Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev, born on October 22, 1884, in the Koshtug volost of the Olonets province, was a Russian poet representing the new peasant direction in 20th-century poetry. His literary talent, often considered superior to Yesenin's, grew from the folk peasant creativity and the centuries-old religiosity of the Russian people. Klyuev's life, filled with the primal strength of peasantry and striving for poetic expression, initially combined instinctive and later politically conscious rejection of urban civilization and Bolshevik technocracy. The form of his poems evolved from folk motifs through the influence of symbolism to more independent structures. His verses, reminiscent of folk laments, intermingle with works resonant with biblical psalms and often feature an ornamental style. The richness of imagery in his work reflects a deep, sometimes prophetic view of the world, as noted by Wolfgang Kazak.

Klyuev shared memories of being a novice in monasteries on the Solovetsky Islands, where he was called 'King David... of white doves, of Christ,' but he escaped when they intended to castrate him. In the Caucasus, he met the handsome Ali, who, according to Klyuev, loved him as Kadr-night teaches, more than a thousand months. This Eastern teaching about marriage with an angel in Russian white Christianity is called the finding of Adam. Later, Ali committed suicide due to hopeless love for Klyuev. The poet also recounted conversations with Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana, meetings with Rasputin, three imprisonments, how he became a famous poet, and how for two consecutive winters he was ground down by the millstones of fashion, curiosity, and satiated boredom at literary gatherings and evenings in Moscow's nobility.

On June 5, 1937, Klyuev was arrested again in Tomsk, and on October 13 of the same year, the NKVD troika of the Novosibirsk region sentenced him to death. He was likely executed and buried in a mass grave in one of the wastelands in a ravine known as the Terrible Ditch, between Kashtachnaya Mountain and the transit prison, now SIZO-1 at 48 Pushkin Street.