Following a brief arrest and release of Maksim Fridman perhaps on a prelude to " Doctors' plot " in 1951, the family moved to Frunze (now Bishkek), Kyrgyzstan. Fridman spent summers in Moscow staying with the family of his father's sister, Elena Fridman, and her husband, David A. Frank-Kamenetskii. Following the death of Joseph Stalin and the general amnesty, cities with warm climate filled with criminals and the crime rates skyrocketed. Police was failing, and while in high school Fridman and many other young men joined "the neighborhood watch" brigades organized by Komsomol and police. He did not miss a single training session in military sambo, and acquired many knife scars from the street action. He was the only one who remained alive from his team of four by the graduation.