 191–217.

Lecture 4: Machiavelli was born the year that Lorenzo de’Medici became the leader of Florence (1469) and died the year the Medici were exiled from Florence for the second time (1527). In the republican interlude between the Medici domination (1494–1512), Machiavelli led an active life as a part of Florence’s government. His most important writings were produced in the years after the Medici reestablished their rulership of Florence. However, in this lecture we shall be concerned with more than Machiavelli’s career. I will present what we know about Machiavelli the man and why these personal elements are important when we analyze Machiavelli the thinker. Maybe we can come to some conclusion about why, in the most well-known portrait of Machiavelli, he has a smile as mysterious—though not as alluring—as another Florentine, Mona Lisa. Recommended Readings: Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction. Maurizio Viroli, Niccolò’s Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli.

Lecture 5: We know a great deal about the circumstances in which Machiavelli wrote what has become his most famous work, The Prince. Although much of that knowledge comes from The Prince itself, we also have letters that Machiavelli wrote from his country estate, where he composed that powerful little book. In studying The Prince, we also come to realize that, although Machiavelli owes a great deal to classical writers from whom he borrowed examples and ideas, he is quite original in his thoughts and theories, disagreeing with both Aristotle and Cicero. Recommended Readings: Maurizio Viroli, “Introduction,” in Machiavelli’s The Prince, translated by Peter Bondanella, pp. vii–xxxix.

24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture Taught by William R. Cook State University of New York at Geneseo Ph.D., Cornell University Mentioning the name Niccolò Machiavelli can unleash a powerful response, even among people who have never read a word of his writings. Our language even has a word—Machiavellian—that encapsulates the images those responses conjure up: - An indistinct figure quietly making his way through the darkest corridors of power, hatching plots to play one rival against another - A cold-blooded political liar, ready to justify any duplicity undertaken in the name of a noble end that will ultimately justify the most malignant means - A coolly practical leader—amoral at best—willing to do whatever is necessary in a world governed not by ideas of right or wrong, but by solutions dictated by realpolitik. - But does the Machiavelli most of us think we know bear any resemblance to the Machiavelli who lived, pondered, and wrote? According to Professor William R. Cook, a reading of Machiavelli that considers only those qualities that we today call "Machiavellian" is incomplete, and Machiavelli himself "certainly would not recognize" such sinister interpretations or caricatures of his writings and beliefs. Indeed, The Prince—on the pages of which so much of this image was built—was not even published in his lifetime. In the 24 lectures that make up Machiavelli in Context, Professor Cook offers the opportunity to meet an extraordinarily thoughtful and sincere student of history and its lessons, and to learn that there is far more to him than can be gleaned from any reading of The Prince, no matter how thorough. Although The Prince is the work by which most of us think we know Machiavelli, and although some have indeed called it the first and most important book of political science ever written, it was not, according to Professor Cook, either Machiavelli's most important work or the one most representative of his beliefs. Those distinctions belong, instead, to his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, a longer work started at about the same time and which would, like The Prince, not be published until well after his death. "Everyone who has seriously studied the works of Machiavelli agrees that he believed in the superiority of a republican form of government, defined as a mixed constitution with elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. "Once we recover the context of the writing of The Prince, and analyze it along with the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, it will be clear how The Prince can be read as a book designed to guide leaders in the creation—for Machiavelli, restoration—of republican government in Italy. To present a complete and well-rounded picture of Machiavelli's ideas on how human societies should be organized and governed, Professor Cook sets aside much of Machiavelli's written output—which included the political work The Art of War, a biography, many letters, and even some plays—to focus on The Prince, the Discourses, and, more briefly, his Florentine Histories. Lecture 1: In addressing the main concerns of the entire course, I will begin by approaching the lecture title questions in two ways. First, I will briefly place Machiavelli in the context of the history of Western political thought. Second, I will address the question of the “real” Machiavelli. Although many see Machiavelli as responsible for justifying tyrannical and underhanded rule, others regard him as one of the greatest and most important theorists to argue for the superiority of a republican government. I will also address Machiavelli’s modernity. He strikes most people as one of the founders of modern thought and has even been referred to as “the first modern man.” I will introduce this idea here, but to address it thoroughly, we will need to examine the world of Renaissance Italy, as well as Machiavelli’s writings. Recommended Readings: Maurizio Viroli, Machiavelli, chapter 5, pp. 148–174.

