"My Universities" concludes Gorky’s autobiographical trilogy whose first book is Childhood. Alexei Peshkov—the future writer Maxim Gorky—lost both his parents when he was little more than a child. He worked as a boy in a shoe shop, then as a dishwasher on a Volga steamboat, and then was apprenticed to some icon painters. He came to Kazan when he was 16 with the hope of being admitted to the University, but he was sorely disappointed. Instead of studying he had to do manual work for a living, and share the existence of the paupers in the slums. Such were the opportunities tsarist Russia had to offer a young man of Gorky’s giftedness in this big and noisy town. However, it was here that he became acquainted with the revolution#ary-minded intellectuals and made contact with the first Kazan circles. And it was here that he conceived the desire which developed with the years to re-make the life of the Russian people and fight for their happiness.