[1][2][3][4] Boris Yelensky was born in Krasnodar, Russia in 1889, near Novorosisk on the Black Sea in the Russian Empire.
His family were Jewish, but did not practice Judaism, and Boris did not learn to speak or write Yiddish as a child.
[1] He began reading socialist literature at the age of 12, joining the Union of Socialists-Revolutionaries Maximalists and participating in the 1905 botched revolution.
[6] Due to repressive pressure (allegedly by the Ohrana),[1] he emigrated to Philadelphia in 1907, joining the Union of Russian Workers and the Radical Library (a branch of the Workmen's Circle) shortly thereafter.
He left Russia with his family in 1922, being banned from the USSR in 1923, and deported as a US citizen; he remained secretary of the Russian Political Relief Committee in 1924–1925.
[6] He is interred in the German Waldheim Cemetery, close to where Harry Kelly and other prominent anarchists are buried.