Kondratyuk was born as Aleksandr Ignatyevich Shargei in 1897 in Poltava, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), although his family originally lived in Kiev.

His father, Ignat Benediktovich Shargei, was a Jewish convert to Catholicism who studied physics and mathematics at St. Vladimir Imperial University of Kiev at the time of his marriage.

[6] She is a direct descendant[6] of Wolmar Anton von Schlippenbach, a general who took part in Charles XII of Sweden's failed invasion of Russia.

Kondratyuk later enrolled at the Peter the Great Petrograd Imperial Polytechnic Institute to study engineering, where he was influenced by Ivan Meshcherskiy.

These included suggesting the use of a modular spacecraft to reach the Moon, leaving the propulsion section of the vehicle on orbit while a smaller lander journeyed to the surface and back (the strategy eventually adopted by the engineers of the Apollo program).

Eventually, Kondratyuk paid a Novosibirsk printing shop to produce 2,000 copies of the 72-page work, and even then had to do much of the typesetting and operating the press himself, both to save costs but also because the equations in the book posed problems for the printer.

Applying his engineering skill to local problems, Kondratyuk designed a huge 13,000 ton grain elevator (quickly nicknamed "Mastodon") in Kamen-na-Obi, built of wood without a single nail, since metal was in short supply in Siberia.

Convicted of "anti-Soviet activity", Kondratyuk was sentenced to three years in a gulag, but because of his evident talents was sent to a sharashka (research facility prison) rather than a labour camp.

At the supervisor's request, in November 1931 a review board changed Kondratyuk's status from "prisoner" to "exiled", and sent him to work on Siberian grain projects.

[10] Kondratyuk learned of a competition to design a large wind power generator for Crimea, sponsored by Sergo Ordzhonikidze, then People's Commissar of Heavy Industry.

The former neighbour in Novosibirsk who had nursed him back to health after his episode of typhus agreed to take his notebooks and eventually took these to the United States when she escaped there with her daughter following World War II.

Evidence collected in the 1990s suggests that he disappeared in January or February 1942 while repairing a communications cable at night near Zasetsky, a village in the Kirovsky District of the Kaluga region.

[12] Kadratyuk's story and contributions to spaceflight were highlighted in the eighth episode of the 2020 American science documentary TV series Cosmos: Possible Worlds, titled "The Sacrifice of Cassini".