Natan Sharansky

Natan Sharansky was born in 1948 in Donetsk

Sharansky was born Anatoly Shcharansky on 20 January 1948 in Stalino, now Donetsk, Ukraine, to a Jewish family. His father Boris was a journalist. As a child he was a chess prodigy and won the Donetsk championship at 15.

He earned a degree in applied mathematics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He then worked in a secret state research laboratory.

In 1973 he was refused an exit visa to Israel on security grounds. He became a translator for Andrei Sakharov and a spokesman for the Moscow Helsinki Group. Arrested in 1977, he was convicted in 1978 of treason and spying and sentenced to 13 years, and he was released in 1986 in a prisoner exchange on the Glienicke Bridge.

In Israel he wrote the memoir Fear No Evil and led the Zionist Forum. In 1995 he co-founded the Yisrael BaAliyah party, and he served as Minister of Industry and Trade, Interior Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Jerusalem and diaspora affairs. He resigned from the cabinet in 2005 in protest of the Gaza disengagement plan.

After leaving the Knesset in 2006 he headed a think tank at the Shalem Center. He chaired the Jewish Agency executive from 2009 to 2018, and in 2019 became chairman of ISGAP.