Nikolai Makarovich Oleinikov (1898–1937) is one of the most original and prominent representatives of the Russian poetic avant-garde of the 1920s-1930s: a subtle lyricist and parodist, a satirist poet, a philosopher, a unique stylist, with whose name an entire artistic movement is associated so-called “absurdism” (D. Kharms, A. Vvedensky, N. Zabolotsky, etc.). Killed during the Stalinist era, he was excluded from the history of literature for decades. His works were not published; most of them remained in manuscripts and lists preserved by the poet’s family and friends.