14 Facts About Yuli Daniel

Yuli Daniel wrote and translated works of stories and poetry critical of Soviet society under the pseudonyms Nikolay Arzhak and Yu.

Yuli Daniel was born on 15 November 1925 in Moscow, Soviet Union, the son of the Russian Jewish playwright Mark Daniel and Minna Pavlovna Daniel.

In 1942, the 17-year-old Yuli Daniel lied about his age and volunteered to serve on the 2nd Ukrainian Front and the 3rd Belorussian Front during Eastern Front of World War II.

In 1944, Yuli Daniel was critically wounded in his legs and was demobilized from the Red Army.

In 1950, Yuli Daniel graduated from the Moscow Pedagogical Institute, and went to work as a schoolteacher in Kaluga and Moscow.

Yuli Daniel published translations of verse from a variety of languages, and like his friend Andrei Sinyavsky, wrote topical stories and novellas which sometimes satirised or were critical of Soviet society but were, naturally, rejected for publication by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during a time of extreme censorship in the Soviet Union.

Yuli Daniel married Larisa Bogoraz, who later became a celebrated Soviet dissident.

On February 14,1966, Yuli Daniel was sentenced to five years of hard labor for "anti-Soviet activity" while Sinyavsky was sentenced to seven years.

Yuli Daniel spent four years of captivity at the Dubravlag, a Gulag camp in Mordovia, and one year in Vladimir Prison.

Yuli Daniel was released and refused to emigrate, as was customary among Soviet dissidents, and lived in Kaluga before moving to Moscow.

Yuli Daniel was genuinely worried about a resurgence of the Cult of Personality under Nikita Khrushchev, which inspired his story This is Moscow Speaking, while Sinyavsky affirmed that he believed socialism was the way forward but that the methods employed were at times erroneous.

Yuli Daniel died on 30 December 1988, and Sinyavsky and his wife Maria Rozanova immediately flew to his funeral from France, where they had emigrated in 1973 after Sinyavsky's release.

Yuli Daniel was buried in Vagankovo Cemetery, a popular burial place in Moscow for members of the arts community.

Yuli Daniel's son Alexander Daniel is a mathematician and his grandson Michael Daniel is a linguist.