Few can boast the same hardness of character that the poet Nikolai Klyuyev possessed. Being an extremely principled person, Klyuev stubbornly defended his point of view throughout his life. Neither the lack of understanding on the part of society, nor the persecution by those in power, nor the criticism of famous people could shake his unbending nature. However, even regardless of his personal qualities, the poet’s work is really magnificent.
A poet came from an old family of Old Believers. However, neither he nor his parents shared the religious beliefs of their ancestors. Parents of Nikolay Klyuyev were not too educated people. His father traded wine, and his mother earned money by working as a weeping woman and a storyteller. N. Klyuyev was a pacifist, and refused to take up arms. They tried to call him up for military service, but he invariably defiantly refused. He was even arrested several times because of this, but the poet did not change his beliefs. The creativity of Nikolai Klyuyev was popular. Other poets, for example, Valery Bryusov and Alexander Blok, spoke very warmly about his poems. Shortly before the Bolshevik revolution, Klyuyev was honored by the Empress, where he read his poems. But a few years after the revolution, he already sent his poems personally to Lenin. In the 1920s, he even wrote a collection of poems and dedicated it to the leader of the world proletariat, but the party reacted to it more than coolly.
In his youth, Nikolai Klyuyev was a member of several revolutionary-minded groups, because of which he was under the supervision of the police, and served several times in prison. Biography of N. Klyuyev is largely based on his own travel notes. But many researchers doubt their authenticity, since the poet liked to embellish reality. In order to increase popularity, the poet deliberately spread the strangest rumors about himself. Later, in the 20th century, the famous writer Yaroslav Hasek acted in a similar way. The first publication of Nikolai Klyuyev took place when he was twenty years old. Sam Klyuyev claimed that he was personally acquainted with Tolstoy and even with the “elder” Rasputin. However, his statements were not supported by any evidence.
After the revolution, Nikolai Klyuyev became disillusioned with the Bolsheviks, which was the reason for the cooling of his relations with the authorities. In the 1930s, he was arrested and sent into exile in Tomsk, and a few years later he was accused of counter-revolutionary activity and sentenced to death. Za Klyuyev personally intervened Maxim Gorky, not afraid to risk his reputation. Alas, this did not help. Officially, Nikolai Klyuyev was rehabilitated only twenty years after the execution, but even after that his works were not published until 1977. In Tomsk, where the poet was serving a link, one of the streets was named in his honor, and a monument to him was erected in the city of Vytegra. In Soviet times, during the thaw, the poems of Nikolai Klyuyev were put to music and turned into romances by the composer V. Panchenko.
