Balagula was born in 1943 in Orenburg, Russia, at the height of World War II. His mother, Zinaida, fled with the children from their home in Odessa after the German Wehrmacht swept across the Russian steppes. Marat's father, Jakov, was a lieutenant in the Red Army; Balagula claims that he was one of the armored corps that stormed Berlin during the last desperate hours of the war. In the harshness of the Joseph Stalin era, the Balagulas led a comfortable, middle class life. Jakov worked in a factory manufacturing locks, as did his wife. Young Marat, an average high school student, was drafted into the Soviet Army at the age of nineteen and served as a bursar for three years, after which the Party assigned him to manage a food co-op in Odessa. Determined to get ahead, Marat attended night sc