Sacha was born in Radomyshl, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire) in December 1887. It’s been hard to cite credible sources where it concerns his early life (though I am sure it’d help if I could speak Ukrainian and Russian!).
Radomyshl is a historically Jewish region. It’s often stated that Sacha and his family moved to Kyiv following his father’s death, and he studied in Odessa. This website has been really useful for the history of Radomyshl and its people (happy to see that Sacha is included on that list of people!).
I’ll be looking into life in Radomyshl around this time, hoping to carve out more details of Sacha’s early life, or at least providing some additional context to the events in this period that may add to this blog.
A Study of Sacha Zaliouk 