Yuri Andropov
There has been much contention over his family background. According to the official biography, Andropov was born in stanitsa Nagutskaya (modern-day Stavropol Krai of Russia) on 15 June 1914. His father Vladimir Konstantinovich Andropov was a railway worker of Don Cossack descent who died from typhus in 1919. His mother Yevgenia Karlovna Fleckenstein (none of the official sources mentioned her name) was a school teacher who died in 1931. She was born in the Ryazan Governorate into a family of town dwellers and was abandoned on the doorstep of a Finnish citizen, a Jewish watchmaker Karl Franzevich Fleckenstein who lived in Moscow; he and his wife Eudokia Mikhailovna Fleckenstein adopted and raised her. Later researches has shown that many details about Andropov's biography were largely falsified during his lifetime which has contributed to the confusion connected to his family history.
Yuri Andropov
He gave different versions of his father's fate: in one case he divorced his mother soon after his birth, in another — died of illness. The "father" he referred to — Vladimir Andropov — was in fact his stepfather who lived and worked at Nagutskaya and died from typhus in 1919. The Fyodorov surname belonged to his second stepfather (since 1921) Viktor Fyodorov, a machinist assistant turned a school teacher. His real father remains unknown; he probably died in 1916 — a date written in Andropov's 1932 resume. During the 1937 check it was reported that his father served as an officer in the Imperial Russian Army. Andropov was thoroughly interviewed four times, yet he was so convincing that he managed to drop all charges and joined the Communist Party in 1939.