Abex Chemicals, Inc. Essays - Blitar Regency, DraftPerkara 149, 150

Abex Chemicals, Inc. ABEX Chemicals, Inc. ABEX Chemicals, Inc. adalah salah saru produsen utama dari petrochemicals (terutama polyethylene). Selama 8 tahun terakhir ABEX menguasai kurang lebih 25% pangsa pasar petrochemical di Amerika Serikat. Namun demikian, persaingan dalam industri ini nampaknya akan semakin ketat, terutama dengan terjadinya ekspansi yang sangat agresif, dan kemungkinan akan terjadinya resesi pada satu sampai dua tahun mendatang. Berdasarkan analisis statistik, harga petrochemical yang diproduksi oleh ABEX diperkirakan akan terus menurun pada 12 hingga 18 bulan kedepan. Hal ini akan meningkatkan credit risk perusahaan ini. Harga saham ABEX baru-baru ini juga mengalami penurunan dari $15 menjadi $9 per lembar. Kedua hal tersebut meningkatkan resiko dalam pemberian pinjaman pada Abex. Melihat kenyataan di atas, perlu kiranya dilakukan penilaian ulang terhadap credit risk dari ABEX. Analisis akan bertitik berat pada 3 aspek penting, yaitu external environment, company fundamentals, dan stock price behavior. Hasil pengamatan terhadap ke-tiga aspek dapat dilihat sebagai berikut: External environment Walaupun trend faktor-faktor ekonomi belum dapat diketahui dengan pasti, masalah utama yang dihadapi pada industri petrochemical ini bukanlah perubahan demand, melainkan overcapacity. Seperti terlihat pada Exhibit 1, produksi polyethylene secara nasional diperkirakan tetap samapi tahun 10. Namun karena kapasitas produksi terus meningkat, maka operating rate akan mengalami penurunan. Akibatnya tingkat persaingan akan terus meningkat, sementara harga produk menjadi semakin rendah. Namun demikian, dalam jangka panjang tingkat konsumsi polyethylene akan naik 4% per tahun, dan harga akan meningkat 5% per tahun mulai tahun 12. Company fundamental Pendapatan operasional Abex didapat terutama dari 2 jenis bisnis, yaitu pipeline distribution of natural gas (gas transmission) dan petrochemical production. Pendapatan dari distribusi gas diperkirakan akan berkurang, berkaitan dengan adanya penurunan produksi gas dan faktor-faktor yang membatasi perkembangan harga jual. Namun hasil analisis dapat memprediksikan tetap adanya peningkatan kecil, baik pada volume maupun tarif jasa distribusi tersebut. Data statisik sehubungan dengan usaha distribusi gas ini dapat dilihat pada Exhibit 1. Pendapatan dari produk-produk petrochemical lebih sulit diramalkan, karena sangat sangat sensitif terhadap harga jual, biaya produksi, serta volume penjualan polyethylene. Faktor-faktor penting dalam estimasi pendapatan opersional dari bisnis ini adalah harga jual dan biaya produksi di masa datang, dan pangsa pasar dari ABEX. Pihak manajemen percaya bahwa struktur biaya produksi ABEX yang lebih rendah dapat membuat harga produksinya sangat kompetitif, sehingga memungkinkan tercapainya operating rate yang lebih tinggi dibanding para pesaingnya. Data statisik sehubungan dengan bisnis produksi polyethylene ini dapat dilihat pada Exhibit 1. Stock price evaluation Berlainan dengan analisis umumnya yang menggunakan discounted cash flow, evaluasi harga saham ini dititikberatkan pada quality of cash flow, earning power, yield, book value dan earnings components. Laporan Keuangan perusahaan, serta rasio-rasio keuangan yang digunakan salam analisis dapat dilihat pada Tabel 1 ? 3. Permasalahan Sehubungan dengan fixed income investment yang dilakukan pada obligasi (bonds/long-term debt) yang diterbitkan oleh ABEX, maka perlu dilakukan investigasi lebih lanjut pada kondisi perusahaan tersebut. Evaluasi harus dilakukan untuk mengetahui perubahan yang terjadi pada credit quality (risk) dari hutang jangka panjang ABEX dalam kurun 3 tahun terakhir (tahun 7 ? 9). Analisis dilakukan pada ratio-ratio keuangan terpenting (key financial ratios), yang difokuskan pada 3 aspek yaitu asset protection, short-term liquidity, dan earning power. Jawaban Pertanyaan 1. Identifikasi terhadap 5 ratio keuangan (dari seluruh ratio yang tercantum Tabel 3) yang relevan terhadap minimal 1 dari 3 aspek analisis diatas, serta interpretasi tingkat serta kecenderungannya dari tahun 7 sampai tahun 9. Ratio-ratio yang digunakan untuk menganalisis aspek asset protection adalah net tangible asset to long-term debt serta long-term debt to total capitalization. Untuk short-term liquidity ditinjau collection period, sementara untuk earning power dievaluasi berdasarkan pre-tax interest coverage dan operating cash flow to long-term debt. Sebenarnya inventory period juga dapat digunakan untuk mengevaluasi short-term liquidity, namun karena bisnis distribusi gas tidak memiliki inventory maka ratio ini tidak digunakan dalam analisis ini (terutama dalam memperbandingkan