Alexandr Kuprin (7 September 1870  – 25 August 1938) was born in Narovchat, Penza. His father was Russian, his mother belonged to a noble Volga Tatar family. Alexandr had two sisters, Sofia and Zinaida.

In 1876 he entered the Razumovsky boarding school, which caused him a lot of what he later referred to as ‘childhood grievances’, but also brought about his riotous nature and made him popular among peers as fine storyteller.

In 1880, inspired by Russia’s victory in the Russo-Turkish War, Kuprin enrolled into the Second Moscow Military High School, turned into the Cadet Corps in 1882. Several of Kuprin’s autobiographical stories, like “At the Turning Point” (1900), “The River of Life” (1906) and “Lenochka” (1910), refer to this period. “Most of his thirty youthful poems date from 1883 to 1887, the four years when he was in the Cadet Corps.

In the autumn of 1888, Kuprin left the Cadet Corps to enter the Alexander Military Academy in Moscow. In the summer of 1890, he graduated from the Academy ranked sublieutenant and was posted to the 46th Dnieper Infantry Regiment stationed in Proskurov (now Khmelnitsky), where he spent the next four years.