[1] Yuri Schmidt was born in Leningrad on May 10, 1937, while the USSR was going through the period of the Stalinist great purge.
His father, declared as the "enemy of the people", was imprisoned in the gulag for 19 years shortly after Schmidt was born.
[1] Schmidt began studying law and graduated from Saint Petersburg State University in 1960.
His clients included jailed leaders of political independence movements in the ethnic enclaves of Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia, a journalist charged with defaming President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan.
His most resounding victory was the acquittal of Aleksandr Nikitin, a former Soviet submarine captain who had been charged with espionage and high treason after he wrote a series of reports detailing radioactive pollution by Russia’s navy.