Gorky's My Universities is an autobiographical work that the author wrote in 1923. It is part of a trilogy that consists of the stories Childhood, In People and My Universities. We were introduced to the last story, which completes the trilogy, in class. Now let’s answer the question: Which person had the strongest influence on Alyosha Peshkov. To do this, let’s get acquainted with the work My Universities in a brief summary, as well as with its characters.
For a detailed study of Gorky’s work, which describes the last stage in the formation of the writer’s personality, we see the birth and development of revolutionary sentiment and advise you to get acquainted with the full version of the text. Those who do not have time can get acquainted with a summary of the work.
My universities Gorky summary
So, My Universities tells the story of the further life of Alyosha Peshkov, the hero of the story. In this book, on the advice of a young high school student, Evreinov, he goes to Kazan. There he plans to go to university. Having said goodbye to, the hero sets off on his journey. Next we learn that the hero never goes to university. Due to the constant lack of funds, Alyosha no longer thinks about studying, he is busy with how to earn money for living.
Reading Gorky's work My Universities, we see how difficult life is for the guy. He works several jobs, but does not disdain hard work that requires physical endurance. At first he lives with the Evreinovs, and soon Peshkov meets an employee from the printing house, Pletnev, with whom he settles. It was Pletnev who later brought our hero together with the revolutionary Derenkov, for whom Alyosha worked in a bakery. The hero was fired up by the ideas of revolution, and they gathered in Derenkov’s store and wanted to change the established structure. Moreover, he even delivered prohibited brochures with baked goods, thereby spreading the ideas of the revolution.
Later, Alyosha met Romas, nicknamed Khokhol, a man who distributed and conducted revolutionary propaganda among the peasants. Having met in Khokhloye, Peshkov moved to him in Krasnovidovo, because Romas promised not only a job, but also help in entering the university. Alyosha agreed, because he never gave up hope of starting his studies. However, Alyosha works in Krasnovidovo, reads a lot, but never begins to study. Instead, he talks with peasants and gets acquainted with local life. Next we learn about a fire that burned many houses. Risking his life, the hero saves all his books.
Romas leaves the village, giving parting words to the young man - the hero of the work. The hero himself was 20 at that time. The story has an open ending, where Alexey does not go to university, but goes with Barinov to a fishing artel to the shores of the Caspian Sea.
As a result, Alyosha left thoughts about university behind, but he received more. His university was life. Traveling, meeting a wide variety of people, observing and even participating in circles of revolutionary youth, the hero thought about life, about man in general and his role, and made his own conclusions. He developed, learned and believed that man was great and beautiful.
Heroes of the story
In Gorky's story, the author creates many characters. Among them are the hero’s grandmother, high school student Evreinov, and Pletnev, an employee of the printing house. We meet Derenkov, a shop owner who conducted revolutionary propaganda among young people, and here is Mikhail Romas, a revolutionary propagandist among peasants. The main character is Alyosha Peshkov, who has long said goodbye to childhood and adolescence.
Alyosha went to Kazan. The young man wanted to go to university, dreamed of studying. However, everything turned out differently.
Upon arrival in the city, the hero began to understand that he would not be able to enter the university. The Evreinov family lived modestly; they could not feed one more person. Alexei
I understood this and tried to leave home every time.
Soon Alyosha became friends with the printing house worker Gury Pletnev. After hearing a story about Lesha’s life, Pletnev offered to stay with him and study. The young man agreed and began to live in a huge house among students and the urban poor.
Alexei’s morning began with a trip for hot water, and while drinking tea, Gury shared interesting newspaper news. Pletnev worked at night and slept during the day. When Gury was in the apartment, Alexey worked at Volga’s - he helped with sawing firewood and worked as a loader. So winter, spring and summer passed.
In the middle of autumn Alexey
Peshkov met Andrei Stepanovich Derenkov, who was the owner of a small grocery store. No one would have guessed that young people with revolutionary sentiments often gather at Derenkov’s place, and in his closet there is a whole library of forbidden literature.
Peshkov became Derenkov’s friend, helped him with his work, and read various books. In the evenings, high school students and students gathered in Andrei Stepanovich’s apartment. These young people were completely different from those to whom Lesha was accustomed. Young people hated the rich life of the bourgeoisie and dreamed of changing something in their usual way of life. There were also revolutionaries who returned from exile.
Alexei’s new friends were worried about Russia, about the fate of their native people. It seemed to Peshkov that they were voicing his thoughts. Sometimes he was sure that he had seen a lot and knew more about life than others...
After some time, Peshkov got a job with Semenov, the owner of the bakery. The working conditions were terrible: basement, dirt, insane heat - and so on fourteen hours a day! Alexey was surprised how the workers endured all this and, secretly from the owner, read them banned publications.
Derenkov opened a new bakery and invited Lesha to work there. All the money from this earnings was used for revolutionary needs. At night, Peshkov prepares bread, and early in the morning he delivers it to the students in the dining room. Hidden under the flour products were leaflets, books and brochures intended for distribution to the “necessary” people.