kedua bisnis yang diusahakan oleh ABEX). a/ Net Tangible Assets to Long-term Debt R atio Ratio ini menggambarkan sejauh mana aset perusahaan dapat meng-cover hutang jangka panjangnya. Yang dilihat adalah perbandingan antara asset (yang tidak diragukan nilai serta realisasinya) terhadap jumlah long-term debt. Besarnya ratio dalam 3 tahun terakhir adalah: Tahun Ratio 7 52.0% 8 34.7% 9 46.2% Trend dari ratio ini ternyata menurun, walaupun terlihat adanya perbaikan pada tahun 9. Penurunan ini mungkin disebabkan oleh 2 sebab yang dapat terjadi sendiri-sendiri, atau dua-duanya sekaligus: Pertama, penurunan net tangible asset, yaitu penurunan jumlah asset yang nilai serta realisasinya dapat dipastikan. Hal ini dapat

Free Essays on Management Problems In The Military

Management Problems in the Military From a young age I was told I had my entire life ahead of me giving me the impression that time is something there is plenty of. But as I grew up and went to school, all I had to do is go there, sit until the classes ended, and then go home and do whatever I wanted. I managed to do all of my homework between classes and nothing was left for home. Then onto college where I quickly learned that in college it wouldn’t work the way that it had worked through school. As an adult it’s the workforce, I saw the needed changes and have tried to develop a system to succeed at these new challenges, and finally realizing how important time and personnel management actually is. The Marine Corps is no different. Time and personnel management are probably one of the largest problems within our unit. Personnel spend more time away from their work area’s either talking, smoking or just wandering around rather than working. I will identify each area and provide my solution to correct these problems to produce a more efficient and productive way to accomplish daily tasks in a timely manner. Effective time management is one of the most important factors for succeeding in basically any task. In my many years serving in the Marine Corps, the one thing we’ve prided ourselves on is that leadership is taught to us at an unusually young age. We are taught that our decisions put Marines lives in danger so make the right one. But when it comes to time and personnel management there is a serious problem that burdens our daily processes. Some people might not think that time management is important. The first part in addressing these problems is to evaluate the process to show Marines the time loss factor in their work process. The main cause is procrastination. This is more than just a negative custom that needs to be weeded out of the Marine Corps. It has always been a sort of joke, or a boas... Free Essays on Management Problems In The Military Free Essays on Management Problems In The Military Management Problems in the Military From a young age I was told I had my entire life ahead of me giving me the impression that time is something there is plenty of. But as I grew up and went to school, all I had to do is go there, sit until the classes ended, and then go home and do whatever I wanted. I managed to do all of my homework between classes and nothing was left for home. Then onto college where I quickly learned that in college it wouldn’t work the way that it had worked through school. As an adult it’s the workforce, I saw the needed changes and have tried to develop a system to succeed at these new challenges, and finally realizing how important time and personnel management actually is. The Marine Corps is no different. Time and personnel management are probably one of the largest problems within our unit. Personnel spend more time away from their work area’s either talking, smoking or just wandering around rather than working. I will identify each area and provide my solution to correct these problems to produce a more efficient and productive way to accomplish daily tasks in a timely manner. Effective time management is one of the most important factors for succeeding in basically any task. In my many years serving in the Marine Corps, the one thing we’ve prided ourselves on is that leadership is taught to us at an unusually young age. We are taught that our decisions put Marines lives in danger so make the right one. But when it comes to time and personnel management there is a serious problem that burdens our daily processes. Some people might not think that time management is important. The first part in addressing these problems is to evaluate the process to show Marines the time loss factor in their work process. The main cause is procrastination. This is more than just a negative custom that needs to be weeded out of the Marine Corps. It has always been a sort of joke, or a boas...

