2-548-314 - © Fine Art Images/Heritage Images

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and author Maxim Gorky, Moscow, USSR, 1931. Gorky (1868-1936) was one of the pioneers of socialist realism in literature. He was a fierce opponent of the Tsarist regime and became involved with the Bolsheviks after the 1905 Revolution. In 1932 Stalin (1879-1953) persuaded Gorky to return to the Soviet Union permanently from Italy, where he had been living because he was suffering from tuberculosis. As Stalinist repression increased within the USSR, Gorky was placed under house arrest in 1934. It has been suggested that his death two years later came at the hands of agents of the Soviet secret police and security organisation, the NKVD. Found in the collection of The Russian State Library, Moscow.