Background
Kugul’tinov, David was born on March 13, 1922 in the village of GakhanAvnagara in the Kalmuck Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
Kugul’tinov, David was born on March 13, 1922 in the village of GakhanAvnagara in the Kalmuck Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
Graduated from Gorkii Literary Institute, 1960.
First poems published in 1936. On active service during World War II. After the war, together with the whole Kalmuck nation, sent to the Gulag (like the Crimean Tatars, the Chechen and Ingushi, the Kalmucks were deported en masse allegedly for high treason). Released after Stalin’s death.
Became a conformist poet, mentioning neither the fate of his own people nor his own Gulag experience during the Stalin years. Broke his silence on the subject in Ogonek in 1988.