He was born in 1958 in Moscow, to a mixed and assimilated family, but with anti-Soviet sentiments. In 1978 he began to study Hebrew, and after some time also to teach it. In 1984 he applied for the exit visa to leave for Israel, but was refused to go by the reason of “inexpediency”. He was arrested in March of 1986 in the heat of campaign against Hebrew teachers. The occasion for the arrest in this case was storage and transport of narcotics (6,6 grams of marijuana). On the trial in July 1986 he was sentenced to three years of imprisonment in the Gulag camps. He spent his sentence first in the 1st zone of a camp in Tsulukidze, Georgia, and then in Omsk, in the Eighth zone. He was released in September 1987 and in the same year left for Israel.
The information was provided by Alexei Magarik
