Chavain, Sergei

Born Oct. 6, 1888, in the village of Malye Karamasy, in what is now Morki Raion, Mari ASSR; died 1942. Soviet Mari writer.

The son of a poor peasant, Chavain became one of the founders of Mari literature. His work first appeared in 1908. In addition to poems, short stories, and novellas, he wrote the play Apiary (1928), the historical drama Akpatyr (1935), which deals with Mari participation in the Peasant War of 1773–75 (led by E. I. Pugachev), and the novel Elnet (part 1, 1936; part 2, published 1963), which concerns the ideological growth of the Mari intelligentsia and peasantry between 1908 and 1917. Chavain translated many of the Russian classics, including works by A. S. Pushkin, N. A. Nekrasov, N. V. Gogol, and M. Gorky. Many of Chavain’s works have been translated into other Soviet languages.