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).
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.
(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.
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