Yulian Semyonov

After the sudden stroke in 1990, Semyonov became bedridden and could not return to work ever again. Y.S. Semyonov died on 15 September 1993 in Moscow. He was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery. The writer's disease and death are still the point for expressing the versions about him being eliminated.

—From interview with Shot Muladjanov, "Moskovskaya Pravda", 22 November 1989

The conversations with such people, as well as holding the investigation regarding the searches for the Amber Room and other cultural values moved abroad from Russia during World War II, were published by Semyonov in his documentary story "Face to Face" in 1983.

Semyonov was one of the pioneers of "Investigative journalism" in the Soviet periodicals. Thus, in 1974 in Madrid he managed to interview a Nazi criminal, the favourite of Hitler Otto Skorzeny, who categorically refused to meet any journalist before. Then, being the "Literaturnaya Gazeta" newspaper correspondent in Germany, the writer succeeded in interviewing the reichsminister Albert Speer and one of the SS leaders Karl Wolff.

He was a writer and assistant director, known for Solaris (1972), Noch na 14-y paralleli (1971) and Po tonkomu ldu (1966).

Semyonov also directed the film Night at the 14th Parallel (1971) and acted in such films as Weekdays and Holidays (1961) and Solaris (1971, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky).

During all his life Semyonov wrote screenplays for films, mainly for the ones after his own works. The writer's full filmography numbers more than 20 filmed works (Major Whirlwind (1967), Seventeen Moments of Spring (1973), Petrovka, 38 (1980), Tass Is Authorized to Announce... (1984), Confrontation (1985), ...), which continue to be hits of the Russian cinema.

In the 1960s–1970s Semyonov worked abroad a lot as a reporter of the said editions (in France, Spain, Germany, Cuba, Japan, the USA, Latin America). His journalist activity was full of adventures, often dangerous ones – at one time he was in the taiga with tiger hunters, then at a polar station, and then he was at the Baikal-Amur Mainline construction and diamond pipe opening. He was constantly at the centre of the important politic events of those years – in Afghanistan, Francoist Spain, Chile, Cuba, Paraguay, tracing the Nazi, who sought cover from punishment, and Sicilian mafia leaders; taking part in the combatant operations of the Vietnamese and Laotian partisans.

Since 1955 he started to try his hand in journalism: he was published in key Soviet newspapers and magazines of that time: "Ogoniok", "Pravda", "Literaturnaya Gazeta", "Komsomolskaya Pravda", "Smena" etc.

In 1953 Semyonov graduated from Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies, the Middle-East department. Then he taught the Afghan language (Pashto) in Moscow State University and simultaneously studied there in the faculty of history.

The father of Semyonov was Jewish, the editor of the newspaper "Izvestia", Semyon Alexandrovich Lyandres. In 1932 he was arrested as "an accomplice of the Bukharin counterrevolutionary conspiracy" and severely beaten during the interrogations; he became partially paralyzed as the result. His mother was Russian, Galina Nikolaevna Nozdrina, a history teacher.

Yulian Semyonov was born on October 8, 1931 in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR as Yulian Semyonovich Semyonov.