Aleksandr Green was born Aleksandr Stepanovich Grinevsky () in a suburb of Vyatka in 1880, the son of the Pole Stefan Hryniewski (russianized as "Stefan Grinevsky"), deported after the January Uprising of 1863, and of a Russian nurse, Anna Lyapkova. In 1896, after graduating from a school in Vyatka, Grinevsky went to Odessa and lived the life of a vagabond. He worked as a sailor, gold miner, and construction worker, but often found himself without a job and sustained himself by begging and with money sent to him by his father.