Jefim Fistein is a Senior Advisor to the President of RFE/RL who served as Director of RFE/RL’s Russian Service until May 2012. Since joining RFE/RL in 1981, he has held the positions of Deputy Director of the Russian Service and Special Assistant to the Director of Broadcasting, among others. In 1996-1997 he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny, a daily with wide national readership. Born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1946, Jefim moved to Prague in 1970, where he has worked as an interpreter and translator of books. Jefim is a signatory of the Charter 77, the samizdat document published in 1977 criticizing Soviet and Czechoslovak governments for human rights violations. After signing the Charter 77, he fled to Austria.
Moscow State University, Faculty of Journalism. State examination in German language at Vienna University.
Jefim writes a weekly column for two Czech magazines, Euro and Reflex and has been published in FAZ am Sonntag in Germany and Vedomosti in Russia; he is regularly interviewed by Czech television stations CT-1, CT-2, CT-24 and Z-1.