David Kugultinov (b. 1922), a -well-known Kalmyk poet, who was awarded the Russian Federation Literary Prize for 1967. His father was a schoolteacher. David Kugultinov had his first book "Poems of Youth" published in 1940, the year he completed his 10-year secondary education. That same year he was admitted to membership of the Union of Soviet. Writers. He began the war as a private and then worked as a correspondent on his division’s newspaper. After the war he graduated from the Literary Institute in Moscow. Since then David Kugultinov has published ten books in Kalmyk and Russian. His philosophical poetry treats the essence of eternal human values and concepts. Kugultinov’s attitude to life and art is a firmly positive one: he is a genuinely modern poet, a man of courage and integrity. The main theme of his collections: "The Vision of’the Heart”, "The Sun’s Equal”, "I Am Your Contemporary"’, "To Earn a Friend’s Lore" and others, is Man and his attitude to the world around him, to people and to the problems of our times.