There is some controversy about where she was born. Natalya was an army brat, and the original record of her birth, either lost or classified, is not available from the military. It's known that her father was stationed in several places throughout the Stavropol region in the late 1940s, and some sources believe that Natalya was born there. But her father was permanently assigned to Usol-Sibirskoe in the Irkutsk region around the time of her birth, and other sources put her birthplace there. Providing some support for this, Natalya herself has always maintained, and school records show, that she grew up in Usol-Sibirskoe.