Leonid Makarovych Kravchuk was born in 1934 in the village of Velykyi Zhytyn ("Żytyń Wielki") to a peasant family. At that time the village was located in Aleksandrija gmina, Rowno powiat in Poland. The village became part of Rivne Oblast in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic after the Soviet invasion in 1939 when Kravchuk was a child. His father served in the Polish cavalry in the 1930s, and later he and his wife worked for the local osadniks (Polish colonists). During World War II Kravchuk's father perished on the front lines.