Ilia Simanovsky has a Facebook post that begins (I’ve translated from his Russian and added links):
In the early 1930s, Georgy Shengeli recruited young poets—Arkady Steinberg, Arseny Tarkovsky, Semyon Lipkin, and Maria Petrovykh—to translate, thereby rendering a great service to Russian literature. For the Quadriga (as the friends called themselves), this was an opportunity to make a relatively comfortable living from literary work. Their own muses were not well adapted to Soviet reality: Lipkin was religious, Tarkovsky was criticized for mysticism, Steinberg was assailed for formalism […] For the rest of their lives, the Quadriga depended on translations for their daily bread and in part for self-expression — although, alas, they did not generally have the opportunity to deal with poets of the stature of Milton or Saadi.
In 1934, the aspiring translators Tarkovsky and Steinberg befriended the Montenegrin communist and poet Radule Stijenski, who had emigrated to the USSR seven years earlier. There was no doubt that Stijenski was a communist, but the world hadn’t suspected until then that he was a poet. The three of them immediately realized this was an opportunity. The revolutionary Montenegrin hadn’t yet appeared on the Soviet book market, and it could be expected that if things were approached in the right manner, one book after another would be published, with the author and translators rejoicing in the royalties.
True, there were certain obstacles. Neither Tarkovsky nor Steinberg knew Serbian, and the poet turned out to be so ungifted that even the Montenegrin flavor allowed no hope that anyone would agree to voluntarily read his poems. As it happened, however, these circumstances were actually advantages. Both translators had plenty of talent seeking an outlet, and there was no need to worry about the translations’ similarity to the original—after all, Stijenski had never published in his native language (and remains a phenomenon confined to Russian literature). And speaking of originals, the questions of whether they existed or not, and what we mean by “originals,” have not been entirely cleared up. […]
The translators’ work was easy and creative—unable to publish their own poems, Arkady and Arseny had a great time. It turned out so well that Soviet critics were delighted, and children loved it.
Unfortunately, it ended in lawsuits and the Gulag; I don’t have the heart to translate the rest of the story, but you can get the basics from the Arkady Steinberg link above. (I posted about Maria Petrovykh here, and Boris Dralyuk wrote about Georgy Shengeli here.)
You did not mention that Stijenski denounced Steinberg and got the latter sent to prison, but Steinberg’s Mum managed to obtain his release after two years.
That was in the part I didn’t translate. But anyone who reads Russian should feel free to enjoy the whole exciting story!