His family left Russia in 1922 for the newly independent nation of Estonia, settling in the town of Härgla in the parish of Juuru.
[1] During the latter half of the 1940s he was an employee of Eesti Raadio, and later worked as a literary director at various Tallinn theaters, including the Estonian Drama Theatre.
Under the collective pseudonym of Lall Kahas, they authored a drama, The Burning Car ('Põlev alus'), which premiered in Valga in 1946.
Their books were credited with "broadening the horizons of reading for Estonian children", perhaps because they showed pre-Soviet Estonia in a positive light, a rarity in the Stalinist era.
[4] His greatest success came with the fairy-tale Londiste, Real Name Phant ('Londiste, õige nimega Vant', 1972) and its sequel Hot Ice Cream ('Tuline jäätis', 1976).