Nikolai talks about his life, childhood, work and how he established two children’s publications in Kalmykia. I am the oldest boy in my family. My father's name is Sanjin Jambul. My grandfather loved to play cards, and one day he won a Kazakh girl in a card game in Astrakhan whom he brought home. My father was born from her. That is why he has a Kazakh name. My father died, but my mother is alive, and I often go to see her. Like other Kalmyks, we returned to Kalmykia from Siberia in 1957. Before exile, my parents lived in the village of Shabiner. When they returned from exile, the village was no longer there. Therefore, we moved to the village of Arshan-Zelmen. I spent my whole life, until I moved to Elista, in that village. At 8, I learned how to smoke. This is kind of a funny story. When I was born, my mother did not have milk. Whatever she fed me with, nothing was suitable for me. At that time, milk appeared in my grandmother’s breasts and she, seeing my sufferings, decided to breastfeed me instead. I could not stop my breastfeeding habit for a long time, despite my family’s best efforts. When I was at school I was still keen on being breastfed. My father was a good stove master. One day he was building a stove for a man in Volgograd whose wife happened to be a doctor. During work, my father complained to the man that he could not make me stop breastfeeding. His wife the doctor advised my father that I be given a cigarette, which my father did. I quit my feeding habit soon after, but still cannot quit smoking. I remember how I used to run home from school and waited for my father to come home for lunch, in order to smoke with him. I followed him all the time, wherever he worked, I worked, not as much to help him as to smoke with him. When I finished school, I began to help my family. After the army, I entered the Kalmyk Language Department of Kalmyk State University. While studying I worked on the side to earn money. I glazed windows, repaired locks, hammered nails, I did everything. I used to make good money, not to mention the fact that I had a very generous stipend from the university. Later I worked in the Komsomol. In 1986, for the first time, the question of the Kalmyk language was raised at government level. Scholars and government officials started to talk about how to revive Kalmyk. Once at a conference I stood up and said that the revival of Kalmyk should start with the publication of children’s literature. In about three months’ time, they called me to their office and said that they had made a decision to publish a magazine in Kalmyk and that they wished to appoint me chief editor of a magazine. I was reminded that I was a poet and could write poetry for children. I said to them: ‘If we want to publish a magazine, we need to make it in color because black-and-white print won’t be very attractive to children’. At that time the printing house in Kalmykia did not do color printing. In the first years we printed our magazine in the neighboring region. I think that our magazine Bayr has helped many children identify themselves as Kalmyk. In 1993, I became Minister of Culture, and in 2003 I was appointed Minister of Press. In 2004, I began publishing a children’s newspaper called Bayrta. That is how I became the founder of two children’s publications. People who started this work with me, still work with me. I have been working in the cultural sphere for more than 25 years.