13 Truthful fabrications

Gorky was no fool, and once greatly surprised Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy claimed that it is the people who produce all great deeds, and the significance of everything else, in particular, personalities in history, is exaggerated. Maxim Gorky objected: "Leo, you are wrong, the people are, of course, great and powerful, but personally I would have remained a tramp and a vagabond if I had not once turned away from them."