Maxim Gorky is the greatest writer of the XX century, whose life and creative pursuit has been vastly researched. Due to the scientific advancements and the general complexity of the writer's figure, there has been a recent development and expansion of the study around Gorky. And one of the results of such expansion becomes a new look at the phenomenon of the incredible success of the writer. Our research aims to analyse critiques of the phenomenon of Maxim Gorky's writing success. Critics of all types sought to understand the reasons for the writer's rapid success, to share their own versions. A myth of sorts about the writer's success emerged in the very first papers: as if the secret of Gorky's success lay in the glorification of a lowlife (social outcasts). Critics perceived Gorky as a living classic long before the academic history of literature acknowledged him as one. It is important to bear in mind that the horizons of expectations of the writer and his readers were almost aligned; to understand Gorky's success. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, the feuilleton appeared as a counteraction to Gorky's success. The authors of those feuilletons ridiculed the extreme exaggerations of critics and their metonymic transfer of his biography on his works.