How did Maxim Gorky’s relationship with Stalin change after his return to the Soviet Union?

Upon returning to the Soviet Union in 1929, Maxim Gorky’s relationship with Joseph Stalin evolved into one of deep political alignment, though private correspondence suggests a growing internal disillusionment.

Initially, Gorky became a central pillar of Stalinist orthodoxy. He served as the first president of the Union of Soviet Writers and was instrumental in establishing Socialist Realism, a doctrine that forced writers to act as political propagandists. Gorky even authored pamphlets and edited volumes that glorified brutal state projects, such as the construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal, which relied on forced convict labor.12

However, correspondence discovered in the 1990s—exchanged between Gorky, Stalin, and secret police chief Genrikh Yagoda—reveals that Gorky gradually lost his illusions regarding the possibility of freedom in the U.S.S.R. He ultimately adjusted to the constraints of the regime, though some Western scholars have speculated that he may have become sickened by the state's excesses before his death in 1936.13