Yevgeny Vladimirovich Mamykin -- "Zhenya" to his friends and family -- was born in 1975 in Kazan. His mother and father separated soon after Zhenya was born, and he lived with his mother in a dormitory room provided by the airplane factory where she worked.

It was at the factory that his mother, Natalya Dmitrievna, met Vladimir Arsentev, who would become her second husband when Zhenya was just a toddler. By all accounts, Vladimir was a father to Zhenya in everything but blood, and from a very early age to the end of his life, Zhenya called him "papa". When Zhenya was eight, Natalya Dmitrievna gave birth to Denis, whom he would always call "brother" despite the fact that they had different fathers. The solidity of their family was perhaps made more complete due to the total absence of Zhenya's natural father.

As a child, Zhenya was outgoing and friendly, a chubby-cheeked little boy with big brown eyes and dark, curly hair. "He looked like a little gypsy boy," says his mother. "He always loved to be the center of attention, to be on the stage." As he grew older, Zhenya performed in school plays and concerts, eventually teaching himself how to play guitar, piano and drums. He also began to write his own music.

When he enrolled in Kazan's Chemical-Technical Lycee after high school, Zhenya started a band, and performed frequently at school discotheques and shows. Whenever he and his friends got together, Zhenya always had his guitar close at hand -- the same guitar that he took with him when he was drafted, and which was one of the few things the army returned to Natalya Dmitrievna after his death.

He was drafted in January 1994 and sent to Volgograd. Considering the vastness of the Russian Federation it was a relatively close posting only 30 hours away by train. "We were so happy to have him close by," says Natalya Dmitrievna. "We couldn't believe how lucky we were that he hadn't been sent off to Arkhangelsk or some other faraway northern place."