(Redirected from Yuri Daniel)
The bookcover of ''The Letters from Prison''
'Yuli Markovich Daniel' (;
November 15,
1925 —
December 30,
1988) was a Soviet
dissident writer, poet, translator,
political prisoner and
gulag survivor.
He frequently wrote under the
pseudonyms Nikolay Arzhak (Николай Аржак) and Yu. Petrov (Ю.Петров).
==Early life and
World War II==
Yuli Daniel was born in
Moscow into the family of
Yiddish playwright
M. Daniel (Mark Meyerovich, ), who took the pseudonym Daniel. The famous
march song of the Soviet
young pioneers, "Орленок" (''Young Eagle''), was originally written for one of his plays. Daniel's uncle, an ardent revolutionary (
alias Liberten), was a member of
Comintern who perished in the
Great Purge.
In
1942, during
Great Patriotic War, Daniel lied about his age and volunteered to serve at the front. He fought in the 2nd Ukrainian and the 3rd Belorussian fronts, in 1944 was heavily wounded in his legs and demobilized due to disability.
Writing and arrest
In 1950, he graduated from Moscow Pedagogical Institute and worked as a school teacher in
Kaluga and
Moscow regions. He published his poetry translations from a variety of languages. Daniel and his friend
Andrei Sinyavsky also wrote
satirical novels and smuggled them to
France to be published under pseudonyms. (See
Tamizdat)
He married
Larisa Bogoraz who later also became a famous dissident. In
1965, Daniel along with Sinyavsky were arrested and tried in the infamous
Sinyavsky-Daniel trial. On
February 14,
1966, Daniel was sentenced to five years of
hard labor for "
anti-Soviet activity". Unprecedented in the USSR, both writers plead not guilty.
Late years and influence
According to Fred Coleman, "Historians now have no difficulty pinpointing the birth of the modern Soviet dissident movement. It began in February 1966 with the trial of
Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, two Russian writers who ridiculed the Communist regime in satires smuggled abroad and published under pen names... Little did they realize at the time that they were starting a movement that would help end Communist rule."
[1]
After four years of captivity in
Mordovia labor camps and one year in
Vladimir prison, Daniel refused to emigrate (as was customary among Soviet dissidents) and lived in Kaluga.
Before his death,
Bulat Okudzhava acknowledged that some translations published under Okudzhava's name were
ghostwritten by Daniel who was on the list of authors banned to be published in the USSR.
Notes
1. The Decline and Fall of Soviet Empire : Forty Years That Shook The World, From Stalin to Yeltsin, , Fred, Coleman, St. Martin's Griffin, August 15, 1997, ISBN 0-312-16816-0 p. 95
Bibliography
★ "Бегство" (The Escape), 1956
★ "Говорит Москва" (Report from Moscow), 1959
[1]
★ "Человек из МИНАПа" (A Man from MINAP), 1960
[2]
★ "Искупление" (The Redemption), 1964
★ "Руки" (The Hands)
★ "Письмо другу" (A Letter to a Friend), 1969
★ "Ответ И.Р.Шафаревичу" (The Response to
Igor Shafarevich), 1975
★ "Книга сновидений" (A Book of Dreams)
★ "Я все сбиваюсь на литературу..." Письма из заключения. Стихи (The Letters from Prison), 1972 (ISBN 0-87955-501-7)
External links
★
A Bit of Fear (Time magazine, 1966)
★
A Day in the Life of Yuli Daniel (Time magazine, 1969)
★
Larisa Bogoraz has died Kharkiv Group for Human Rights Protection
★
Materials of Daniel's case, photos, poetry HRO-Russia
★
Memoirs by Larisa Bogoraz
★
Poetry
★
Memoirs about Yuli Daniel by Natalia Rapoport
★
Bio
★
Radio Freedom program dedicated to Yuli Daniel
★
Anthology of Samizdat