Zabolotsky's father was an agronomist, of peasant stock; his mother was an assistant schoolteacher, the descendant of priests. Nikolai was born not far from Kazan, but spent much of his childhood in a village, and then a small town, in the remote province of Vyatka. After briefly studying medicine and philology in Moscow, he moved to Petrograd in the early 1920s to study at the pedagogical institute. In 1928, he and two younger writers, Daniil Kharms and Aleksandr Vvedensky, founded the OBERIU or “Ob'edinenie real'nogo iskusstva” [“Association of Real Art”], the last avant-garde grouping in the Soviet Union. This acronym was provocative. If "real'nyi" is understood to mean "real", it implies that the work of other artists might

not

be real art. And if "real'nyi" is understood as…

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Citation: Chandler, Robert. "Nikolai Zabolotskii". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 February 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13311, accessed 19 March 2024.]

13311 Nikolai Zabolotskii 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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