Zundelevich grew up in a lower middle class Jewish family in a small town in the Oshmyany uyezd of the Vilna Governorate.

He studied at the Vilna Rabbinical School until 1873, where he organized a revolutionary circle whose members included Aaron Liebermann and Abraham Cahan.

[1][2] Zundelevich later joined the Circle of Tchaikovsky in St. Petersburg and, as a founding member of the secret society Land and Liberty, he advocated the use of terror as a means of political struggle.

On 30 June 1876, Zundelevich participated in the organization of Peter Kropotkin's escape from the Nikolaev Military Hospital.

[3] He was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, and thereafter in the Kara and Akatuy katorga prisons.