[1] Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Moscow, he studied at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages when World War II broke out.
He taught at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, and then for many years at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages (now Moscow State Linguistic University), where he headed the Department of Interpretation.
In later years, he also worked as a principal researcher at the Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences.
He is the author of the landmark monographs "Standard English in the USA and England" (1971), "Translation and Linguistics" (1973), "Modern Sociolinguistics.
[2] He was an active participant in the Pugwash Movement and Dartmouth Conferences which brought together international scholars and public figures to build confidence and reduce the danger of armed conflict.