Grigory Chukhray was born in Melitopol (modern-day Zaporizhzhia Oblast of Ukraine) to Red Army soldiers Naum Zinovievich Rubanov and Claudia Petrovna Chukhray. He was of Ukrainian origin.Grigori Chukrai, My Cinema. Moscow, 2001, 98 p. Award List scan at The People's Feat During the Great Patriotic War of 1941—1945 database His parents divorced when he was three years old. He was raised by a stepfather, Pavel Antonovich Litvinenko, the head of kolkhoz. His mother Claudia Chukhray took an active part in the collectivization and dekulakization of the Ukrainian SSR, then worked as an investigation officer at militsiya.
