[1][2] Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov was born in 1885 in Malye Derbety, Astrakhan Governorate, Russian Empire (in present-day Kalmykia).

[2] Soon Khlebnikov would belong to Hylaea, the most significant Russian Futurist group (along with Mayakovsky, Aleksei Kruchenykh, David Burliuk and Benedikt Livshits).

[4] In his work, Khlebnikov experimented with the Russian language, drawing upon its roots to invent huge numbers of neologisms, and finding significance in the shapes and sounds of individual letters of Cyrillic.

He wrote futurological essays about such things as the possible evolution of mass communication ("The Radio of the Future") and transportation and housing ("Ourselves and Our Buildings").

[2] Although Khlebnikov had supported the 1917 Russian Revolution and shared many of its utopian visions, his works were criticized by the Soviets for not conforming to the structures of socialist realism.

In his final years, Khlebnikov became fascinated with Slavic mythology and Pythagorean numerology, drawing up long "Tables of Destiny" decomposing historical intervals and dates into functions of the numbers 2 and 3.

There has been no medical diagnosis of his last illness; he suffered from gangrene and paralysis (he seems not to have recovered the use of his legs after his 1920 hospitalization in Kharkov), and it has been suggested that he died of blood poisoning or toxemia.