Salman Raduyev was born in 1967 into the Gordaloy teip (clan) in Novogroznensky near Gudermes in eastern Chechnya. During the early 1980s Raduyev was active in the Komsomol (Young Communist League) of which he eventually became a leader for the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. After attending high school in Gudermes, Raduyev served 1985-1987 in the Red Army as a construction engineer in the Strategic Rocket Forces unit stationed in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, where he became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After demobilization, he studied economy and worked in Soviet construction industry.