Character Archetypes in For Whom the Bell Tolls Essay

Character Archetypes in For Whom the Bell Tolls - Essay Example To begin with, Maria’s story essentially begins when the enchanting American professor, Robert Jordan, enters her life. Before that, she was a rebel, a broken character all but destroyed by the civil war. However, Maria is a survivor. Her very character is symbolic of the war effort in that she has endured the loss of her family, who were brutally murdered by a fascist group, was gang raped by the fascists herself, and then spent time as a prisoner of the fascists, during which time her hair was cut short to symbolize her forced renouncement of the Republican cause. She was an utterly broken woman. Stripped of her family, her dignity, and her inherent power as a woman, Maria was on the verge of giving up—and would have—if not for the shining light that Pilar represented and the sexual redemption found within Robert’s arms. Maria is an inherently sexual heroine. She and Robert make love three times over the course of the novel’s three days and their relationship is fast-forming. Almost instantly, despite the civil war erupting around them, they discover a deep and transcendent love for one another. She is able to, at least outwardly, overcome the monstrous act upon her body; though, psychologically it appears as though she is taking up a sexual relationship with Robert because she is seeking a parallel comfort to her agony. In being sexually hurt, she seeks sexual redemption in the arms of the strong male lead. As a character, Maria is stereotypical and does not experience much evolution during the course of For Whom the Bell Tolls. She is nineteen, and while many women grow to be stronger characters during times of crisis, she maintains a youthful mindset, unable to fully escape from the horrors of her past. It is only when she finds herself safely in the arms of Robert that she attains some semblance of peace. What her character does represent, however, is the archetypal fire of rebellion in the hearts of the rebels during the war. Like the rebels, her heart, while damaged, fought for freedom, seeking solace in the darkness, finding peace in redemption. Ultimately, Maria’s sexual search for self is a direct correlation to the passion of the rebellion and demonstrates that a person can find true peace—an almost transcendent immortality—when the fires of rebellion burn hot within them. On the other hand, Pilar is a diverse and challenging character. She claims she is à ¢â‚¬Å"so simple [she is] complicated† (Hemingway 156). She is tough, almost more so than the male leads of For Whom a Bell Tolls, and, more importantly, she serves as an archetypal symbol for the strength of the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War. She is a woman unafraid of conflict, and will challenge any of the men for their character flaws, cowardice, and mistakes. Perhaps the most endearing quality to Pilar—and that which makes her more accessible a character than Maria—is that she is nearing fifty and no longer knows the love of a man. She becomes almost instantly jealous of Maria and Robert’s relationship and makes a point of telling Maria so, explaining that â€Å"I love thee and he can have thee, I am no tortillera but a woman made for men†

Effects of Quality Management on Domestic and Global Competition Paper Research

Effects of Quality Management on Domestic and Global Competition - Research Paper Example As it is stated in their website, the passengers of Southwest Airlines must possess federal government-issued picture identification; an exception is given to people under the age 18 (Southwest.com). The South west Airlines has designed special provision for the customers who are age 65 and older. Similarly, they have arranged high tech facilities for the issue of boarding passes. The customers can receive boarding passes from the Skycap Counter (situated in selected locations) and check luggage four hours prior to the scheduled departure (Lufthansa). The Airport Arrival chart helps passengers to check the time of flights. The boarding passes are categorized into several groups as A, B, and C on the basis of the fare they purchased. Likewise, extreme facilities are offered to kids and disable persons. In the case of Lufthansa, they have been using ultra modern technologies in order to provide maximum conveniences to customers. Their checking-in system is based on the application of c heck-in machine. In order to take advantage of the system, passengers are required to possess an electronic ticket. This system is effectively employed in various other procedures also such as baggage checking and passport registration.

