Her father, Boris Leonidovich Ratushinsky, was an engineer; her mother, Irina Valentinovna Ratushinskaya, was a teacher of Russian literature.

[4][5] Between 1 and 3 March 1983, she was tried in Kyiv and convicted of "agitation carried on for the purpose of subverting or weakening the Soviet regime" (Article 62).

Her previous works usually centered on love, Christian theology, and artistic creation, not on politics or policies as her accusers stated.

[2] In 1987, Ratushinskaya moved to the United States, where she received the Religious Freedom Award of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

[2] For the next ten years Ratushinskaya lived in London, UK, until December 1998,[9] when the family returned to Russia to educate their seven-year-old twins in Russian schools.

Irina and her husband Igor had spent one year undergoing various procedures to regain their Russian citizenship, including letters and appeals to President Boris Yeltsin.

The mothers took turns looking after all 4 children, and Irina's way of keeping all of them somewhat disciplined and entertained was manifested in a series of stories she invented about the adventures of a naughty girl called Cinderella, who wore shoes size 45 and enjoyed robbing banks together with the naughty prince of Bencionia, and giving a headache to the strict King Bencione.

Eventually, the storytelling was attended by the other 3 parents, who loved the series, particularly after hearing of Cinderella and the prince's vacation in Cuba, where they shaved Fidel Castro bald in his sleep.