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 Larionov
Larionov was born on 19 August 1986 in Novosibirsk, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union. His family later moved to Tashkent, Uzbek SSR, due to his father's army service. He began skating in 1990, introduced to the activity by his mother, who was concerned about his health. He decided to continue skating after the family returned to Novosibirsk and later trained for four years in Moscow before moving to Perm. His first skating partner was Dinara Kalimulina.