July 29, 1918
The Bolsheviks closed it "New life". A social and literary newspaper, the editor of which was Maxim Gorky, lasted 14 months. According to the revolutionary and publicist Nikolai Sukhanov, It was the most popular daily newspaper. Petrograd:
Everyone read it. Most importantly, it was read by the working masses. With a few exceptions, and during short periods, Novaya Zhizn's circulation was the largest of all St. Petersburg newspapers.
It began publication on May 1, 1917. It was published by a group of internationalist social democrats (many were Mensheviks) and writers, including Gorky, Sukhanov, Lunacharsky, and others.
The publication criticized the Bolsheviks, especially after the October Revolution. The most vocal critic was Gorky, the "stormy petrel of the revolution"—his columns reflecting on the revolution's rebirth later formed the book "Untimely Thoughts":
*One should not think that the revolution spiritually healed or enriched Russia. *Murder and violence are the arguments of despotism, these are vile arguments - and powerless, because to rape someone else's will, to kill a person does not mean <> to prove the wrongness of the thought *The most terrible enemy of freedom and rights is within us; it is our stupidity, our cruelty <> Are we capable of understanding this? If we are not capable <> we do not have freedom. It is simply a word that we are unable to saturate with the necessary content *Soldiers are leading a thief, beaten half to death, to be drowned in the Moika River; he's covered in blood... one eye is missing. He's accompanied by a crowd of children; then some of them return from the Moika River and, hopping on one leg, joyfully shout: "We've drowned him, we've drowned him!" These are our children, the future builders of life. A human life will be cheap in their estimation. *War has valued a man less than a small piece of lead *Telling the truth is the most difficult art of all arts, because in its “pure” form, not connected with the interests of individuals, groups, classes, nations, the truth is almost completely inconvenient for use by the average person and is unacceptable to him.
"Untimely Thoughts" was banned in the USSR for almost 70 years; it was republished only in 1988.