The Gorki Fund in the USA and Revolutionary Russia: From the History of Soviet-American Contacts in the 1920s

• Main Author: Maxim M. Gudkov
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Russian Academy of Sciences, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature 2020-06-01
• Series: Литература двух Америк
• Subjects: maxim gorky; henry wadsworth longfellow dana; the gorki fund; povolzhye famine (1921–1923); soviet-american cultural links.
• Online Access: http://litda.ru/images/2020-8/LDA-2020-8_347-381_Gudkov.pdf

The paper discusses the activity of the Gorki Fund in regards to fundraising for the needs of scientists in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) during one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes in Soviet history – the Russian famine of 1921–1923. For the first time in Russian science, the work of H.W.L. Dana’s (1881–1950) foreign foundation in Boston is analyzed. Dana’s biography is provided as well as the entire dynasty of Longfellow–Dana, one of the most influential and educated in the Northeast of the United States. The author illustrates the factors for Dana’s interest in Russia and its culture. The analysis of the Gorki Fund’s humanitarian activities is provided on the basis of unknown American sources and many earlier unpublished materials from the A.M. Gorky Archive in A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow). Due to the fact that there were no official diplomatic relations and no financial transactions between the USSR and the USA in the 1920s, as well as Gorky’s emigration to Germany, the transfer of contributions of the fund from abroad to Russia was greatly complicated. This is clearly demonstrated in the article by a detailed recollection of the correspondence in regards to the transfer of one thousand dollars from the USA to Petrograd. The article analyzes the various means of the Gorki Fund to collect money, from the dispersal of appeals by the Russian writer to American intellectuals and organizations of a special lottery to cooperation with the producer Morris Gest in connection with the staging of the play “The Lower Depths” of MAT (Moscow Art Theatre) in America. This study aids in further understanding of M. Gorky’s participation in the case of saving Soviet scientists during the Russian famine of 1921–1923. The article will also help to clarify cultural relations between the USA and USSR in the first decade of Bolshevist regime.