Yuri Andreyevich Smirnov (Russian: Юрий Андреевич Смирнов, usually initialized as Ю.А.
Smirnov was born in Vladikavkaz in March 1923, and, after finishing college, he joined the army.
After the Second World War he left the army and was admitted to the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences in linguistics, where he was primarily interested in the Punjabi language, on which he later wrote his doctoral thesis.
This book has been criticised as an "uneasy amalgamation" of previous work by Grierson and Bahri, and the language described in it has been characterised as "an unreal composite of Multani and Awankari.
Smirnov is considered to be a specialist in Saraiki, Dogri, Punjabi, and Rajasthani languages.