Daniel wrote and translated works of stories and poetry critical of Soviet society under the pseudonyms Nikolay Arzhak (Russian: Никола́й Аржа́к, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɐrˈʐak] ⓘ) and Yu.

Petrov (Russian: Ю. Петро́в, IPA: [ˈju pʲɪˈtrof] ⓘ) published in the West to avoid censorship in the Soviet Union.

Daniel's work Moscow Speaking, published in 1959 under the pseudonym Nikolai Arzhak, caught the attention of the KGB, the main security agency and secret police of the Soviet Union.

The KGB began investigating Daniel and Sinyavsky's dissident works being published in the West, and soon linked their pseudonyms to their real identities.

It began in February 1966 with the trial of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, two Russian writers who ridiculed the Communist regime in satires smuggled abroad and published under pen names.

Daniel was genuinely worried about a resurgence of the Cult of Personality under Nikita Khrushchev, which inspired his story This is Moscow Speaking, while Sinyavsky affirmed that he believed socialism was the way forward but that the methods employed were at times erroneous.