During his writing career, he also used the pen names Makar Svirepy, Nikolai Makarov, Sergey Kravtsov, NI chief engineer of the mausoleums, Kamensky and Peter Shortsighted.

In 1925 Oleynikov received an appointment from the Central Committee of the USSR to the Pravda newspaper in Leningrad, where he also worked as an editor on the magazine New Robinson, created by Samuel Marshak.

[1] From 1926 to 1937, Oleynikov was active in official duties of staging children's theater with Shostakovich and Schwartz, including Wake Lena (1934), Helen and Grapes (1935) and At Rest (1936).

During his years in Leningrad, Oleynikov became associated with the avant-garde OBERIU writing group who published in the children's magazines, including the writers Korney Chukovsky, Boris Zhitkov, Mikhail Prishvin, Eugene Schwartz, Vitaly Bianki, Daniil Kharms, Alexander Vvedensky and Nikolai Zabolotsky.

He began to privately write ironic verse and parodies which reflected mockery and criticism of the Soviet ideals, counter to his official role as a manufacturer of Party propaganda for children.

In 1997 Ukrainian composer and director Alexey Kolomiytsev wrote a rock opera titled Vivisection based on Oleynikov's poems about animals.