 He was arrested by Russian authorities April 27, 1886 for participation in "The People's Will" which was labeled an anti-tsarist terrorist organization spending three years in an Odessa jail.Sternberg was then exiled to the Sakhalin penal colony for a ten-year prison sentence.He was deported from Odessa on the boat "Peterburg" on March 19, 1889, arriving in Port Aleksandrovsk, Sakhalin, on May 19, 1889.