Prokhor Chaliapin

Chaliapin was born as Andrei Zakharenkov in Volgograd on 26 November 1983. His mother was a cook, and his father, a steelworker. He was the only child of Andrei Ivanovich Zakharenkov and Elena Ivanovna Kletskina, who was eighteen at the birth of her son. Chaliapin's paternal grandparents hailed from Gorky Oblast and Smolensk Oblast, while his maternal grandparents came from Arel'sk, Trubchevsky District, Bryansk Oblast and Kalynivka, Korosten Raion, Zhytomyr Oblast, Ukraine. His maternal grandmother was an ethnic Pole. Three out of his four great-grandfathers were killed in World War II, of which two on the Eastern Front during the Great Patriotic War.

In many interviews, Chaliapin acknowledged that he endured a challenging childhood due to his father's problems with alcoholism and schizophrenia. His parents divorced when he was nine. As a result of a then deteriorating relationship with his mother and new step-father, Chaliapin moved in with his paternal grandparents. In 1996, his maternal grandmother and aunt were murdered in their apartment in Volgograd; Chaliapin was the first one to discover the murder scene. Initially, charges were pressed against both his parents, leaving Chaliapin to be sent to an orphanage. However, after three days, charges were dropped and his mother returned home. A few months later, Chaliapin became involved in a serious car accident.

Chaliapin was involved in music from a young age. He started playing bayan and entered a local music school, but was expelled after a few years. In the fifth grade, he became a soloist of the Russian folk band "Vyunok" and moved from the regular school to the Central School of Art at the Volgograd branch of the Samara Academy of Arts and Culture. At the age of 15, Chaliapin auditioned to enter the State Music and Pedagogical Institute named after M. Ippolitov-Ivanov at the department of "Folk singing". Chaliapin was enrolled in the programme with a full scholarship. With this, he also moved to Moscow.

After graduating from the institute, he applied to the same department at the Gnessin Musical College, where he managed to enroll. His tuition fees were sponsored.