Little is known of Rakovsky's life between that moment and July 1932, the moment when he was allowed a medical leave. Towards the end of the same year, Trotsky was informed that he had attempted to flee the Soviet Union, and, in March 1933, it was announced that he had been deported to Yakutia. Answering Trotsky's request, the French mathematician and Trotskyist Jean Van Heijenoort, together with his fellow activist Pierre Frank, unsuccessfully called on the influential Soviet author Maxim Gorky to intervene in favor of Christian Rakovsky, and boarded the ship he was traveling on near Istanbul. According to Heijenoort, they only managed to meet Gorky's son, Maxim Peshkov, who reportedly told them that his father was indisposed, but promised to pass on their request. Researcher Tova Yedlin proposed that the problem was caused by Gorky's distress over having recently separated from his mistress Moura Budberg, as well as to the writer's close surveillance by OGPU agents.