Yekaterina Peshkova

Yekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova (née Volzhina

On 30 August 1896 Peshkov and Yekaterina got married. In 1897, Yekaterina gave birth to a son, Maxim, and in 1901, a daughter, Katya. In 1902-1903, the family lived in Nizhny Novgorod (now the A. M. Gorky Museum-Apartment). She repeatedly visited and lived in Yalta, working at the Yalta Alexandrovskaya Gymnasium. The couple separated by mutual consent. Five-year-old daughter Katya died of meningitis in the summer of 1906, when Gorky and Maria Andreyeva were in the United States, from where Alexei Maksimovich sent his abandoned wife in Nizhny a consoling letter with a request to take care of their remaining son. However, they "maintained a special relationship throughout their lives," noted their granddaughter Marfa. According to published data, the divorce was never officially formalized, which partly explains the fact that Gorky never entered into another registered marriage.