Yuli Daniel
Soviet writer and poet (1925-1988)
Yuli Markovich Daniel (Russian: Ю́лий Ма́ркович Даниэ́ль, IPA: [ˈjʉlʲɪj ˈmarkəvʲɪtɕ dənʲɪˈelʲ] ; 15 November 1925 – 30 December 1988) was a Russian writer and Soviet dissident known as a defendant in the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial in 1966.
Daniel wrote and translated works of stories and poetry critical of Soviet society under the pseudonyms Nikolay Arzhak (Russian: Никола́й Аржа́к, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɐrˈʐak] ) and Yu. Petrov (Russian: Ю. Петро́в, IPA: [ˈju pʲɪˈtrof] ) published in the West to avoid censorship in the Soviet Union. Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky were convicted of anti-Soviet agitation in a show trial, becoming the first Soviet writers convicted solely for their works and for fiction, serving five years at a labour camp.
Early life and writing
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 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, Daniel was critically wounded in his legs and was demobilized from the Red Army. In 1950, Daniel graduated from the Moscow Pedagogical Institute (now Moscow State Regional University), and went to work as a schoolteacher in Kaluga and Moscow.
Daniel also 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 (CPSU) during a time of extreme censorship in the Soviet Union. Daniel and Sinyavsky smuggled their works out of the Soviet Union as samizdat to France to be published under pseudonyms. Daniel married Larisa Bogoraz, who later also became a celebrated Soviet dissident.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Yuli Daniel” as soviet writer and poet (1925-1988). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q435770. VIAF identifies the subject as 9890201. The Library of Congress control number is n80073840. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1925, 1988, 1966 and 1942.
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This entry incorporates text from “Yuli Daniel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.