[2] Born in Moscow into a working class family, Lev Samsonov spent an unhappy childhood in and out of orphanages and colonies after his father was prosecuted in 1937 during the anti-Trotskyism purge.

He went to Siberia to travel there under an assumed name, Vladimir Maksimov (to become later his pen name), spent time in jails and labour camps, then worked as a bricklayer and construction worker.

[3][4] In 1956 Maksimov returned to Moscow and published, among other pieces, the short novel My obzhivayem zemlyu (We Harness the Land, 1961) telling the story of Siberian hobos, courageous, but deeply troubled men, trying to find each their own way of settling down into the unfriendly Soviet reality.

[8] Among Maksimov's best-known works written in France were the novels Kovcheg dlya nezvanykh (The Arc for the Uninvited, 1976), telling the story of the Soviet development of the Kuril Islands after the World War II, an autobiographical dilogy Proshchanye iz niotkuda (Farewell from Nowhere, 1974—1982), and Zaglyanut v bezdnu (To Look Into the Abyss, 1986), the latter having as its theme Alexander Kolchak's romantic life.

He switched to criticizing the new Russia's regime and, while still a staunch anti-Communist, started to published his diatribes aimed at Egor Gaidar-led liberal reforms regularly in the Communist Pravda, to great disdain of some of his friends.

[3][4] "Maksimov's was an unbalanced, harsh prose, with settings and time modes ever changing, human life stories and the details thereof complementing each other, augmenting the narrative into all-embracing, epic proportions.

[His strength lies] with the power of an original, natural-born stylist, which enables him to see through clearly into the lower strata of the Soviet society (which he knew painfully well from his own experience), as well as the highly-charged sense of moral responsibility of a patriot writer," according to the German Slavic studies scholar and literary historian Wolfgang Kasack.