Chetkov with sisters 1936
Born on 26 October 1926 in Novaya Lyalya in the Urals, Boris Aleksandrovich Chetkov was born into a prosperous peasant family. His earliest memories were tinged with the velvety glow of nostalgia: he described escaping from his parents’ dull flat to his grandparents’ farmyard, ‘colossal’ to a young boy’s eyes; the animals, hard work with his grandfather and the practical jokes his grandparents played on him. But all too soon the idyll was over: his family was forced into collectivization, he spent time in the Gulag system and fought in World War II, all before the age of 19.
Courtesy Kenneth Pushkin: 'Boris Chetkov in his own Words'.
Additional research: Hermione Crawford