Knowledge and Perception of Cervical Cancer Research

Knowledge and Perception of Cervical Cancer Research METHODOLOGY Study design and setting A cross-sectional study was conducted from May to June, 2015 among regular undergraduate female Debre Berhan University students. The university is found in Debre Berhan town which is 130 kilometer from Addis Ababa. The university has approximately 20,000 students pursuing regular and extension undergraduate and graduate studies. Of them 10,560 are regular undergraduate students.   Official university statistics show that 37.5% of the students are females and most of the undergraduate students living in university residential halls during the semester sessions. The University has two Institutes, eight colleges and 33 departments. Study variables The outcome variables were knowledge and perception of cervical cancer. Sociodemographic characteristics, reproductive history and sources of information were among the independent variables. Sampling size calculation The 584 sample size was calculated using single population proportion by open epi software considering the following assumptions; the number of female regular undergraduate students in the university =3,962, proportion of the university students who had knowledge on risk factors of   cervical cancer=50.6% (14), 95% confidence interval, 5% reliability,1.5 design effect and 10% non-response rate. Sampling procedure Two stage cluster sampling technique was used for the study.in the first stage , of the twenty nine departments, nine departments were selected by using simple random sampling technique and the sample size was allocated proportionally to each selected departments, based on the number of students. In the second stage, the study participants were selected from each year of study and sections of the selected departments by simple random sampling technique using computer method proportionally to the number of students in each year of study and sections. A list of the students was obtained from each department. Data collection procedure A self-administered questionnaire containing open and closed ended questions was prepared initially in English after reviewing deferent literature then translated into Amharic by an expert and again retranslated to English. Before the actual data collection process, tool was pre tested on 27 female Public Health students of Debre Berhan University. Then necessary modifications were made according to the results of pretest study. Six data collectors were recruited to facilitate the data collection process and were trained for two days. During the data collection process, the data facilitators introduces themselves to the participants and handed over a letter from each college/department which asked for support of the data collection process and showed the ethical clearance. Measurement Participants knowledge about cervical cancer was assessed by using a 20 points scale questions about the etiology, mode of transmission, symptoms, risk factors and prevention methods. A knowledge score was calculated for each participant based on the number of questions correctly answered in the knowledge section. A score of 1 was assigned to every correct answer and a score of zero to incorrect responses. Knowledge questions was scored and pulled together and the mean score was computed to determine the overall knowledge of the participants. Participants scored above the mean were considered as having good knowledge and below average as having poor knowledge. Statistical analysis Data was entered into an Epi info 3.5.4 and imported to SPSS version 20 for analysis. Results were summarized using descriptive summary measures for continuous variables, frequency and percent for categorical variables. To identify the effect of independent variables on knowledge and perception of cervical cancer, both the bivariate method and the multivariate logistic regression techniques were used. Then variables with p value ≠¤ 0.2 in the bivariate analysis was included in the multiple logistic regressions. Odds ratio and 95% confidence interval was used to identify the presence and strength of association and level of significance at the 0.05.

