The Confession: A Novel by Maksim Gorky

Russia’s changes were Gorky’s changes. He first flung his type of hero, the people from the lowest of the low—water-rats, tramps, petty thieves—into a discouraged, disappointed and hopeless Russia. It was a Russia that had almost decided that there were no more people, that they were without courage, that the misery and degradation in which they lived was there because of their own inefficiency, their lack of idealism, their incapacity to grasp an idea and to strike and fight for it.