This article presents an archival finding — the first parts of Byron’s Don Juan translated by Georgii Shengeli in 1953 in iambic pentameter instead of the hexameter he used for his 1947 edition of the work. The fragment is discussed against the background of the critical campaign that was launched against Shengeli in the early 1950s. It is compared with the published version  as well as with Tatiana Gnedich’s 1959 translation with particular  attention to disputed features.