Writting tips

Your response papers are, as the phrase suggests, Individual affairs. What I want, above all, Is your personal response to the readings, and to the questions Vive posed in the accompanying guidelines. In evaluating your papers, above all we consider their content: how well you address the thoughts and arguments presented by these documents, and the quality of ideas you express. That said, please consider these papers exercises in formal writing. That means you deed to adhere to the principles and rules of American English grammar and spelling.Yes, we will hold your feet to the fire on these matters. A few tips follow, addressing problems that arose In the first batch of papers: 1) Keep your tenses straight. Few trials In life are so agonizing as working through a paragraph In which tenses shift, like a wayward eye, from present to past and back again. When you are writing about the past, stay in past tense. The exception to this comes when you find yourself interpreting historical te xts (as you will do in these papers); in this case it is perfectly fine, indeed desirable, to write in the present.Think of it this way: use present tense when dealing with text, past tense when dealing with historical context. For example: â€Å"In this passage, Discusses argues that history is not simply the stories people tell. His approach contrasted sharply with that of Herodotus, who in his account of the Persian Wars mainly collected and retold stories already In circulation. † 2) Avoid unnecessary capitalization. High-flying concepts, such as State, Religion, or Monarchy, need not – should not! – be capitalized.They did that sort of thing back In the seventeenth century, but nowadays we use lower case for just about everything save proper nouns and titles. By the way, â€Å"Bible† should be capitalized, as it is the title of a work; â€Å"God† is likewise capitalized when used in a monotheistic context, as it is considered a proper noun. Bu t more generic usage, as when referring to the gods of polytheistic systems, for example, takes lower case – e. G. , â€Å"Thro was the Norse god of thunder. † 3) Do not use inverted commas (‘†¦ ‘) with quotations, except when you have to place a quote inside a quote († ‘†¦Do learn the difference between American and British usage In respect to quoted passages (Including the placement of periods and commas). In short: American usage requires that periods and commas be placed Inside the quotation marks (though semi-colons are placed outside). Use a pronoun, double-check to make sure you have established a clear precedent. Too often, pronouns show up unannounced in your papers, and it's only polite to have first made introductions. Whenever you use â€Å"it† or â€Å"they' or even â€Å"this,† make sure you've already provided a solid point of reference.The second issue concerns he use of â€Å"they,† â€Å"theirâ €  etc. As the pronoun for words such as â€Å"anyone,† â€Å"everyone,† and â€Å"somebody' – words that otherwise are treated as singular (e. G. â€Å"everyone in this class is crazy,† not â€Å"everyone are crazy. â€Å") Presumably this is because the old default option, â€Å"he,† is nowadays seen as disagreeably male-oriented. I agree that we shouldn't use â€Å"he,† â€Å"him,† â€Å"his† when the reference is not gender-specific. But this problem can usually be finessed with a little rewriting. For example, try using a plural antecedent – â€Å"persons,† â€Å"people† etc. – when you foresee using â€Å"they,† â€Å"their† etc. s he pronoun to follow. 5) Semi-colons can be very useful, but only when properly employed. As a rule, there are two permissible uses. One occurs when you have two grammatically self-standing phrases, but one leans on the other insofar in meaning (t hat is, one statement is derivative of or supplementary to the other). If the phrase is not-self sufficient, if it is grammatically dependent upon the other, then use a simple comma. The second use for semi-colons arises when you string together a long and complex list of things, and need help in keeping your sequencing clear.In this situation, the mi-colon serves as a kind of super-comma. 6) Finally, pay attention to paragraph organization. Introduce your paragraphs with a strong lead sentence – something that indicates the content of what will follow. When, three, four or more sentences down the page, you've finished with that particular point, make way for a paragraph break (and a new, helpful lead sentence). Your readers will thank for making your train of thought more clear. Even more, your writing will benefit from the ways in which paragraph organization forces you to collect your thoughts and organize them more clearly.

Maxim Gorky

