Osip Maksimovich Brik (Russian: Осип Максимович Брик) (16 January 1888 – 22 February 1945), was a Russian avant garde writer and literary critic, who was one of the most important members of the Russian formalist school, though he also identified himself as one of the Futurists. He met his future wife, Lilya Kagan, when he was 17 and she 14; they were married on 26 March 1912. (Her sister Elsa was Louis Aragon's wife and a notable French writer.) Later, on 8 June 1920, he joined the Cheka. Jakobson wrote of this period: