Sergei Chavain

His first play was The Wild Duck in 1912, a satire of Tsarist bureaucrats. After the October Revolution, Chavain wrote several plays for the first Mari mobile theatre, such as The Autonomy (1920) and The Sun Rises, the Storm-clouds Disappear (1921), inspired by the Revolution and Russian Civil War. Later he wrote plays for a Mari theatre studio, including Jamblat's Bridge (1927), the comedy The Hundred Roubles Bride-money (1927), the musical drama The Bee-Garden (1928), Kugujar (1929) (a play devoted to the 1905 Revolution), The Live Water (about the formation of kolkhozes), The Timber Mill (1930) (about collectivization), Marii Company (1934) (on the battle for Kazan in 1918)), and Akpatyr (1935) (about Mari participation in Pugachev's Rebellion). The Light of the Coin (1936) was a comedy based on Mari popular beliefs. He translated into Mari several Russian classical plays. A victim of the Great Purge during the "struggle with bourgeois nationalism", he was executed in Yoshkar-Ola on 11 November 1937 and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956. The State prize of Mari El is named after Chavain.

• Name — Sergei Chavain • Native Name — Сергей Чавайн • Birth Name — Sergei Grigorievich Grigoriev • Born — 6 October 1888 • Birthplace — Maliy Karamas, Russian Empire • Died — 11 November 1937 • Place of death — Yoshkar-Ola, Mari ASSR, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union • Death Cause — executed • Education — Kazan Teachers' Seminary • Occupation — * poet • dramaturge

Sergei Chavain is recorded as writer and poet.