Two years after his birth, his family moved to Alexandrovsk (Yekaterinoslav Governorate), where Stepan graduated from city school and joined the local ironworks as a metalworker.

[1] During the 1917 February Revolution in Russia, Petrichenko had been based with a unit of Russian fleet at the small Estonian island of Naissaar (Nargen) in the Tallinn Bay.

The red and black flag of the anarcho-communists was lowered, and its "government" retreated onto the ships of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, heading for Helsinki (Helsingfors), and from there to Kronstadt.

Soon, the police chief of Vyborg received a denunciation of the "vile plot" of Petrichenko, as a result of which, on May 21, 1922, he was arrested and spent several months in prison.

The verdict passed on November 17, 1945, read:[1] Petrichenko, Stepan Maximovich, for participation in a counter-revolutionary terrorist organization and belonging to Finnish intelligence, is to be imprisoned in a forced labor camp for a period of 10 years, counting the period from April 24, 1945.Stepan Petrichenko died on June 2, 1947, during his transfer from the Solikamsk labor camp to the Vladimir Central Prison.