His father, Viktor Lazarevich Belinkov (1901—1980), was a well-known economist; his mother, Mirra Naumovna Belinkova (1900—1971), was a scholar of children's literature.
He received his higher education at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute and Moscow State University.
In January 1944, during Joseph Stalin's rule, Belinkov wrote a novel called A Diary of Feelings that was tacitly circulated and read by friends and acquaintances.
[2] Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy and Viktor Shklovsky interceded for him: the execution was replaced by eight years of imprisonment in Karlag (Karaganda Gulag branch).
He returned to writing, but his literary works contained anti-Soviet pathos that was incompatible with the official dogma of the time.