Russian short story writer, novelist, autobiographer and essayist, whose life was deeply interwoven with the tumultuous revolutionary period of his own country. Gorky ended his long career as the preeminent spokesman for culture under the Soviet regime of Joseph Stalin. Gorky formulated the central principles of Socialist Realism, which became doctrine in Soviet literature. The rough, socially conscious naturalism of Gorky was described by Chekhov as â€Å"a destroyer bound to destroy everything that deserved destruction. † LIFEMaxim Gorky whose real name was Aleksei Maximovich Peshkov, was born on March 16, 1868, in the Volga River city of Nizhny Novgorod, which in 1932 was renamed Gorky in his honor. His father, a cabinetmaker, died when Gorky was 4 years old, and the boy was raised in harsh circumstances by his maternal grandparents, the proprietors of a dye works. From the age of 10 Gorky was virtually on his own, and he worked at a great variety of occupations, among them shopkeeper's errand boy, dishwasher on a Volga steamer, and apprentice to an icon maker.At a very tender age he saw a great deal of the brutal, seamy side of life and stored up impressions and details for the earthy and starkly realistic stories, novels, plays, and memoirs which he later wrote. He was self-taught in many areas, including literature, philosophy, and history, both Russian and Western. In 1884 Gorky moved to Kazan, dreaming of entering university. That didn’t come to happen because of lack of money. Instead he enrolled in the â€Å"revolutionary underground school. † He attended gymnasium and university populist clubs, reading the relevant literature and fighting with police.At the same time he earned his living doing menial work. In December 1887 a series of misfortunes led him to a suicide attempt. After that, Gorky traveled around Russia in search of a job and experience. He traveled to the Volga Region, the Don, Ukraine, Crimea, South Bessarabia (now part of Moldova) and the Caucasus. He worked as a labourer in a village, a dishwasher, a railroad guard and a worker at a fishery, a salt-works and a repair workshop. At the same time he managed to get acquainted with people from arts circles, take part in clashes with police and earn an overall reputation as an â€Å"untrustworthy† individual.In his travels, he collected prototypes for his future characters, which can be seen in his early works, where the characters were people from the â€Å"bottom† echelons of society. In 1895 he was appointed at the â€Å"Samara Newspaper† (â€Å"Samarskaya gazeta†), where he wrote daily articles for the gossip column â€Å"By the Way† (â€Å"Mezhdu prochim†), signing them as Iegudiil Khlamida. While at the paper he met Ekaterina Volzhina, an editor, whom he married a year later. In 1897 he suffered from aggravated tuberculosis and moved to the Crimea together with his wife. Later they moved to the vill age of Maksatikha in Ukraine’s Poltava Region.That same year, his son Maksim was born. At the beginning of 1898 Gorky returned to Nizhniy Novgorod and in April 1901 Gorky was detained in Nizhniy Novgorod for having taken part in student unrest in St. Petersburg. Later he was expelled to Arazmus. Gorky was elected an honorary academic of polite literature. However, under Emperor Nikolay II’s order, the result of the election was annulled. In 1903 he broke up with his wife and in 1904, the Moscow Theatre Actress Maria Andreeva became his common law wife. In 1905 Gorky was an active participant in the revolution.He was a close associate of the social-democrats but at the same time, on the eve of â€Å"Bloody Sunday† (a key moment in Russia’s history, which served as a trigger for the 1905 Revolution) he visited Sergey Witte, the author of the October Manifesto of 1905, and together with a group of intellectuals he tried to prevent the tragedy. After the revo lution Gorky was arrested on charges of preparing a coup d'à ©tat, but both Russian and European cultural figures rose up to defend the writer. He was released and at the beginning of the following year, emigrated from Russia.He went to America to collect funds to support the Russian Revolution. In 1913 Gorky returned to Russia. After the 1917 Revolution his position became ambiguous: on the one hand, he was supportive of the new authorities, but on the other hand, he kept to his own beliefs, thinking that mass culture is more important than class struggle. At the same time, he started working at the â€Å"World Literature† (â€Å"Vsemirnaya literatura†) publishing house, founding the newspaper â€Å"New Life† (â€Å"Novaya Zhizn†). Gorky’s relations with the authorities gradually aggravated.In 1921 he left Russia, officially going to Germany for medical treatment, but in fact escaping Bolshevik retribution. He lived in Germany and Czechoslovakia until 1924. During this time he actively wrote articles for German magazines (â€Å"The Acknowledgement of a Poet and the Russian Literature of Our Time,† â€Å"The Russian Cruelty,† â€Å"The Intellectuals and the Revolution†). All the articles show his rejection of what had happened in Russia. Gorky actively strived to unify Russian artists working abroad. In the mid-1920s Gorky moved to Sorrento, Italy, where he started work on the novel â€Å"The Life of Klim Samgin† (â€Å"Zhizn Klima Samgina†).The novel was never finished. In 1928 he journeyed to the USSR and spent the summer traveling around the country. His impressions on the trip were published in the book â€Å"Around the Union of Soviets† (â€Å"Po Soyuzu Sovetov†). Three years later Gorky moved to Moscow. Having seen the results of Bolshevik rule while traveling, he set as his goal the promotion