Yulian Semyonovich Semyonov (, ), pen-name of Yulian Semyonovich Lyandres () (October 8, 1931 – September 15, 1993), was a Soviet and Russian writer of spy fiction and detective fiction, also scriptwriter and poet. He is well known for creating the fictional spy Stierlitz. Early life 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. 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. Career After gaining a degree of an interpreter in the University, Semyonov had diplomatic business in East Asia countries, continuing at the same time his scientific studies in Moscow State University (specializing in Persian history and politics). 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 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. 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. 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