N.M. Borodin was born in 1905 in Kamensk, Russia. After a childhood marred by civil war and famine, Borodin enrolled to study in Novocherkassk with the aim of becoming a microbiologist. He briefly served in the Red Army as part of his military service before embarking on a successful career researching animal disease, including posts in Armavir, Moscow and Baku. Borodin kept working through Stalin's purges and received the Order of Lenin. He renounced his Soviet citizenship in London in 1948, and went on to write One Man in His Time, a memoir of his life and career in Stalinist Russia.