Yulian Semyonov

Origins and early life

Yulian Semyonov was born in Moscow on 8 October 1931 as Yulian Semyonovich Lyandres, the son of a Jewish father, Semyon Alexandrovich Lyandres, deputy editor of Izvestia, and the site records him through that named parent; no conversion is recorded.

Work and career

His father was arrested in 1952 during the late Stalinist repression, and when the state security asked the young man to denounce him publicly he refused, which cost him his place at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies; the fact is documented and it defines him. He trained as an Afghan specialist, worked as a journalist in Afghanistan, Latin America, Spain and Japan, and wrote more than fifty books. His novels created Maxim Isaev, better known by his cover name Stirlitz, a Soviet agent inside the German Reich Security Main Office; the 1973 television series Seventeen Moments of Spring, adapted from the novel, was watched by nearly the whole Soviet population and made Stirlitz a permanent figure of Russian popular culture and of Russian jokes.

He also wrote about the Nazi looting of cultural property and searched for the Amber Room, interviewed Otto Skorzeny and Albert Speer, and founded in 1986 the first independent Soviet publication of the perestroika period, Sovershenno Sekretno. A 1987 article in People magazine reported the suspicion of some that his exclusive access implied work for the KGB, and this fiche records that plainly alongside the Stalinist persecution of his father. He died in Moscow on 15 September 1993.