Nikolai Slichenko was born into a large gypsy family in the Belgorod Region on December 27, 1934. He had four sisters and brothers.
 After the war, the family settled at one of the farms in the Voronezh Region, where Nicholai first heard of the existence of the Musical and Drama Gipsy Theatre "Romen" in Moscow.
In 1951, 16-year-old Nikolai Slichenko was admitted to the world's first and only gypsy theater  - The Romen. Lyalya Chyornaya, M.V. Skvortsova, S.I. Andreeva, M.I. Cherkasova, and other outstanding gypsy actors and actresses of the senior generation became the teachers and stage partners of Nikolai Slichenko. In total, he has played more than 60 roles at his home theater. Moreover, he has acted in dozens of feature films and television series.
The natural outcome of such a creative heyday was his transition to stage directing. From the first trial as an assistant director to the director-producer of landmark stage productions, such as "Grushenka" after Nikolai Leskov, "We are Gypsies" authored by Ivan Rom-Lebedev and Nikolai Slichenko, "The Living Corpse" by Leo Tolstoy, "Fidelity" by G. Kashuba, "Birds need the Sky" by Ivan Rom-Lebedev, "Countess, the Gypsy" by P. Gradova P., and others.
Nikolai Slichenko graduated from the Advanced Directing Courses, where he studied under the People's Artist of the USSR, Andrey Goncharov.
Since 1977, Nikolai Slichenko has been the art director of the Romen Theatre.
Nikolai Slichenko is not only a bright actor, director, and performer, but also a great teacher. Caring about the future of the Gypsy theatre, he has founded a special professional training studio for for the Romane Theater at the Gnessin Music School.
Nikolai Slichenko is a professor, a member of the International Theatre Academy (2001), the Security, Defense and Law Academy (2001).
He is the Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1968), the People's Artist of the RSFSR (1975), and the People's Artist of the USSR (1981).