Because he came from an affluent family of the tzarist regime, he was persecuted by the Soviet administration and intentionally ignored as a poet, and his name and works were deleted from literary histories.
Zakir Ramiev was born on November 23, 1859, in the village of Zirgan, Meleuz in the Ural Mountains, today situated within the autonomous republic of Bashkortostan of the Russian Federation.
His father, initially a merchant, amassed a great fortune after he got into gold-mining, and became one of the wealthiest persons in czarist Russia.
His keen interest in literature led him to translate short stories from Turkish to Tatar and to write poetry.
His poetry, lyrical and philosophical, reveals a profound intellectuality and a high level of general culture.
As the simplistic literary taste of Soviet ideology is being gradually discarded, believe experts, his poems are apt to serve as examples guiding all poets and authors in their creative endeavor in the post-Soviet period, whether they be Tatars or Turks in general.
Derdmend was commemorated in December 2009 on the 150th anniversary of his birth by a one-day conference at the National Museum and a gala night at the opera in Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan.