Journalist Nicholas Daniloff, a 1974 Nieman Fellow who worked as a foreign correspondent and reported from Moscow for both United Press International and U.S. News & World Report, died on Oct. 17, 2024, in Cambridge, Mass. He was 89.

Daniloff was unwittingly caught in a case of international intrigue shortly before wrapping up his assignment as Moscow bureau chief for U.S. News and World Report in 1986. In August that year, he met with an old friend named Misha Luzin and gave him several Stephen King novels as a parting gift. Luzin gave Daniloff a sealed packet he said contained Soviet newspaper clippings.

While walking home from the meeting, Daniloff was stopped and arrested by the KGB, not realizing that he had been handed photographs and maps of military installations marked “secret.” The espionage charges leveled against him were widely recognized as a tactic devised to win the freedom of Gennadi Zakharov, a Soviet U.N. employee who had been arrested on spying charges in New York just one week earlier. After spending two weeks in Lefortovo Prison, unsure of his fate, Daniloff was released and exchanged for Zakharov. Soviet human rights activist Yuri Orlov was also released in the deal.

After returning to the U.S., Daniloff and his family visited the White House where he credited U.S. President Ronald Reagan for helping to gain his release. Daniloff’s wife, Ruth Daniloff, a British journalist, had been instrumental in keeping his story in the public eye.

The incident nearly derailed the October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Those talks ultimately led to a treaty on intermediate-range nuclear missiles the following year.

An international career in journalism

Daniloff was born in Paris on Dec. 30, 1934, and grew up speaking French, English and Russian at home. His father, who had left Russia during the 1917 revolution, had moved the family to the United States, Argentina and back to Paris before Daniloff left to study at Harvard, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1956.

Daniloff worked for a year as a copy boy at The Washington Post before studying at Oxford University, receiving a master’s degree in political science in 1959. After graduation, he joined UPI in London and was named bureau chief in Geneva in 1960. The next year, he joined UPI’s Moscow bureau, where he worked until 1965. During that period, he covered Cold War stories including the Cuban missile crisis, the Soviet space program and the fall of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

He went on to become a national security reporter in Washington, D.C. and then studied as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during the 1973-74 academic year. After finishing the fellowship, he worked as a UPI White House correspondent and among other stories, covered the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

In 1980, he joined U.S. News & World Report and became Moscow bureau chief the following year.

Daniloff started teaching journalism at Northeastern University in 1989 and directed the school’s journalism program from 1992 to 1999. He continued to teach courses until he retired in 2014. He received the 2013 New England Newspaper Press Association Journalism Educator of the Year Award.

Daniloff additionally taught journalism at the Uzbek State World Languages University in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, created by Uzbekistan’s president in 1999.

His books include his memoir, “Two Lives, One Russia,” “Of Spies and Spokesmen: My Life as a Cold War Correspondent (Volume 1)” and “The Kremlin and the Cosmos.”

An avid rower, Daniloff competed in the Head of the Charles Regatta into his 80s.

Daniloff’s wife Ruth died in January 2024. He is survived by his daughter Miranda Daniloff Mancusi, his son Caleb Daniloff, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Friends are invited to the Nicholas Daniloff Celebration of Life:

• When? Saturday, November 16, 2024, 12:00-1:00 p.m. ET, with a reception to follow
• Where? Story Chapel, Mt Auburn Cemetery, 580 Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Please contact Miranda Daniloff Mancusi if you plan to attend.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in Nicholas Daniloff’s name to the Committee to Protect Journalists or Riverside Boat Club.

Additional reading:

The New York Times
Nicholas Daniloff, 89, Dies; Reporter’s Arrest in Moscow Ignited a Firestorm
A veteran foreign correspondent during the Cold War, he was held on trumped-up espionage charges. He credited President Ronald Reagan with fighting for his release.

The Boston Globe
Nicholas Daniloff, US journalist who defied Soviet captors, dies at 89

The Washington Post
Nicholas Daniloff, reporter held in Moscow amid Cold War tussle, dies at 89
After two weeks in KGB custody in 1986, Mr. Daniloff was released in a swap that freed a suspected Soviet spy held by the United States.

The Harvard Crimson
Nicholas Daniloff ’56, Reporter Imprisoned in Soviet Union, Dies at 89
On May 15, 1992, the last leader of the Soviet Union was onstage at the Harvard Institute of Politics’ JFK Jr. Forum for a discussion when he took a question from a tall, self-assured man in square glasses.

Nieman Reports
Creating a Different Approach to Telling the News
by Nicholas Daniloff, March 2003
An American journalism professor teaches students about free speech in authoritarian Uzbekistan.