Yuri Ilyich Druzhnikov (in Russian: ???? ????? ?????????) was born Yuri Izrailevich Alperovich on the 17 April 1933 in Moscow, USSR.
He died on the 14 May 2008 in Davis, California.In his lifetime, he worked as an actor, a photographer, an editor, a journalist and travel correspondent, as an author and as a professor of Russian.
He was also the vice-president of the American branch of the International PEN club.