Saratov Governorate
Gladkov was born in 1883 in Bolshaya Chernavka, Saratov Governorate (present-day Penza Oblast) to a family of Old Believers. In 1904, Gladkov began propaganda work for the Social Revolutionary party in Chita, Irkutsk, joining the teachers' institute of Tiflis in the following year. In 1906 he began propaganda work for the Bolsheviks, and was exiled that November for four years to Manzurka village in Irkust province. After completing his exile, Gladkov returned to Novorssiisk and to the Kuban where he was appointed the head of a primary school in Pavlovskaya.