Inessa (Yakovlevna) Nedvetskaya, née Khariton, was born in 1935, in Leningrad (St. Petersberg). Her parents, Yakov (Markovich/Meerovich) Khariton (b.1909, Haisyn, Ukraine; d.1979) and Raisa (Efimovna) Khariton (née Buzova) (b.1910, Mogilev, Belarus; d.1985), worked as economists in a Soviet bank system having graduated from the Finansovy Institute (State Institute of Finance). They were both the first in their families to receive advanced education. During the war, Yakov served as an officer in the Soviet Army. Raisa and Inessa were evacuated to Shalya in the Ural Mountains region where they resided from 1941-1944. For a short time towards the end of the war (1944-1945), they had to relocate to a small town in the recently liberated Ukraine because of a food shortage.