More than half a century later, Lonin wrote a book about his wartime experiences, entitled Detstvo, opalyonnoye voĭnoĭ ("a childhood scorched by war").
[citation needed] At the age of sixteen, Lonin moved to Petrozavodsk and studied at a vocational school, and from 1948 on, he worked as a toolsmith and farm machinery mechanic at a garage.
He was no stranger to this task, having begun to collect Russian folk songs in his home village during the Finnish occupation.
Some items collected by Lonin were published in 1969 in the book Obrazcy vepsskoĭ reči ("samples of the Veps language").
In the book's foreword, Lonin is described as "a resident of the Šoutar’v village who is an enthusiastic collector of Veps folklore".
[6] In 1963, Lonin made his first folklore-collecting trip outside of Karelia, to the Veps villages of the Lodeĭnopol’skiĭ raĭon in the Leningrad Oblast’.
[7] In 1964, on a similar trip, the idea occurred to him that he should try to found a Veps ethnographic museum in his home village of Šoutar’v.
Lonin was later part of a group that commented upon the texts produced by Bible translator Nina Zaĭtseva.