Marina Solodkin

Marina Solodkin was born in 1952 in Moscow

Marina Solodkin, born Marina Gershman, was born in Moscow in the Soviet Union on 31 May 1952. She earned a PhD in economic and social history and a master's degree in political and economic geography at Moscow State University.

She immigrated to Israel in 1991 and joined Yisrael BaAliyah, the immigrant party led by Natan Sharansky. She entered the Knesset in 1996 and chaired the committee on the status of women. After the 1999 elections she became Deputy Minister of Immigrant Absorption, and she returned to that post in March 2005 after her party merged into Likud.

Before the 2006 elections she left for Kadima and was elected from 6th place on its list. She was not made a minister, and in protest she missed the swearing-in of Ehud Olmert's government and did not see herself bound by coalition positions. She was reelected in 2009 and in December 2012 announced she would not run again.

She wrote books in Russian and Hebrew, including a dictionary of economic history. She died on 16 March 2013 in a hotel in Riga, Latvia, where she had gone for a conference against fascism. She lived in Ashkelon and left a husband and 2 children.