Five-year-old daughter Katya died of meningitis in the summer of 1906, when Gorky and Maria Andreyeva were in the United States, from where Alexei Maksimovich sent his abandoned wife in Nizhny a consoling letter with a request to take care of their remaining son.

[4] According to published data, the divorce was never officially formalized, which partly explains the fact that Gorky never entered into another registered marriage.

Before the October Revolution she took an active part in the work of the Committee for Assistance to Russian Political Prisoners (Комитет помощи русским политкаторжанам) under the leadership of Vera Figner.

After 1922, she was chairwoman of the subsequent organization the Assistance to Political Prisoners (Pompolit, Помощь политическим заключенным, Помполит).

In 1927, she was instrumental in securing the commutation and release of Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn after he was accused of counter-revolutionary activities, and sentenced to death.