Ivan Dmitrievich Voronin

Ivan Dmitrievich Voronin – a literary scholar, writer and local historian, educator, editor, and public figure. He is the founder of modern regional studies in Mordovia. He was born into a peasant family in Saransk. From 1929 to 1937, after serving in the Red Army (RKKA), he was engaged in economic and Komsomol activities in Orenburg, Kuibyshev and Mordovia. In 1938 he graduated externally with honors from the M.G.P.I. named after A. I. Polezhaev in Saransk and worked there as a lecturer in literature.

  

During the Great Patriotic War he worked as an instructor for personnel training in the political department of the Railway Troops of the USSR. After the war, until 1951, he served as head of the history sector at the Mordovian Scientific Research Institute of Language, Literature, History and Economics (МНИИЯЛИЭ). At the same time he taught at the Mordovian State Pedagogical Institute and the Mordovian Party School, and was also the editor of the almanac "Literary Mordovia." From 1951 to 1959 he headed the Union of Writers of Mordovia, and from 1957 returned to teaching at the Mordovian State Pedagogical Institute and later at Mordovian State University. From 1961 to 1970 he chaired the Department of Russian and Foreign Literature. He passed away on May 29, 1983 in Saransk. He left an extensive literary legacy: 14 books and more than 300 articles. He researched the works of Alexander Polezhayev, Nikolai Ogaryov, Ivan Makarov and Dmitry Struysky. He also studied the influence of Mordovian culture on the works of Russian writers such as Alexander Pushkin, Lev Tolstoy, Alexey Novikov-Priboy and others.