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.

On 18 May 1935, the Maxim Gorky (with pilots I. V. Mikheyev and I. S. Zhurov) and three more aircraft (a Tupolev ANT-14, R-5 and I-5) took off for a demonstration flight over Moscow.

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.