What is Yuri Ryabinkin?
{{more sources|date=March 2025}} {{Infobox person | name = Yuri Ryabinkin | image = | birth_name = Yuri Ivanovich Ryabinkin | birth_date = 2 September 1925 | birth_place = [[Saint Petersburg]], [[Soviet Union]] | death_date = Dead by 2 March 1942<br/> (aged 16) | death_place = [[Siege of Leningrad|Saint Petersburg]], Soviet Union | nationality = Russian | occupation = Diarist }} '''Yuri Ivanovich Ryabinkin''' ([[Russian language|Russian]]: Юрий Иванович Рябинкин; 2 September 1925 – between 8 January and 2 March 1942), was a Russian boy who endured the [[Siege of Leningrad]]. He kept a personal diary from 22 June 1941 (the day the Germans invaded the Soviet Union) to 6 January 1942. He gained posthumous fame a few years later after [[World War II]] ended, when his diary was printed by a press. His diary was first published in 1970.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Leningrad: State of Siege|last=Jones|first=Michael|publisher=Hachette|year=2009|isbn=9781848541214}}</ref> Yuri's fate remains unknown. It is known that he did not survive the siege of Leningrad, and that he died between 8 January and 2 March 1942 (due to records confirming it). The exact date of his death and his burial place has not been recorded. == Life and family == === Early life and family background === Yuri Ivanovich Ryabinkin was born on 2 September 1925 in Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad). His younger sister, Irina, was born on 30 April 1933. His mother, Antonina Mikhailovna Riabinkina (née Pankina), was born on 13 August 1903 and came from a family belonging to the intelligentsia. She completed her education at the gymnasium and was fluent in French, German, and Polish. Yuri and his family lived in an apartment that even had a library. By 1941, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, Antonina worked as a librarian and was also a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Yuri's father left the family in April 1933, remarried, and lived with his new wife in a Russian village near Finland before being sent to the Gul