In 1955-1963 I attended Leningrad Middle School 170 (grades 1 - 8).

In 1963-1966 I was a student at the Leningrad High School 239. This is a remarkable school, one of the best in Leningrad, with specialization in Mathematics and Physics. See a wikipedia article. I am most grateful to the following three teachers:

Mirra Girshevna Katsnelson, history		Garry Borisovich Akhverdov, mathematics		Victor Kirillovich Kobushkin, physics

In 1966-1971 I was an (undergraduate) student at the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics (mat-mex), Leningrad State University.

By the end of this period I prepared my first two research papers:
1. Links, two-fold branched coverings and braids;
2. Local knotting of submanifolds
(they were published in 1972 and 1973 in Matem. Sbornik). The latter was my master thesis.

Then I became an aspirant (a graduate student) at the Department of High Geometry of the same Faculty.
Both during undergraduate and graduate study, my supervisor was Vladimir Abramovich Rokhlin.

I graduated in 1973, a year before the time, in order to fill an assistant professor position at the same Department.

In 1974 I defended a dissertation
"Topological invariants of branched coverings of manifolds with boundary"
for the degree Candidate of Phys.-Mat. Sci. (Ph.D) .

In 1983 I defended the second dissertation (a counter-part of a habilitation),
"Real algebraic varieties with prescribed topological properties"
for the degree of Doctor of Phys.-Mat. Sci .

---