(Leonid Nikolaevich Andreiev; Orel, 1871 - Kuokkala, 1919) was, as a narrator and playwright, one of the most prominent Russian writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He graduated in Law (1897) in Moscow and moved to the literary field precisely when Gorky's success was emerging. Despite their personal friendship, Andreiev became Gorky's most qualified rival, maintaining for some time a strange balance between the two predominant currents: realism, of which Gorky was the greatest exponent, and the more complex and confused symbolism.