Alienation and Moral Crisis in Pre-Revolutionary Russia: A Study of Bourgeois Identity in Foma Gordeyev

Abstract

This paper discusses the representation of the merchant class by Maxim Gorky in Foma Gordeyev. The novel illustrates that this social class, even if it has proved its economic power and thus material basis for stability, is a perilous construction of morality. Neither riches nor higher social positions can provide genuine satisfaction. Instead, which creates confusion and darkness. Foma is limited because he cannot hold to the ideals of his own class. He is a tragic figure who understands the truth yet has lost his agency to act. Gorky demonstrates the outward strength of action and agency in his merchant class but the crippling moral weakness just below the surface across much of his life. It serves as a psychological portrait of one man and, at the same time, a barometric reading of an aristocracy in creeping demise.