Olyk Ipai

Olyk Ipai was a Mari poet.
He was born as Ipatiy Stepanovich Stepanov in the village of Toimetsola in the Mari El. He attended a school in the village of [Arino, Mari people|Mari El Republic|Aryn], of which the Mari national poet Sergei Chavain was the headmaster at the time. He studied at a pedagogical college in Yoshkar-Ola, and later studied cinematography in Moscow; however, he chose to pursue poetry instead. He also translated many works of Alexander Pushkin, Nikolay Nekrasov, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Eduard Bagritsky from Russian to Mari. He was involved in the Mari Union of Soviet Writers and was commissioned to write a letter "from the Mari people to Comrade Stalin" with Sergei Chavain and Osyp Shabdar in 1936. Like many of the Mari intelligentsia at the time, he was executed during the Great Purge.