S. was born 1892 in Kremenchug, Crimea. According to Yona Radinov, his father was a gabbai. He received his education from a middle school. In 1912, according to S.'s autobiography, he came into Russian drama in Poltava, where he had begun to act under the name of Yakovlyev. After acting for a year in a range of Russian cities, in 1917, he went over to Kherson and Russian operettas. In Kherson, he also participated in Yiddish in the troupe of the Kurik brothers, and he acted in Sholem Aleichem's "S'fidlt nit." He also was the secretary of the Artists' Union. In 1919 he returned to perform in Russian in Novotsherkask, Taganrog, Novorosisk, and from there traveled to Yugoslavia, where he for eight years time directed his own troupe in Serbian, and there took the name "Serbsky."

In 1928 he, under the name of Serbsky, came to Riga and entered into the "New Yiddish Theatre" under the direction of Julius Adler, and he remained to perform in Yiddish in Riga's Yiddish theatre. In 1929-30 he acted in Kovno's new Yiddish theatre. In 1931 he was in Poland and Lithuania and then returned to the Riga Yiddish Meutim Theatre. In 1939 he acted with the guest-starring Max Perlman and Gita Galina, and then went off to Belgium, where he was captured by the Nazis, who had him killed.

S.'s wife, Maria Larska, a Jew, was a soubrette-prima donna on the Russian stage. His brother, the Russian coupletist Chigorov, had in his elder years married the Yiddish actress Sara Brez and also crossed over to the Yiddish stage and was killed in the Riga Ghetto.