Yuri Fedorovich Orlov is a physicist, human rights activist, former political prisoner. Founder and first leader of the Moscow Helsinki Group. Arrested and convicted “for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” Subsequently expelled from the USSR and deprived of Soviet citizenship. Now he is the honorary chairman of the MHG and a professor at Cornell University. “When twenty years ago I told Joseph Brodsky that I wanted to write a memoir and asked for advice, he advised only to avoid the usual references to events and conversations in memoirs and not be afraid to introduce direct speech and direct dynamics of events. The master had to be obeyed. After writing the first chapters, I sent them to him for evaluation. He liked it." Yu. Orlov

“It is difficult to imagine a more generous source for getting acquainted with Russian flora and fauna of the second half of the 20th century than this work. In addition, the reader who wants to get acquainted with it can be grateful to the author, at least for the fact that this acquaintance will be made in a position for the reader that is much more favorable and safe than the one in which the author of this work remained throughout his entire adult life... On the other hand, like any story about human evil, “Dangerous Thoughts” goes beyond the purely Russian specifics... For the book is, in the end, about what a person can do to a person, and how a person can cope with it. ", wrote Joseph Brodsky about the book by Yu. Orlov.