Gorki, Maxim, GAWR kee, mahk SEEM (1868-1936), was a Russian novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. Gorki vividly portrayed the poverty of peasants and workers, as well as the decay and narrow-mindedness of the middle class before the Communist Revolution of 1917. The Lower Depths (1902), Gorki's most popular play, describes the miserable lives of the inhabitants of a cheap boarding house. His most famous novel, The Mother (1907), tells the story of an old peasant woman who is converted to the revolutionary cause.