of the new â€Å"cultural construction† of the country. He initiated th e creation of literary magazines and publishing houses. Later he organized and chaired the first all-Soviet meeting of Soviet writers. In May 1934 Gorky’s son was killed.Some suspected the NKVD (the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) was responsible for the killing. Two years later Gorky died himself. Speculations continued to surround his death for years; one popular theory suggested he was deliberately poisoned. Gorky is buried in Moscow. LITERARY CAREER Gorky rose to prominence early in life and made his mark as a writer, playwright, publicist, and publisher in Russia and abroad. His literary career began in 1892 with the publication of the story â€Å"Makar Chudra. † His articles and stories were soon appearing in provincial newspapers and journals.His ideas of the writer's involvement in the social, political, and economic problems facing Russia were close to those of Leo Tolstoy and Vladimir G. Korolenko, who became his mentor and friend. Some of h is literary works had important political significance, such as the poem Burevestnik (The Stormy Petrel), which in 1901 prophesied the oncoming storm of revolution. While visiting the United States in 1906 on a mission to win friends for the revolution and raise funds for the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (RSDWP), he wrote the novel Mat (Mother).Gorky's revolutionary ideology lay in his insistence on the inevitability of radical change in Russian society. He started to write for newspapers, and his first book, the 3-volume Sketches and Stories (1898-1899), established his reputation as a writer. Gorky wrote with sympathy and optimism about the gypsies, hobos, and down-and-outs. He also started to analyze more deeply the plight of these people in a broad, social context. In these early stories Gorky skillfully mixed romantic exoticism and realism. Occasionally he glorified the rebels among his outcasts of Russian society.In his early writing career Gorky became friends wit h Anton Chekhov , Leo Tolstoy , and Vladimir Lenin. Encouraged by Chekhov, he composed his most famous play, The Lower Depths (1902), which took much of the material from his short stories. It was performed at the Moscow Art Theater under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavsky. The Lower Depths enjoyed a huge success, and was soon played in Western Europe and the United States. Gorky was literary editor of Zhizn from 1899 and editor of Znanie publishing house in St. Petersburg from 1900.Foma Gordeyev (1899), his first novel, dealt with the new merchat class in Russia. The short story Dvadsat' shest' i odna (1899, Twenty-Six Men and a Girl) was about lost ideals. â€Å"There were twenty-six of us – twenty-six living machines locked in a damp basement where, from dawn to dusk, we kneaded dough for making into biscuits and pretzels. The window of our basement looked out onto a ditch dug in front of them and lined with brick that was green from damp; the windows were covered o utside in fine wire netting and sunlight could not reach us through the flour-covered panes.Our boss had put the wire netting there so we could not give hand-outs of his bread to beggars or those comrades of ours who were without work and starving. † (from ‘Twenty-Six Men and a Girl', 1899) The joy in the lives of the bakers is the 16-year old Tania, who works in the same building. A handsome ex-soldier, one of the master bakers, boasts of his success with women. He is challenged to seduce Tania. When Tania succumbs, she is mocked by the men, who have lost the only bright spot in the darkness. Tania curses them and walks away, and is never again seen in the basement.Gorky became involved in a secret printing press and was temporarily exiled to Arzamas, central Russia in 1902. On leaving Russia in 1906, Gorky spent seven years as a political exile, living mainly in his villa on Capri in Italy. Politically, Gorky was a nuisance to his fellow Marxists because of his insiste nce on remaining independent, but his great influence was a powerful asset, which from their point of view outweighed such minor defects. He returned to Russia in 1913, and during World War I he agreed with the Bolsheviks in opposing Russia’s participation in the war.He opposed the Bolshevik seizure of power during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and went on to attack the victorious Lenin’s dictatorial methods in his newspaper Novaya zhizn (â€Å"New Life†) until July 1918, when his protests were silenced by censorship on Lenin’s orders. Living in Petrograd, Gorky tried to help those who were not outright enemies of the Soviet government. Gorky often assisted imprisoned scholars and writers, helping them survive hunger and cold. His efforts, however, were thwarted by figures such as Lenin and Grigory Zinovyev, a close ally of Lenin’s who was the head of the Petrograd Bolsheviks.In 1921 Lenin sent Gorky into exile under the pretext of Gorky’s needing specialized medical treatment abroad. In the decade ending in 1923 Gorky’s greatest masterpiece appeared. This is the autobiographical trilogy Detstvo (1913–14; My