Professor Mikhail Chlenov, one of Russian Jewry's foremost intellectuals, teaches at the State Jewish Maimonidies Academy in Moscow, Presviously he was a researcher in the ethnography department of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, as well as being a leading cultural and intellectual figure in Soviet Jewry since the 1970s. Chlenov is president of the Va'ad, the Federation of Jewish Organizations of Russia, founded in December 1989.