Maya Aleksandrovna Ulanovskaya was born in New York City while her Jewish parents were stationed there as Soviet "resident spies" and Soviet intelligence officer illegals for the GRU. Her father was Alexander Ulanovsky (1891-1971). Her mother was Nadezhda Ulanovskaya (1903-1986). In a 1952 memoir, Whittaker Chambers, who reported to the Ulanovskys in the early 1930s, noted Nadezhda's pregnancy and also noted that Ulanovskaya had an older brother, "kept hostage at school in Russia (the boy was killed fighting against the Germans during the Nazi invasion)."