Kuzma Pavlovich Chainikov

(Kuzebai Gerd). Born Jan. 2 (14), 1898, in the village of Bol’shaia Dok’ia, in what is now Vavozh Raion, Udmurt ASSR; died Nov. 2, 1941. Soviet Udmurt poet and folklorist.

Chainikov studied at the V. Ia. Briusov Higher Literary Institute from 1922 to 1925. His works were first published in 1914. In his poetry collections The Gusli Player (1922), The Flowering Land (1927), and Steps (1931), he faithfully depicted the plight of the Udmurt people under tsarism. His vivid verses about the revolution, the Civil War, and the new life of the Udmurts were set to music as folk songs. Chainikov was the author of the first Udmurt narrative poem about V. I. Lenin (1925); his other narrative poems include War (1916), The Plant (1921), and Ten Years (1931).

Chainikov also wrote elementary-school textbooks and readers. A student of Udmurt folklore, he published three anthologies of folk songs and a number of articles on the folklore and ethnography of the Udmurts.