Lecture 2: When people stroll around Florence even a bit, they are introduced to such Florentines as Brunelleschi, Donatello, and the Medici. Stepping into the church of Santa Croce, they see the tombs of Michelangelo, Dante (actually he is not in that tomb), Galileo, and Machiavelli. It is impossible not to be overwhelmed by the great Florentine geniuses who shaped Western thought. What sort of place was Florence in the period we call the Renaissance? It was an oligarchical republic, and for much of the period after 1434, it was dominated by one family—the Medici. Florence was also a prosperous city, famous for its cloth and banking industries. It was an independent “nation” and, therefore, was constantly trying to gain advantage over its Italian neighbors, as well as deal with the great European monarchies. Recommended Readings: Articles by Nicolai Rubenstein, Elena Fasan Guarini, and Giovanni Silvano, in Machiavelli and Republicanism, Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli, et al., eds., pp. 3–70.

Lecture 34: The title of Doctor Zhivago includes the old form of the genitive case in the word for “alive.” This genitive is also used as the accusative only for animate words attached to living humans or animals. In short, Pasternak is talking about life itself in its oldest, traditional form. Finding himself in a society calling itself socialist, with full value assigned to the collective, the poet - referring both to the title character and the author - wants to establish himself as an individual, separate from the collective. Repeatedly, Soviet society wants to draft the doctor, who creates some of Pasternak’s best poetry, into its over-organized and overarching civitas. The result is a continuous struggle, which cannot be diverted by marriage or love affairs, by political propaganda, by warfare, or even by the full powers of nature herself. When the poet sees the beauty of the snowbound Russian woods, he uses it to separate himself from the world around him. The result leads to isolation, poetry of the first order, and death. Suggested Reading: Victor Erlich, ed., Pasternak: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ronald Hingley, Pasternak: A Biography. Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (a novel and series of poems), with prose translated by Max Hayward and Manya Harari and poems translated by Bernard Guerney.

Lecture 36: In the course of these lectures, we have come a considerable way together: We have traveled over 1,000 years, from early Kiev in the 9th century through the Soviet Union of the 20th century. We have seen how the early adoption of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, together with the continuation of the pre-Christian oral Slavic tradition, existed side by side in the 10th through the 12th centuries in the territory around Kiev. We then skipped forward to the early 19th century and saw how these disparate traditions came together in the Golden Age of Russian Literature. After consideration of the various trends manifest in the most famous period of Russian literature, we then moved forward to the 20th century and the era of Soviet culture. As we looked at the central issues of the literature that came out of the USSR, we saw how Russian literature redirected its notions about the eternal questions. And now we can look back on the territory traversed, hoping that these considerations and descriptions will help us to think ever more deeply about ourselves and the world, spurred on by the stimulus of Russian literature. Suggested Reading: Edward J. Brown, Literature Since the Revolution. D. S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature, edited by Francis J. Whitfield. Charles Moser, ed., Cambridge History of Russian Literature.

Lecture 35: Up to the 1960s, the Soviet Union officially claimed that there were no slave labor camps in the USSR. The air was struck by a kind of lightning when, in 1962, a new work by a previously unknown high school math teacher took the world by storm. It was Solzhenitsyn’s novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Through the soft voice of an uneducated man from a provincial collective farm, now a prisoner in the GULAG (an abbreviation for labor camps, soon to become world famous), the reader becomes aware of the horrendous reality of Stalin’s camps. Throughout its pages, the book reflects the mentality of a decent human being who deeply believes in producing good work no matter the circumstances. In many ways, the novel conforms to the shibboleths favored by the socialist regime. Yet its indictment of that same regime is crushing and, ultimately, lethal. Solzhenitsyn, subsequently in exile in New England, now back in a very different Russia, continues to write and speak in the voice of a prophet. Many in Russia look upon him today as the worn-out tribune of a long-gone time. I see him as the voice of Russian determination and strength. Suggested Reading: Michael Scammell, Solzhenitsyn: A Biography. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, authorized translation by H. T. Willetts, with an introduction and commentary by Katherine Shonk. D. M. Thomas, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. A Century in His Life.

