Maxim Gorky is the most famous Soviet writer, immortalized in the names of cities, streets, airplanes and almost disappeared from cultural use in the new, post-Soviet era. For many years he was praised as a “petrel of the revolution”, a devoted supporter and propagandist of communist ideas, and then condemned for the same. Meanwhile, he was never a 100% Bolshevik, his creative method does not fit into the Procrustean bed of “socialist realism,” and his biography is far from the standards of proletarian morality. In the book of the famous writer, poet, literary historian Dmitry Bykov, Gorky appears as an extraordinary person, an outstanding master of Russian prose, a witness and chronicler of great historical events. The book is being published on the eightieth anniversary of the death of the writer, who played an outstanding role in the history of the ZhZL series.