GORKY’S EXPERIENCE OF CONSTRUCTING SOCIAL OPTIMISM REVIEW OF THE BOOK: M. Gorky. Letters About Literature / Ed. by A.G. Plotnikova; comp. O.V. Bystrova, E.V. Kudrina, E.N. Nikitin, A.G. Plotnikova. Moscow, Gorky Literary Institute, 2023. (Series “Wri

The peer-reviewed new edition of Gorky’s letters on literature is intended for students of creative universities and writers. The scope of the topics that Gorky addresses in his letters to colleagues in the workshop is limitless. The reader will find joyful discoveries of subtle Gorky’s observations and deep reflections on literature as a platform from which to “reproach and take revenge”, about parties and freedom from them, about conscience — of a writer and a man, about optimism and love of life, about indifference, about the desire to live “with the sun in the blood”, about God, whom a person will certainly meet, both on the way “from top to bottom and down in the mud” and on the way “from bottom to top”, about the importance of having a sense of beauty, and even more important quality of having a “good, thoughtful” soul, about literature as pleasure and literature as service, about hatred of “Dostoevschina” in the Russian character, and much more. The value of the reviewed publication lies in the fact that the Gorky legacy appears here more relevant than ever in its desire to “awaken self-pride in a person”, in the experience of constructing social optimism