The artist is Efanov
For the first time, Efanov turned to this topic in 1939, having performed the drawing of the same name. “The idea of the picture,” wrote the artist in memoirs, “arose on my eve of the 60th anniversary of Comrade Stalin. In the newspaper, I read a large article by Comrade Poskrebyshev. It described how Joseph Vissarionovich visited him on the eve of Gorky’s death . In this picture, I wanted to convey the psychological state of the leader and his comrades and their attitude to the patient Gorky, whose last phrase was: „How you want to live “…”.
The writer died June 18, 1936. The circumstances of his death – this often happened in those years – remained completely unclear. But, be that as it may, Stalin, like a case with Kirov, used the death of the writer for his political purposes. His death was declared violent, and g. G. Berry, who was the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, in the third Moscow process in 1938 admitted that Gorky was poisoned by doctors by order of Trotsky. (T. H.)
Electronic catalog “Heroes and villains of Russian history”. SPb, 2010. WITH. 444.
