Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky was born August 25, 1925 in Batumi; The family later moved to Leningrad. In January 1942 Arkady and his father left the besieged city, but Arkady was the only survivor in his train car; his father died on reaching Vologda. Arkady was later drafted into the Soviet army, training first at the artillery school in Aktyubinsk and later at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow, from which he graduated in 1949 as an interpreter of English and Japanese. He worked as a teacher and interpreter for the military until 1955. From 1955 he began to work as an editor and writer. In 1958, he began to collaborate with his brother Boris, a collaboration that lasted until Arkady's death October 12, 1991.