Childhood), V lyudyakh (1915–16; In the World), and Moi universitety (1923; My Universities). The title of the last volume is sardonic because Gorky’s only university had been that of life, and his wish to study at Kazan University had been frustrated.This trilogy is one of the finest autobiographies in Russian. It describes Gorky’s childhood and early manhood and reveals him as an acute observer of detail, with a flair for describing his own family, his numerous employers, and a panorama of minor but memorable figures. The trilogy contains many messages, which Gorky now tended to imply rather than preach openly: protests against motiveless cruelty, continued emphasis on the importance of toughness and self-reliance, and musings on the value of hard work.Gorky finished his trilog y abroad, where he also wrote the stories published in Rasskazy 1922–1924 (1925; â€Å"Stories 1922–24†), which are among his best work. From 1924 he lived at a villa in Sorrento, Italy, to which he invited many Russian artists and writers who stayed for lengthy periods. Gorky’s health was poor, and he was disillusioned by postrevolutionary life in Russia, but in 1928 he yielded to pressures to return, and the lavish official celebration there of his 60th birthday was beyond anything he could have expected.In the following year he returned to the U. S. S. R. permanently and lived there until his death. His return coincided with the establishment of Stalin’s ascendancy, and Gorky became a prop of Stalinist political orthodoxy. Correspondence published in the 1990s between Gorky and Stalin and between Gorky and Genrikh Yagoda, the head of the Soviet secret police, shows that Gorky gradually lost all illusions that freedom would prevail in the U. S. S . R. , and he consequently adjusted to the rules of the new way of life.He was now more than ever the undisputed leader of Soviet writers, and, when the Soviet Writers’ Union was founded in 1934, he became its first president. At the same time, he helped to found the literary method of Socialist Realism, which was imposed on all Soviet writers and which obliged them—in effect—to become outright political propagandists. Gorky remained active as a writer, but almost all his later fiction is concerned with the period before 1917. In Delo Artamonovykh (1925; The Artamonov Business), one of his best novels, he showed his continued interest in the rise and fall of prerevolutionary Russian capitalism.From 1925 until the end of his life, Gorky worked on the novel Zhizn Klima Samgina (â€Å"The Life of Klim Samgin†). Though he completed four volumes that appeared between 1927 and 1937 (translated into English as Bystander, The Magnet, Other Fires, and The Specter) , the novel was to remain unfinished. It depicts in detail 40 years of Russian life as seen through the eyes of a man inwardly destroyed by the events of the decades preceding and following the turn of the 20th century.There were also more plays—Yegor Bulychov i drugiye (1932; â€Å"Yegor Bulychov and Others†) and Dostigayev i drugiye (1933; â€Å"Dostigayev and Others†)—but the most generally admired work is a set of reminiscences of Russian writers—Vospominaniya o Tolstom (1919; Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy) and O pisatelyakh (1928; â€Å"About Writers†). The memoir of Tolstoy is so lively and free from the hagiographic approach traditional in Russian studies of their leading authors that it has sometimes been acclaimed as Gorky’s masterpiece.Almost equally impressive is Gorky’s study of Chekhov. He also wrote pamphlets on topical events and problems in which he glorified some of the most brutal aspects of Stalini sm. Assessment. After his death Gorky was canonized as the patron saint of Soviet letters. His reputation abroad has also remained high, but it is doubtful whether posterity will deal with him so kindly. His success was partly due, both in the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent abroad, to political accident.Though technically of lower-middle-class origin, he lived in such poverty as a child and young man that he is often considered the greatest â€Å"proletarian† in Russian literature. This circumstance, coinciding with the rise of working-class movements all over the world, helped to give Gorky an immense literary reputation, which his works do not wholly merit. Gorky’s literary style, though gradually improving through the years, retained its original defects of excessive striving for effect, of working on the reader’s nerves by the piling up of emotive adjectives, and of tending to overstate.Among Gorky’s other defects, in addition to his weakness for philosophical digressions, is a certain coarseness of emotional grain. But his eye for physical detail, his talent for making his characters live, and his unrivaled knowledge of the Russian â€Å"lower depths† are weighty items on the credit side. Gorky was the only Soviet writer whose work embraced the prerevolutionary and postrevolutionary period so exhaustively, and, though he by no means stands with Chekhov, Tolstoy, and others in the front rank of Russian writers, he remains one of the more important literary figures of his age.