The Litvinenko Inquiry

Part 3: Alexander Litvinenko – his life in
Russia and the United Kingdom, his
illness and death
Chapter 1: In Russia
3.1 I received detailed evidence regarding the history of Alexander Litvinenko’s life in
Russia before he left to travel to the United Kingdom (UK) with his family in November
2000. Very little of this evidence was contentious and much is already in the public
domain. For example, a detailed account of Mr Litvinenko’s life in Russia is to be
found in Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko’s book Death of a Dissident, and I am
of course aware of other books that have been written about Mr Litvinenko’s life, such
as Martin Sixsmith’s The Litvinenko File and Alan Cowell’s The Terminal Spy.
3.2 Although many of these matters are well known, I have set them out here in outline
as they are of considerable contextual significance to the questions that I have been
charged with investigating. The events that took place during Mr Litvinenko’s life in
Russia, and in particular the last years before he left, cast a long shadow over his
life in the UK. Many of those who played a part in the events of the final weeks and
months of Mr Litvinenko’s life in 2006 were old friends and adversaries from his days
in Russia.
Childhood
3.3 Alexander Litvinenko was born on 4 December 1962 in the Russian city of Voronezh.
His parents, Walter and Nina Litvinenko, divorced when he was very young, and it
appears that his childhood, in consequence, was not easy. I heard that as a young
child Alexander spent periods of time living with his father and his father’s parents in
Nalchik in the North Caucasus, with his mother in Moscow and with an aunt in another
city called Morozovsk. When he was about 12 he returned to Nalchik to live with
his grandparents, with whom he spent the rest of his childhood. 1 Nalchik is located
towards the south of the old USSR, in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. It is
close to Chechnya. This region and its people would later play an important part in
Mr Litvinenko’s life.
3.4 Both Mr Litvinenko’s parents remarried. His mother had a daughter, Svetlana, with
her new husband. Mr Litvinenko’s father, Walter, had three children with his new wife,
of whom the youngest was a son named Maxim. 2 As we shall see, Maxim lived in Italy
later in his life, where he spent some time with his older half-brother Alexander.
3.5 Mr Litvinenko finished his schooling in 1980 at the age of 17. The evidence of Marina
Litvinenko (who of course had not yet met Mr Litvinenko at that time) was that he
applied to go to university, but did not get a place, 3 and decided instead to go to
military college. He took that decision in part because he would have been required to
undertake military service at some point in any event. However, she said that he was
also influenced, even at that young age, by a desire to serve and defend his country.
1
Marina Litvinenko 3/19-20; INQ017734 (page 2 paragraph 6)
2
Marina Litvinenko 3/20-23
3
Marina Litvinenko 3/23-24
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