Nikolay Klyuyev

Nikolay Klyuyev was born in Onega, Russia in 1885. His first poems were published in 1912 and he emerged as the first of the so-called "peasant poets".

Klyuyev welcomed the October Revolution as he believed it would lead to the redistribution of land to the peasants. This hope of a better future was expressed in his long poem, Lenin (1924). He later became critical of the Bolsheviks and his disillusionment was reflected in the poems, The Village (1927) and Lament for Yesenin (1927).

Nadezhda Khazina knew him during this period: "Klyuyev, an outlandish but most gentle creature, a gypsy with bright dark-blue eyes, was our neighbour for many years in Herzen House and then in Furmanov Street, and we were always very friendly with him. Klyuyev was dismissed from his work as an editor very early... Mandelstam very much admired Klyuyev's cycle of poems on the theme of being an outcast, and he often read passages from them."

Klyuyev was accused of supporting the kulaks and was arrested by the NKVD. It is believed the Nikolay Klyuyev died in a labour camp in 1937.

Primary Sources

(1) Nadezhda Khazina and Osip Mandelstam knew Nikolay Klyuyev well in the 1930s. Khazina wrote about Klyuyev in her book, Hope Against Hope (1971)

Klyuyev, an outlandish but most gentle creature, a gypsy with bright dark-blue eyes, was our neighbour for many years in Herzen House and then in Furmanov Street, and we were always very friendly with him. Klyuyev was dismissed from his work as an editor very early. He was too much of a peasant to make a good official and worry about the purity of the "superstructure".

Mandelstam very much admired Klyuyev's cycle of poems on the theme of being an outcast, and he often read passages from them, imitating Klyuyev's apartment was searched - he did not have time to hide them - and they have disappeared, like everything else that was taken to the Lubianka. Klyuyev himself disappeared with them.