Kuzebai Gerd (a real name Kuzma Pavlovich Chaynikov) was born on the 14th of January in 1896 in the village Bolshaya Dokya of Malmyzhski uyezd of Vyatskaya province. He was shot on the 1st of November in 1937 in Sandarmokh, Karelia. He was an Udmurt poet, a prose writer, a playwright, a public figure. In 1922-1925 he studied at the Higher literature V. Y. Brusov institution in Moscow.
The importance of Gerd’s scientific effort was great. He was an initiator of creation the first society of studying Udmurt culture, when he was a student. Before it Gerd did a lot for education of his native people. In November, 1918 he was an organizer of Votic cultural-educative society that set up many events, including different concerts and performances in the Udmurt language. K. Gerd considered the native language as a main tool for education for each people. That was why education of Udmurt people should be based on the native language and national culture. When Gerd studied at V. Y. Brusov institution he worked at studying of Udmurt folklore and way of life. For attraction more people to that affair he proposed to create a company “Bolyak”. At that time there was an increase of political terror and conflict with nationalism. Leaders of the company, including Gerd, were charged with national limitedness and aspiration to separate from USSR. A local history movement subsided. In 1928 a company “Bolyak” was liquidated. In 1932-1933 agencies of the main political administration of Nizhegorodsli krai fabricated a famous case “ULFIN”. The name of the case descends from the words “Union of liberation Finnish nationalities”. On the 13th of May 1932 Kuzebay Gerd was arrested and accused for leadership of counterrevolutionary bourgeois-nationalistic organization for case “ULFUN”. On the 9th of July 1933 Gerd was condemned to shooting, but according to Maxim Gorky’s intercession shooting was replaced to 10 years of deportation, but on the 1st of November the writer was shooting. He was rehabilitated in 1958.
While he was studying at the literature institution Gerd indeed set about folkloristic and published some collections of folklore. The scientific work poet continued at graduate course under the Moscow research institune of national and ethnic cultures of East people. The second part of 20s was the most successful for him: he joined the literature group “Kuznica”, he became a chairman of its national section; in those years were published his best collections of verses – “Flowering earth”, “Stages”.
In poetic work Gerd used the whole genre wealth of lyric poetry – from small lyric verse to novel and ballad. He brought to the Udmurt poetry new poetic forms: sonnet, triolet, different forms of free verses.