Serhiy Lyfar was born on March 20 (April 2), 1905 (according to other sources – April 2 (15), 1904) in the then suburb of Kyiv, the village of Pirogov or in the village of Vita-Litovsk, in the family of an assistant forester of the Trypillya-Vityansk forestry, Mykhailo Yakovych Lyfar, and his wife, Sofya Vasylivna Marchenko. In the register of the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross of the Lord in the village of Pirogov, where the Lyfar family was a parishioner, there is a record of his birth on March 20 and baptism on April 10, 1905. The Lyfar family had deep Cossack roots. Later, Serhiy Mykhailovych recalled how, while visiting his grandfather in Kanev, he listened to stories about the heroic past of Ukraine and examined “yellowed, faded certificates with wax seals that were awarded to Lyfar by Ukrainian hetmans and kosh atamans of the great Zaporozhye Army.” In 1913, Serhiy went to study at the Imperial Alexander Gymnasium. Later, he continued his studies at the 8th Kyiv Gymnasium. The boy was endowed with a subtle musical sense. Since childhood, Lyfar sang in the church choir of the Sophia Cathedral, took violin lessons from Professor Voyachek, and attended the piano class at the Kyiv Conservatory. But the decisive moment in his fate was his meeting with Bronislava Nizhynska, the sister of the then famous dancer Vaclav Nizhynsky. It was her Kyiv ballet studio “School of Movement” that became the first step to the heights of fame for 17-year-old Serhiy. Ukraine and Kyiv remained Lifar’s bright dream until the end of his life. “Even the beautiful, brilliant Paris could not make me, a Kyivan, forget my wide, majestic Dnieper,” he said.

When presenting the Order of the Legion of Honor, Charles de Gaulle once again offered Serge Lifar citizenship and addressed him:
“Monsieur Lifar! You have done so much for France that few other famous Frenchmen have done. Isn’t it time for you to become French with a passport?” Lifar replied: “I am sincerely grateful, Mr. President, for your offer. But I have never been and will never be French, because I am Ukrainian and my homeland is Ukraine.” He remained the owner of a Nansen passport, a “person without a state” — he could not renounce his roots, ancestors, the land where he was born. Already expelled from the theater, he once came to the Grand Opera in an embroidered vyshyvanka, and then shared his most cherished dream: “I dream of returning to Ukraine. However, at home, unfortunately, no one knows me, and in France they have forgotten me.”

Oles Ilchenko recalled that Valery Parsegov, who was acquainted with Serge Lifar, told him that Lifar emphasized his Ukrainian origin in conversations with him.