Nikolay Oleynikov
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Nikolay Makarovich Oleynikov (; 5 August 189824 November 1937) was a
Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...
editor, avant-garde poet and playwright who was arrested and executed by the
Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
s for subversive writing. During his writing career, he also used the pen names Makar Svirepy, Nikolai Makarov, Sergey Kravtsov, NI chief engineer of the mausoleums, Kamensky and Peter Shortsighted.


Early life

Nikolay Oleynikov was born in the village of Kamenskaya into a prosperous
Cossack The Cossacks are a predominantly East Slavic Eastern Christian people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Ukraine and southern Russia. Cossacks played an important role in defending the southern borders of Ukraine and Rus ...
family. He graduated from
Donetsk Donetsk ( , ; ; ), formerly known as Aleksandrovka, Yuzivka (or Hughesovka), Stalin, and Stalino, is an industrial city in eastern Ukraine located on the Kalmius River in Donetsk Oblast, which is currently occupied by Russia as the capita ...
College and in 1916 entered the Kamensky Teachers' College. In December 1917 he joined the
Red Guards The Red Guards () were a mass, student-led, paramilitary social movement mobilized by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 until their abolition in 1968, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted.Teiwes According to a ...
and in March 1918 enlisted in the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
, fighting against the Germans and White Cossacks in the
Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...
. In 1920 he joined the Russian Communist Party (RKP). He worked on the editorial board of the ''Red Cossack'' newspaper, and later moved to Bakhmut where he became the executive secretary of the newspaper ''Russian Steamshop''. With
Petrograd Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...
writers Mikhail Slonimsky and Evgeny Shvarts, he organized the literary magazine ''Zaboi'' (''Mine Face'' in English) in 1925 in Bakhmut.


Career

In 1925 Oleynikov received an appointment from the Central Committee of the USSR to the ''
Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, 'Truth') is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most in ...
'' newspaper in
Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...
, where he also worked as an editor on the magazine ''New Robinson'', created by Samuel Marshak. From 1926 to 1928 he was active in Leningrad magazines, and organized broadcasts for children. In 1928 he was appointed to the Gosizdat, Children's Department of State Publishing House, as editor of the children's magazine ''Monthly Journal'' (EF). He also wrote for the children's magazine ''Yozh'' (''Hedgehog'' in English) in 1928. From 1926 to 1937, Oleynikov was active in official duties of staging children's theater with
Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich), First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded ...
and Schwartz, including ''Wake Lena'' (1934), ''Helen and Grapes'' (1935) and ''At Rest'' (1936). He also wrote humorous but satirical poems like "The Carp", "The Beetle" and "Cockroach". Early in 1937, Oleynikov became editor of ''Cricket'', another children's magazine. During his years in Leningrad, Oleynikov became associated with the avant-garde OBERIU writing group who published in the children's magazines, including the writers Korney Chukovsky, Boris Zhitkov, Mikhail Prishvin, Eugene Schwartz, Vitaly Bianki, Daniil Kharms, Alexander Vvedensky and Nikolai Zabolotsky. He began to privately write ironic verse and parodies which reflected mockery and criticism of the Soviet ideals, counter to his official role as a manufacturer of Party propaganda for children. Some of his early efforts are lost and the first surviving poems include "Head" (1926), followed by others including "Gluttony" (1932), "In the Art Gallery" (1936) and "Vulcan and Venus" (1937). Only three of these poems were published in Oleynikov's lifetime. In 1934, he published "Service Science", "The Fly" and "Praise to Inventors" in the journal ''Thirty Days''. These were immediately identified as subversive, and he dropped the idea of publishing any others. On 3 July 1937, Oleynikov was arrested as a counter-revolutionary and the editors of the Gosizdat were investigated. After several months of torture, Oleynikov was sentenced to death, was shot in on 24 November 1937 and buried at the Levashovskaya wasteland. His widow received a
death certificate A death certificate is either a legal document issued by a medical practitioner which states when a person died, or a document issued by a government civil registration office, that declares the date, location and cause of a person's death, a ...
from the registry office that listed his death as 5 May 1942 of fever.


Posthumous publication

Regardless of the light and humorous nature of his work, Oleynikov is considered one of the "darkest" and "most philosophically uncompromising" of the Russian avant-garde poets. He was " rehabilitated" by the Soviets in 1957, and after 1964, more of Oleynikov's poems were published in the USSR as part of articles that professed to ridicule his work. The first exhaustive collection of his poetry was published in 1989. In the summer of 2006, English translations of some of his poetry appeared in the US, published in ''OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism''. In 1997 Ukrainian composer and director Alexey Kolomiytsev wrote a rock opera titled ''Vivisection'' based on Oleynikov's poems about animals.


Works

Selected publications include: *First Council, 1926 *Battle Days, 1927, 1991 *Tanks and sleigh, 1928 *Poetry in the journal ''Thirty Days'', 1934 *Two poems "Cockroach," "Change name" in the almanac ''Poetry Day'', Leningrad, 1966 *Problems of Literature, 1969, 1970 *Poetry, Bremen, 1975 *Ironic poems, New York, 1982 *Change of name, 1988 *Abyss of passions, 1990 *For a fly ..., 1990 *Poems and Poems, 2000 *Vulcan and Venus, 2004 *Circle of smart guys, 2008


References


External links


Website for the opera ''Vivisection''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oleynikov, Nikolay 1898 births 1937 deaths Russian children's writers Soviet dramatists and playwrights Russian male poets Soviet children's writers Soviet male writers 20th-century Russian male writers Soviet poets Russian children's poets Executed writers Great Purge victims from Russia Soviet rehabilitations Russian male dramatists and playwrights