OBERIU

OBERIU, an acronym for the Union of Real Art, was a short-lived Soviet avant-garde literary and performance collective founded in Leningrad in 1927 by the writers Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky, joined by poets including Nikolai Zabolotsky and Konstantin Vaginov, who staged provocative public performances mixing poetry readings with circus stunts and absurdist theatre. Working in deliberate opposition to Socialist Realism's demand for clear ideological content and accessible form, OBERIU's writing embraced illogic, non sequitur, dark comic absurdity and a fractured sense of meaning that anticipated the Theatre of the Absurd by several decades, and Kharms in particular became known for brief, disturbingly comic prose sketches of everyday violence and irrationality. Denounced by Soviet authorities as literary hooliganism, the group was suppressed after 1931 and several of its members, including Kharms and Vvedensky, died during Stalin's purges and the Siege of Leningrad; largely unpublished in their lifetimes, OBERIU's writers were rediscovered only decades later, and the movement is now regarded as the last significant Soviet avant-garde current before the Stalinist clampdown on experimental art.