Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov was born in 1885 in
Malye Derbety,
Astrakhan Governorate,
Russian Empire (in present-day
Kalmykia). He was of
Russian and
Zaporozhian Cossack descent. His younger sister, Vera Khlebnikova, was an artist. He moved to
Kazan, where he attended school. He then attended school in
Saint Petersburg. He eventually quit school to become a full-time writer. In 1909-10, he met the to-be Russian Futurists
Vasily Kamensky,
David Burliuk, and
Vladimir Mayakovsky. In his work, Khlebnikov experimented with the
Russian language, drawing upon its roots to invent huge numbers of
neologisms, and finding significance in the shapes and sounds of individual letters of
Cyrillic. Along with Kruchenykh, he originated
zaum, a language defying translation. He wrote
futurological essays about such things as the possible evolution of mass communication ("The Radio of the Future") and transportation and housing ("Ourselves and Our Buildings"). He described a world in which people live and travel about in mobile glass cubicles that can attach themselves to
skyscraper-like frameworks, and in which all human knowledge can be disseminated to the world by
radio and displayed automatically on giant book-like displays at streetcorners. In 1912, he also published a method to predict historical events; one of the examples given was a "collapse of an empire in 1917". In 1921, he was able to travel to Persia; excited at his arrival, he wrote poems chronicling exciting events and the sights around him. He also made friends with several
dervishes. He was forced to go back to Russia in August of that year. In his final years, Khlebnikov became fascinated with
Slavic mythology and
Pythagorean numerology, drawing up long "Tables of Destiny" decomposing historical intervals and dates into functions of the numbers 2 and 3. Khlebnikov died while a guest in the house of his friend Pyotr Miturich near
Kresttsy, in June 1922. There has been no medical diagnosis of his last illness; he suffered from
gangrene and paralysis (he seems not to have recovered the use of his legs after his 1920 hospitalization in Kharkov), and it has been suggested that he died of blood poisoning or toxemia. A
minor planet 3112 Velimir discovered by
Soviet astronomer
Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh in 1977 is named after him. ==Publishing history==