The group OBERIU (which stands for Ob"edinenie Real"nogo Iskusstva [Union for True Art]), the last artistic group of the Russian avant-garde, was created in 1927. It made several poetical presentations between 1927 and 1930. This group united the poets I. Bakhterev, D. Kharms, K. Vaginov, A. Vvedenskii, N. Zabolotskii, and N. Oleinikov. In 1930 the group was suppressed and OBERIU as a movement was edited out of Russian literary history for almost 60 years. In this book, Kobrinskii puts the movement in the historical literary and poetical context of their time, analyzes their esthetic and poetic principles, and shows their close connections with the Russian avant-garde. Bibliography. Name index.