[1][2] Although he was active in science fiction before perestroika, the recognition came when he wrote a Slavic fantasy novel, The Three from the Forest (Russian: Трое из Леса).

The family could barely make both ends meet: as Nikitin recalled later they had to eat soup made from potato peelings disposed of by their neighbors in the post-war time.

At the age of 15, doctors told Nikitin that he would not live for more than six months, but in the next year, he overcame illnesses and improved his health greatly through yoga, hard physical exercise, and a strict diet.

[8] Two years later, he became a lumberman and rafter in the construction sites of the Russian Far North, then a geologist exploring the Ussuri krai with its swampy coniferous forests, great rivers, and many places where no human had ever been before.

Bright impressions of those journeys inspired his Saveliy series of short science-fiction stories featuring a hunter from taiga who meets aliens and teaches the art of hunting to them.

Furthermore, I knew that whatever I did was temporary, that my true destiny was great and my current job nothing but an adventure I'd like to recall someday.”[5] During 1964–65, Nikitin completed his secondary education as an external student in an evening school and seriously considered his full-time career choice.

By 1967, he achieved the master-of-sports rank in canoeing, first grades in boxing, sambo, track and field athletics, learned to play the violin, and sold several cartoons to local magazines.

Nikitin wrote it on a bet with his fellow writers, who said that writing industrial novels was far more difficult than science fiction and that he was hardly capable of it.

The management of both those organizations had rather slighting attitudes towards science fiction in general, but they highly appreciated Fire Worshippers and the fact that Nikitin was a workman without higher education: it was congruent with the aims of communist propaganda.

[5] Nikitin used his newly gained opportunities and influence to found the Speculative Fiction Fan Club (SFFC) (Russian: Клуб Любителей Фантастики, КЛФ) in Kharkiv.

In 1979, Nikitin wrote his third book, The Golden Rapier: a historical novel about Alexander Zasyadko (1774-1837), a Russian general of Ukrainian origin and inventor of rocket weapons.

[9] For his scandalous novel, Nikitin was dismissed from his office in the Union of Writers, banned from publishing in Ukraine, and his name was forbidden from being mentioned in the local media.

During perestroika, when some degree of free enterprise was allowed to Soviet citizens, Nikitin, in association with other writers, founded Fatherland (Russian: Отечество), one of the first cooperative publishing houses in the country.

[15] On March 30, 2014, during the Eksmo Book Festival in Moscow, Nikitin officially confessed his writing of The Adventures of Sir Richard Longarms, an epic fantasy novel series ongoing since 2001 with over 7,000,000 copies sold in Russia and other countries, under the pen name of Gaius Julius Orlovsky.

[16] Before the reveal, the similarity of style, turns of speech, and ideas promoted in their novels, as well as the presence of Gaius Julius as the pseudonym of the hero of one of Nikitin's stories, all led to the logical conclusion about the identity Orlovsky, which was supported by some literary sites.

[17] Today Nikitin is the author of more than 100 books (including those published under the pen name of Gaius Julius Orlovsky) and one of the most commercially successful Russian writers, comparable to Vasili Golovachov and Sergei Lukyanenko.

The Three from the Forest series is based on the life of the Neuri, which are, according to Nikitin, distant ancestors of the Eastern Slavs, as well as their neighbors, the Scythians and Cimmerians.

They go through various adventures in varied settings: the half-mythological lands of Hyperborea and Scythia, then Kievan Rus’, medieval Europe, and the Middle East.

[20] In 1999, Nikitin wrote the novel Pharamond, dedicated to the life and adventures of the semi-legendary progenitor of the Frankish kings from the Merovingian dynasty in the era of the Migration Period.

[22] According to Andrey Beskov, Nikitin prefers when the sources provide a minimum of information without limiting the author's imagination, so, for example, he builds myths about Slavic deities in the novel Artania.

[3] The works show that the Russian pagan spiritual heritage, in all respects, surpasses the poor Western and Christian moral values.

"[3] Nikitin wrote about the "Judeo-Masonic conspiracy", which goes back to the beginning of time and aims to establish the power of the chosen Wise Men worldwide.

Nikitin repeats the neopagan mythology that Prince Vladimir the Great, fulfilling the order of the "Jewish Freemasons", entwined Rus' with a Christian net and turned the Russians into slaves.

Oleg's main enemies are the "Jewish Masons", who serve the destructive idea of progress and civilization, and for whom the freedom-loving "uncontrollable" Slavic people are the greatest danger and, therefore, must disappear.

No Russian publisher dared to release this novel, despite the unprecedented commercial success of The Three from the Forest several years before, so the first edition of Rage and its two sequels was printed and distributed by Nikitin at his own cost.

On May 22, 2010, Nikitin married Lilia during a small ceremony at their home in Red Eagles (Russian: Красные Орлы), a cottage settlement near Moscow.

[28] Nikitin is fascinated with new technologies: he monitors the hi-tech news thrice a day,[29] has six computers at home and many electronic devices, which he upgrades and changes for newer models regularly.

[30] As of June 2014, Yuri Nikitin is a frequent visitor to the online forum Transhuman (Russian: Трансчеловек) where he has the nickname of Frog, being one of the first registered members and an honorary administrator.

[30] See "The Russians are coming" for the origin of the series name (Русские идут) In the post-Soviet period, there were no official foreign releases of Nikitin's books.

[35][36][37] As of June 2014, the English versions of three novels by Yury Nikitin (In the Very Beginning, The Grail of Sir Thomas, The Secret of Stonehenge) are available as e-books in major online retailers.