In 1933 María and Alberti founded the journal "Octubre" and in 1934 she returned to the Soviet Union to attend the "First Congress of Soviet Writers" where she met Maxim Gorki, André Malraux and Erwin Piscator among others. Later that year she went to the United States to raise funds for the workers affected by the October 1934 Asturian miners' revolt which soon developed into an armed insurrection against the Spanish government ending in the deaths of 2,000 people including priests, miners and army personnel. This response eventually led to the coalition of different leftist factions that sparked the creation of the Popular Front.