Maxim Gorky

Born Alexei Peshkov in 1868, he drifted across the Russian Empire working odd jobs before turning those years into the raw material of his fiction. His 1890s stories and the play The Lower Depths (1902) made his name; his autobiographical trilogy and the novel Mother followed, though he later called the latter one of his biggest failures. He threw in with the Bolsheviks early, opposed the Tsar, stood with Lenin, then soured on the repressions during the Civil War and spent years in exile. Stalin summoned him back in 1928. He returned in 1932, was crowned founder of Socialist Realism, and set to work on The Life of Klim Samgin - unfinished, some call it his masterpiece. He kept friends among the opposition leaders who would be executed; he tried to shield disobedient writers. In June 1936 he died, his last days spent under unannounced house arrest.