The bakery had a special room where like-minded people gathered. But soon the police and the policeman became suspicious, and Alyosha was constantly interrogated.
A frequent visitor to the “secret room” was Mikhail Antonovich Romas, who was often called “Khokhlo”. He went through the Yakut stages and arrived in Krasnovidovo with the writer Korolenko. In the village, Khokhol began to engage in fishing and opened a small shop - all this served as a “cover”. In fact, active revolutionary propaganda was carried out among the local population.
One summer, Romas invited Peshkov to move to the village. Alexey was supposed to provide assistance in selling goods, and Mikhail Antonovich would help him with his studies. Alyosha happily agreed. In the master's house, he spent a lot of time reading, talking with the owner, and participating in general meetings with local peasants.
The townspeople and the village headman treated Mikhail extremely poorly. One day they set fire to a shop with all the goods they had acquired. Peshkov was in the attic at the time and the first thing he did was try to save the literature, but then jumped out of the window.
After this incident, Mikhail Antonovich decided to move to another city. When he said goodbye to Alexei, he advised him to take all events calmly, because everything that is not done is certainly for the better.
Then Peshkov turned twenty. A strong, robust young man with blue eyes. Alexei’s face was rough, with powerful cheekbones, but when a smile appeared on it, the man noticeably transformed.
Since childhood, Alyoshka was very angry when someone was offended. He never liked the greedy people he had to live with. The young man was always ready to argue and rebel against injustice. The grandmother always taught her grandson to remember only good and to forget evil. Alexey couldn’t live like that, he thought that “evil” had to be fought. Peshkov became very attached to good people, whom he met almost everywhere. For himself, he firmly decided that he would be honest and do good deeds for the benefit of others.
Reading literature was only beneficial; Alexey chose books seriously and carefully. From an early age, he loved his grandmother's songs and fairy tales, and recalled the poems of Lermontov and Pushkin with special trepidation...
The guy wanted to be somewhat like the heroes of the works, to be wise and faithful to his good deed. Dreams of university studies collapsed; life itself was a kind of “university” for him. And he shared this a little later in his third autobiographical book, “My Universities.”
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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. During 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 couldn’t 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 Vasily Semenov’s pretzel bakery. 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 chickens. 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, I lived well, 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 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 Yakutsk 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 again hired on a barge 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.”
Option 2
The story is narrated in the first person. The main character is a provincial youth, whom high school student N. Evreinov persuaded to enter Kazan University. At first, the hero lived in the Evreinovs’ house, but quickly realized that here he was a burden and every piece of bread he ate caused irreparable damage to the family budget. The young man moves to Gury Pletnev, with whom he and he unloaded barges on the Volga. Now the hero’s home became a dirty little room in “Marusovka” - a kind of hostel where the whole city rabble lived.
After some time, the young man, thanks to the patronage of Evreinov, will end up in a circle where forbidden literature was read in the evenings. But these books did not make much of an impression on the young man, nor did his studies at the university, to which he is becoming more and more indifferent every day. He was attracted by the port, the conversations of the porters, their stories and tales, and all these conversations about “reasonable and good” were too far from the real life of ordinary people.
But the circle nevertheless had an impact on the fate of the hero: there he met Andrei Derenkov, who gave all the proceeds from his grocery store to help those in need, and his charming sister Maria. The young man fell passionately and recklessly in love with this girl, but did not even dare to talk about his feelings. Maria, like her brother, was a “populist” and spent all her strength on teaching poor orphans.
In the fall, the hero finds a new place of work - Vasily Semenov’s pretzel bakery. The work was very hard, there was no time either to visit the university or to go to the circle, where even a glimpse of Maria could be seen. It was during this period that a certain Georges, the riotous tutor of a landowner, instilled in the young man a simple thought: all the stories about freedom and democracy are nonsense, because for a working person to be happy, all he needs is a piece of bread, a warm corner and his beloved woman nearby. This thought turned out to be diametrically opposed to everything he had heard over the past two years; the hero decided to shoot himself. He bought a pistol for this purpose at the market, but his hand trembled and, after treating his shot lung for two months, he returned to work at the bakery.
The following spring, Khokhol, a former political exile, invited the young man to move to the village of Krasnovidovo and work in his shop. The hero began a new, rural life, in which after some time he began to feel very comfortable. But one day there was an explosion in Khokhla’s shop; it turned out that the competitors had decided to get rid of the more successful merchant in this way. The damage was insignificant, trade continued, and one day Khokhol announced that he was going to marry Maria Derenkova. The hero decides to flee from this house and not see his beloved wife of another. But he doesn’t have time: the village was set on fire, the shop burned to the ground, and Khokhla was arrested and sent to another ten-year exile in the Yakutsk region.
Mitya Barinov, the hero’s new friend, persuades him to go to the Caspian Sea. They began their journey on a barge going down the Volga, and after a couple of weeks they were already at the final destination of their journey, where they joined an artel of talkative fishermen.
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