Maxim Gorky

Maxim Gorky — the name means Bitter — was orphaned at eleven, worked as a dishwasher, baker and dock hand, and attempted suicide at nineteen before becoming the most widely read writer in Russia. He funded the Bolsheviks, then quarrelled with Lenin over their brutality and went into exile. Stalin lured him back to be the figurehead of Soviet letters; he died in 1936 in circumstances still disputed.