Anton Petrovich Pyrerka
Quick Facts
Biography
Anton Petrovich Pyrerka (Nenets name - Syarati) (December 7, 1905 - September 22, 1941) is the first Nenets linguist, translator, folklorist, and writer. Participated in the founding of the Nenets National District. Natalia Mitrofanovna Tereshchenko's husband.
Biography
Born in the Bolshezemelskaya tundra in the family of a poor reindeer herder Pyotr Pyrerka (Nenets name - Pat). He received the Nenets name Syarati (“will be near the family, clan”), and was baptized as Anton. At the age of six he became an orphan, and his relative Syasko Pyrerka abandoned him together with her three-year-old sister Irina in the village of Yokusha. The children were adopted by the Vaska, a poor Nenets. He taught children to collect alms, and told them folk Nenets riddles, fairy tales and legends. Later, they were sheltered by an old Russian fisherman, nicknamed "Plasterer" from Oksino. He arranged for children to go to parish school in Telviska. There they learned Russian literacy, becoming one of the few literate Nenets people of that time. After several years of work on the Ob river their elder brother Semyon returned to Anton and Irina. He took them with him and they went back to their previous throw Syasko on Agricultural Laborers work.