"Translated by David Burg and Arthur Boyars" -- title page

"Text in Russian and English" -- t.p. verso

Yuli Daniel (November 15, 1925 — December 30, 1988) 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, "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 critically wounded in his legs and demobilized due to his pursuant disability.

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.

He married Larisa Bogoraz who later also became a famous dissident. In 1965, Daniel and 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". Both writers entered a plea of not guilty, unprecedented in the USSR.

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.
--Wikipedia