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.
Alexander Cherepkov
Alexander Vasilyevich Cherepkov was born in Leningrad. He served in the Soviet Red Army during World War II, and was decorated four times. He was a Soviet Master from the late 1940s, but took some time to climb through the deep hierarchy of talent. His first important result was clear 1st at Yaroslavl 1948 with 12.5/17 (this was likely a Soviet Championship quarter-final). His first attempt to qualify for the Soviet final saw him score 6.5/16 in the semi-final at Moscow, 1949. In the Leningrad Championship of 1950 he scored 7/13 for 6th place, but he fell short again at the Soviet semi-final level (Tartu 1950) with 5.5/15.