KUZMICHEV Alexei Viktorovich (b. 1962 in Kirov) enrolled at the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys (MISiS) in 1983, where he met German Khan and Mikhail Fridman, his future business partners. In his first year of study, Kuzmichev became a secretary of the Komsomol organization and joined the Communist Party. He graduated from the Institute in 1988 and worked with Friedman and later Khan in the cooperatives Courier, Alpha-photo, and Alpha-Eco until 1989. The last two cooperatives provided household services and sold carpets, copy machines, and computers.