Alexander Yulievich Finn-Enotaevsky was born in
Kovno on November 10 (22), 1872 to a Jewish family. His father, Joel Girshevich Finn, was a bank clerk; his mother Rayna-Bryan Girshevna Finn (nee Edelman) was a housewife. His name at birth was Abe Ioelevich Finn; years later, after being exiled to Enotaevsk, he began to use the pseudonym Enotaevsky, which later became part of his surname. He studied at the gymnasium in Nikolaev, then entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Imperial University of St. Vladimir in
Kyiv, where he specialized in chemistry. During his studies, he became interested in Marxism, then joined the
Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1892. In 1895, after graduating from the university, he did not stay in it (according to his own recollections, due to the fact that he "was carried away by the social sciences"). In 1895 he entered the medical faculty of
Moscow University. While a student of the medical faculty of Moscow University, he became active again in the social democratic movement, creating and heading one of the first Marxist circles in
Moscow and conducting social-democratic propaganda among students. In 1895, he became one of the organizers of the Moscow Workers' Union, which united the disparate Moscow Social Democratic circles into a semblance of a single organization. In 1896, he was arrested in the case of the Moscow Workers' Union and sentenced to two years of exile in the city of Enotaevsk (now the village of Enotaevka,
Astrakhan Oblast). ==In exile==