Lecture 33: Pasternak became one of the major prophets of the 20th century. Raised in a family of artists and musicians, he eventually settled on poetry as his means of artistic expression. Not only were his own poems of very high quality, but he also mastered the art of translation in an unusually powerful way. His translations of Shakespeare breathed a new and different life into the art of the Elizabethan poet, and they kept Pasternak in a field of endeavor much less politically dangerous in the Stalinist USSR than writing his own poetry. Later, in the era of Khrushchev’s so-called “thaw,” he took the chance of publishing a novel, which gained instant international fame and caused Pasternak to feel the fury of the Soviet government. Suggested Reading and Viewing: Lazar Fleishman, Boris Pasternak: The Poet and His Politics. Grigorii Kozintsev, Hamlet, the film with English subtitles, translated by Boris Pasternak, with music by Dmitri Shostakovich. William Shakespeare, Hamlet and Othello, in The Complete Works, edited by W. J. Craig.

Lecture 32: One of the deepest psychological problems for ordinary people in Soviet Russia had to do with religion. The regime, speaking for the society, whether or not the society liked it, loudly proclaimed the Soviet Union a godless, materialist, atheist country. Religion was officially branded backward and primitive, conceived to make people obedient to a previous reactionary regime. This position flew straight in the face of millions who held on to a deep and traditional Christian faith. In addition to the denunciation of religion, other changes in society also affected the family in fundamental ways. In his satires, Zoshchenko catches these effects and the general instability that people felt. Suggested Reading: Mikhail Zoshchenko, Nervous People and Other Stories.

Lecture 31: Thus far, we have dealt with Soviet writers who took the revolution and the Soviet regime very seriously. Probably the most popular writer in the Soviet Union, Mikhail Zoshchenko, took a different approach: He considered the whole experience fodder for satire and laughter. Somewhat in the style of our own newspaper satirists Art Buchwald and Russell Baker, Zoshchenko wrote mostly short stories, sometimes very short, that shed a ridiculous light on the many hypocritical and often downright crazy aspects of Soviet propaganda and life. Miraculously, in the context of Soviet control, he got away with it for quite some time, often under the protective cover of a narrative style that seemed to disassociate the author from the civic vices he so lovingly portrayed. The lightness and skill of his presentation seemed to forestall any possible ideological offense. A good example of his deftness, as well as his remarkable and unusual courage, can be found in the story “Pelageia,” which takes off from the milieu connected with the famous Soviet campaign for mass literacy. Suggested Reading: Mikhail Zoshchenko, Nervous People and Other Stories, translated by Maria Gordon and Hugh McLean, with a critical introduction by McLean. (Skip the early part and read the title story.)

Lecture 30: When Sholokhov’s Cossacks think of war, they think of the Cossack traditions of cavalry charges and hand-to-hand combat. In World War I, they face the armies of industrialized Germany and Austria-Hungary. The novel’s presentation of historical change is only intensified by the ideological strife, new for the Cossacks, involved in revolutions and civil war. Suddenly, all of the old social norms turn topsy-turvy, and a politically uneducated man like Gregor, as well as his family and friends, are hard pressed to know in which direction to turn. They end up on many different sides, hardly recognizing people that they have known since childhood. In many ways, the same holds true for the supposedly stalwart ranks of the Bolsheviks, who position themselves to destroy the Cossack culture and life. The novel is an unsurpassed presentation of what it feels like to experience revolution firsthand. Some 35 years after writing the novel, Sholokhov would occupy a very different position when he called for the execution of some dissidents in the USSR. Then, some of his previously loyal readers excoriated him with a horrendous curse for a writer: “We wish you complete sterility.” Suggested Reading: Isaak Babel, The Collected Stories, which includes “Red Cavalry” and other stories that offer a different account of the Cossacks who fought on the side of the Red Army and the Bolsheviks. Roy Medevedev, Problems in the Literary Biography of Mikhail Sholokhov.

Lecture 29: Sholokhov’s best work goes along lines very different from what we have seen in Gorky and Maiakovsky. If to them, the revolution represented something highly desired and necessary, Sholokhov saw it as a tragic force that wiped out a whole community—the Cossacks— who were very dear and close to him. It was entirely natural that these people, with their vigorous and colorful (albeit crude) culture, who had occupied a privileged position for three centuries under the tsars, formed the most active and militarily effective resistance to the establishment of a new revolutionary regime. In the first part of And Quiet Flows the Don, Sholokhov gives a vivid picture of pre-World War I Cossack life, with its rich farms, love of horses, lust for women, and a military tradition that habitually struck terror in the hearts of all enemies, foreign and domestic, of the tsar. Seen largely through the eyes of a decent man, Gregor Melekhov, Cossack life and lands appear in all their glory and all their defects. Suggested Reading: C. G. Bearne, Sholokhov. Mikhail Sholokhov, And Quiet Flows the Don, translated by Stephen Garry.

