MIKHELSON Leonid Viktorovich (b. 1955 in Kaspiysk), born into a Jewish family, graduated from the Kuibyshev Civil Engineering Institute with a degree in civil engineering in 1977. After that, he worked as the superintendent of the construction trust in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug of the Tyumen Region near the city of Surgut at the construction of the first line of the Urengoy-Chelyabinsk gas pipeline.