Konstantin Fedin drew this friendly caricature of Maxim Gorky in the mid-1920s. He managed to capture the features of Gorky’s face and his glance very accurately. The fact that Fedin created a grotesque portrait of the venerable writer shows how strong their friendship was.

Fedin met Maxim Gorky in Petrograd in 1920. On 28 January of that year, he wrote a letter to Gorky, saying that he had dreamt about becoming a writer since he was a child and that he had made every effort to succeed in it. However, as a novice author, he didn’t have anyone who could give a proper appraisal of his work – a person who was both respected in literary circles and a competent writer in their own right, someone whose opinion he could trust completely. This is exactly what Fedin considered Gorky to be. So he asked him to give a brutally honest opinion of his work.

By that point, Fedin had been working in the printed media for about a year. While living in Syzran, he had edited the Otkliki (Responses) magazine and the district newspaper Syzran Kommunar. Later, in Petrograd, he joined the editorial office of the newspaper of the 7th Army Political Department. However, Fedin regarded all these activities only as steps to his real goal – becoming a writer. He told Gorky all this.

Gorky welcomed the young author with open arms, having previously read the manuscripts of his stories. He analysed them in detail, pointing out their shortcomings, but in general expressed confidence in Fedin’s talent as a writer. The meeting was enough to convince the young writer that he had chosen the right chosen path and reaffirmed his commitment to it. Gorky was keen to ensure that the two wouldn’t lose touch, so he asked Fedin to take part in a project he was developing to write a cycle of historical dramas about prominent political figures. Fedin chose to write about Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), who was a Russian thinker and revolutionary, and a theorist of anarchism and populism.