Lecture 28: As the 1920s went forward, it became clear that socialist dreams were not sufficiently powerful to deal with economic and political realities. Maiakovsky’s work began to take on a more defensive, less hopeful tone. He felt that he had to stave off attacks from his fellow socialists, as he shows in “At the Top of My Voice.” Then, in 1929, he completed a very ambivalent and moving play, The Bedbug. Woody Allen’s film Sleeper is, in many ways, derived from this play. The piece goes from an ironic derision of “bourgeoisius vulgaris” to a nostalgic fondness for the same and a hideous foretaste of Stalinist arrests and killings. One year later, Maiakovsky played Russian roulette with a loaded pistol and lost! His monument, not far from the center of Moscow, still preserves his defiant stance and the image of his expansive poetry. Suggested Reading: Vladimir Maiakovsky, Vladimir MajakovskijMemoirs and Essays (some in English, some in Russian), edited by Beng Jangfeldt and Nils Ake Nilsson. Herbert Marshall, Mayakovsky.

Lecture 27: To create the literature of the new—and of the soon-to-be spotless— world of socialism, which would prepare the way eventually for complete communism, Maiakovsky joined in the new organization called Proletarian Culture (Proletkul’t). This organization was to include genuine workers, who could write with a new proletarian class consciousness. Alas, despite their consciousness, their writing was abominable. Maiakovsky, on the other hand, had a brilliant poetic talent, and his verse became an important part of the work that the Soviet government presented to the world as proof of the creative force of socialism. His evocation of the Sun to visit the proletarian poet, his cry for a creative surge from ‘the army of the arts,” even his paeon to the futuristic (albeit bourgeois) architecture of the Brooklyn Bridge, all stoked the fires of passionate socialism. This view was quite a contrast with Gorky’s attachment to the best of world culture that had existed before the revolution. Suggested Reading: Vladimir Maiakovsky, The Bedbug and Selected Poetry, edited and with commentary by Patricia Blake; translated by Max Hayward and George Reavey. Lawrence Stahlberger, The Symbolic System of Majakovskij.

Lecture 26: During the First World War, two revolutions took place in what had been the tsarist empire of Russia. The first, in February–March 1917, overthrew Tsar Nikolai II and attempted to establish a democratic government. The second, under V. I. Lenin and his Bolsheviks in October–November 1917, overthrew the provisional democracy and sought to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. In 1923, the name Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was adopted, which lasted until 1991. The new government was determined to put into practice the doctrine of Marxism, which meant that its leaders had to direct and control every aspect of human life toward the goal of a perfect society, labeled “complete communism.” Naturally, Russian literature, long concerned with the “eternal questions,” became a prime target and concern of such a regime. Gorky, in spite of his initial shock at the violence connected with the revolution, stayed loyal to the revolutionary cause. At times, though, he tried to protect writers and intellectuals from the excesses of Communist Party control. Suggested Reading: Alexander Kaun, Maxim Gorky and His Russia. Lev Trotsky, Literature and Revolution.

Lecture 25: Gorky’s real name means “pawn”; his pseudonym means “bitter.” In those two words, we have the essence of this remarkable personality, who had real talent, which he sometimes, but not always, revealed in writing that shook Russia and the world. For several years in the early 20th century, he even eclipsed the fame of Tolstoy. Destined to live on the chronological edge between two political and social systems, which were separated by two revolutions and a bloody civil war, he became a symbol of that change, ending his career as a kind of Soviet icon. Of course, he was no saint, and wide propagandistic worship only served to conceal the reality of his life and work. It also meant that he was extravagantly praised by some and equally extravagantly reviled by others. His appearance in New York City in 1906 resulted in a scandal that drove away Mark Twain, who had been the head of a committee formed to welcome Gorky to the land of the free and the home of the brave. Let’s examine the reality, briefly, but as objectively as we can. I believe we will find both literary art and human decency well worth our effort and attention. Suggested Reading: Maxim Gorky, Autobiography of Maxim Gorky, translated by Isidor Schneider. Edward Wasiolek, ed., “Gorky’s Memoirs of Lev Tolstoy,” in Critical Essays on Tolstoy. Irwin Weil, M. Gorky: His Literary Development and Influence on Soviet Intellectual Life.