First professional Koryak writer and USSR People's Deputy
After his 1989 election as a USSR People's Deputy, he refused a Moscow apartment and returned to his native Palana. 'Each of my books is a Confession for me,' he said.
The first professional Koryak writer, widely known by his pen name Koyanto (Коянто, 'Reindeer Man'), he was a foundational figure of Koryak literature. After graduating from the Northern Faculty of the Herzen Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad and the Higher Literary Courses at the Gorky Literary Institute, he devoted his life to rendering the lives, myths, and identity of the Koryak and other northern indigenous peoples in poetry and prose, beginning with his first collection Songs of Alney (1969). His prose work The Upper People Can Wait (1976) stirred controversy with its sharp critique of Soviet bureaucratic policies toward the North. In 1989 he was elected a USSR People's Deputy from the Koryak Autonomous Okrug, championing indigenous rights, and after the Soviet dissolution he continued to serve his homeland as chair of the human rights commission and adviser to the governor.
Career Timeline
- 1956Worked as teacher, methodologist, and cultural center director in Koryak Autonomous Okrug
- 1969Published first poetry collection Songs of Alney; adopted pen name 'Koyanto'
- 1972Member, Union of Writers of the USSR
- 1974Co-founded the Kamchatka Writers' Organization
- 1976Published The Upper People Can Wait, a controversial critique of northern bureaucracy
- 1989–1991USSR People's Deputy (Koryak Autonomous Okrug); member, Commission on Social and Economic Development of Republics and Autonomous Regions
- 1990s–2000sExpert at the Presidential Representative Office, adviser to the governor, chair of the Human Rights Commission of Koryak Autonomous Okrug
- 2002–2012Chaired the Human Rights Commission; taught Northern literature at Palana Pedagogical College