Kazannik was born on 26 July 1941 in Perepis, which was then part of the
Ukrainian SSR, into a large peasant ethnically Ukrainian family. He soon after lost both his father and two older brothers, who died on the
Eastern Front of
World War II. Kazannik would later state his determination to become a lawyer came from his time working in the Kazakh SSR, as he witnessed the mass riots in 1959 of local workers against a metallurgical plant that was promptly dispersed. In 1960 he served in the
Soviet Army in
military engineering. He then, in 1963, entered the Faculty of Law at
Irkutsk State University where he graduated from in 1967 and then entered graduate school at in 1968. In 1989, he gained notability for granting his seat in the
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union to
Boris Yeltsin. Between 1993 and 1994, Kazannik was
Prosecutor-General of Russia. Kazannik later served as Deputy Governor of
Omsk Oblast from 1995 to 2003. Additionally, he taught law at
Omsk State University. ==References==