Zabolotsky's father was an agronomist, of peasant stock; his mother was an assistant schoolteacher, the descendant of priests. Nikolai was born not far from Kazan, but spent much of his childhood in a village, and then a small town, in the remote province of Vyatka. After briefly studying medicine and philology in Moscow, he moved to Petrograd in the early 1920s to study at the pedagogical institute. In 1928, he and two younger writers, Daniil Kharms and Aleksandr Vvedensky, founded the OBERIU or “Ob'edinenie real'nogo iskusstva” [“Association of Real Art”], the last avant-garde grouping in the Soviet Union. This acronym was provocative. If "real'nyi" is understood to mean "real", it implies that the work of other artists might <…
1394 words
Citation: Chandler, Robert. "Nikolai Zabolotskii". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 February 2014 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13311, accessed 23 November 2024.]
