Career
Laht was also a People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (later Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security)) officer who participated in arrests and deportations in 1940s. Laht also used the palindromic pseudonym Onu Thal. Laht"s humorous satires were popular, notably in the collections Piimahambad in 1954 ("Milk Teeth") and its second version Piimahambad (plombeeritud) in 1956 ("Milk Teeth, Filled").
The subject matter includes "shock troops" (work battalions sent to pioneer new agricultural and industrial collective projects), cultural restriction, time wasting bureaucracy and other phenomena of Soviet life.
Laht has published several books, mostly satirical poetry and humor. He left the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Union of Writers and rejected the status of a Soviet war veteran.
Laht died on September 24, 2008 after a lengthy illness.