The bust of Maxim Gorky was created by sculptor Mikhail Blokh in revolutionary Petrograd in late 1917 — early 1918. After the October Revolution, Gorky engaged in active social and human rights work in order to save cultural values and protect the “old-regime” Russian intelligentsia in the new Soviet reality. In his newspaper “Novaya Zhizn” (New Life), the writer published editorial columns, later included in the book “Untimely Thoughts”, in which he openly criticized the new Bolshevik regime.

The sculptor managed to convey the complex and contradictory experiences that overwhelmed the writer during the revolutionary days. The poetess Zinaida Gippius left a vivid description of Gorky’s external and internal state in November 1917 in her “Diary”,

After the October Revolution, Gorky patronized the Pushkin House: he facilitated the transfer of valuable archives and artifacts, and petitioned for subsidies for the purchase of various collections. In 1918, he donated part of his personal archive to the museum. From March 24, 1935, to the end of his life, Gorky was the director of the Pushkin House. In the early 1920s, the Literary Museum began collecting artworks depicting Gorky and other Soviet writers: the bust made by Bloch was also acquired into the collection.

Mikhail Fyodorovich Blokh was a sculptor. He attended the Odessa Art School. Between 1906 and 1913, he studied at the Higher Art School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg in the workshop of academician of sculpture Vladimir Alexandrovich Beklemishev. Blokh worked on free-standing sculptures, created genre compositions and portrait busts, and was a regular participant in exhibitions from 1907.