	Kuzma Grebennik was born on 18 February 1900 in the village of Bryansk in Slavyanoserbsk Uyezd in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate in a working-class family of Russian ethnicity. His father worked as a miner in the coal mines of the Donbass. Grebennik graduated from elementary school and became a sorter at the coal mine at the age of 10. In 1914, his family moved to the village of Kremen in Kharkov Governorate, where Grebennik graduated from a two-year college in 1915. In 1916, he became a worker at the Donets-Rubezhnyi Factory. Grebennik returned to the Donbass and became a worker at a coal mine in 1918.