Early Life
Born Yeshua Zalman Sverdlov (Russified name: Zinovy Mikhailovich Sverdlov, Зиновий Михайлович Свердлов) to a Jewish engraver in Nizhny Novgorod, he was an older brother of Yakov Sverdlov (subsequently a Bolshevik party leader and a high Soviet official). In 1896, Maxim Gorky met the Sverdlov family at an exhibition and soon became a close friend. During Gorky's exile to Arzamas in 1902, Zinovy worked as his secretary. To evade Tsarist Russian restrictions for Jews to live in big cities, Zinovy Sverdlov was baptized Eastern Orthodox and officially changed his name. Gorky (real name Alexey Peshkov) became his godfather.
Zinovy Peshkov was disowned by his family and in 1904 he emigrated to Canada. After two years, he joined Gorky in Capri.
Read more about this topic: Zinovy Peshkov
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Women who marry early are often overly enamored of the kind of man who looks great in wedding pictures and passes the maid of honor his telephone number.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“I have all my life been on my guard against the information conveyed by the sense of hearing—it being one of my earliest observations, the universal inclination of humankind is to be led by the ears, and I am sometimes apt to imagine that they are given to men as they are to pitchers, purposely that they may be carried about by them.”
—Mary Wortley, Lady Montagu (1689–1762)