For this purpose, it was equipped with a powerful radio set known as the "Voice from the sky" (Russian: Голос с неба, romanized: Golos s neba), printing machinery, a library, radio broadcasting equipment, a photographic laboratory and a film projector with sound for showing films in flight.

The aircraft set several carrying-capacity world records and is also the subject of a 1934 painting by Vasily Kuptsov, which is now in the collection of the Russian Museum at Saint Petersburg.

The accompanying I-5 biplane piloted by Nikolai Blagin had performed two loop manoeuvres around the Maxim Gorky.

The Maxim Gorky crashed into a low-rise residential neighbourhood west of present-day Sokol metro station.

On 14 December 1942, it crashed after the pilot allowed a passenger to take his seat momentarily and the passenger activated the stabilizer control mechanism via a switch on the pilot's armrest, raising the stabilizer and sending the airplane into a nosedive from an altitude of 500 m (1,600 ft), killing all 36 on board.