(real name Dmitrii Fedorovich Bogoslavskii). Born Sept. 5 (18), 1901, in the village of Mari-Pizhai, in what is now Sernur Raion, Mari ASSR; died Jan. 22, 1950, in Ioshkar-Ola. Soviet Mari writer. Participant in the Great Patriotic War (1941–45).

Orai was first published in 1929. He is the author of short stories, of the novellas The Apostate (1930), Steep Ascent (1935), and Oliana (1935), and the novella The Unfading Star (1950), based on the life of Hero of the Soviet Union S. R. Suvorov. Orai’s principal work is the novel Through the Mists (published 1951), in which he depicts the spiritual rebirth of the Mari people in the early years of Soviet power.