He studied at the Lomonosov Moscow State University (now MSU) at the Faculty of Biology and Soil Science from 1945 and graduated from the Department of Biochemistry of Plants in 1950.

[5] From 1964 to 2006 he worked as a lecturer at the Department of Virology at Faculty of Biology at the Moscow State University.

Gamaleya Federal Research Center for Epidemiology & Microbiology, his department was transferred to the N.N.

[9] In 1963, in an attempt to find specific tumour antigens, Abelev's department discovered an embryonic protein synthesised by liver cancer cells, α-fetoprotein.

On this basis, the Abelev-Tatarinov reaction was developed for immunodiagnosis of liver cancer and teratoblastoma of the ovary.