He was born on May 11 (24), 1912 in the village of Dyakivtsi (now Lityn district of Vinnytsia region) in the family of a peasant, a veteran of the Russian-Japanese war Panas Stelmakh. His mother is Belarusian. After graduating from high school he studied at a pedagogical college. He began his career in the Vinnytsia newspaper "Bolshevik Truth".
