Sandzhi Kaliaev

Born Jan. 2, 1905, in the village of Tsagan-Nur, in present-day Priozernyi Raion. Soviet Kalmyk writer; People’s Poet of Kalmykiia (1965). Member of the CPSU since 1928.

Kaliaev is one of the founders of Soviet Kalmyk literature. His first work was published in 1924. He is the author of several collections of poetry, a cycle of poems about V. I. Lenin entitled Only by the Precepts of IVich (separate edition, 1969), and the narrative poems Brigadier (1935) and Tamara (1963), the last about a young partisan named Tamara Khakhlynova. Kaliaev is also an expert on Kalmyk folklore. He is a literary critic and a translator of the plays of Moliere.