Russkaya Mysl
In 1915 Yesenin became a co-founder of the Krasa literary group and published numerous poems in the Petrograd magazines "Russkaya Mysl", "Ezhemesyachny Zhurnal", "Novy Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh", "Golos Zhizni" and "Niva". Among the authors he met later in the year were Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Nikolai Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova; he also visited painter Ilya Repin in his Penaty. Yesenin's rise to fame was meteoric; by the end of the year he became the star of St Petersburg's literary circles and salons. "The city took to him with the delight a gourmet reserves for strawberries in winter. A barrage of praise hit him, excessive and often insincere," Maxim Gorky wrote to Romain Rolland.