Kostenetskaya, Marina Grigoryevna

Family and Early Years

Marina Kostenetskaya is the late and only child of her parents, born a month before the next exile of her father, Grigory Fedorovich Kostenetsky (1892-1961). He came from a family of clergymen, before the revolution he graduated from the law faculty of Moscow University . He lived in Leningrad , was arrested for his origin in the case of Kirov ’s murder , when 12 thousand “socially alien elements” came under repression . In 1937 he was convicted and sent to a settlement in the Pskov region. Since the beginning of World War II, Grigory Fedorovich was not subject to draft by age, and the Pskov region quickly fell under occupation , he moved to Riga under German authorities. There he met his future wife Ekaterina Timofeevna (1905-1988), a pianist. The Kostenetsky attempted to flee with the retreating German troops, but in 1945 they returned from Germany to Riga, where their daughter was born. Marina did not see her father for 10 years until he returned to Riga in 1955. Until this time, Ekaterina Timofeevna raised her daughter alone, the family was in great need ^[1] .

Passion for literature

Since childhood, Marina Kostenetskaya was fond of literature ^[2] and after leaving school she went to work as a teacher in Chukotka , later writing a book about this region - “Cold Face Moon”. In the preface to her, the writer Nikolai Zadornov noted: “I remember how young Marina sent us, to the Writers' Union , her photographs, where she is with a gun on a goose hunt, then with two deer donated to her ... Like the heroine of her story, she she lived in Chukotka in the most difficult conditions, agreeing to teach in the tundra in a mobile brigade of shepherds ... She wrote a book without embellishment, with love for people and nature, revealing subtle observation. ” After returning from Chukotka, Kostenetskaya had health problems, so she added the book to the Dikli tuberculosis sanatorium. The book, influenced by the friends of Marina's poetess Lydia Zhdanova and her husband, writer and translator Viktor Andreev, received a recommendation for publication from the Writers' Union, however, the already collected galleys were removed from print due to the prohibition of censorship - Glavlit .

Then the chief doctor of the Dikli sanatorium Andrei Laukmanis recommended Kostenetskaya to enter the Riga Medical Institute , believing that she would make a good children's doctor. Marina passed the exams on the first attempt and in 1971 was enrolled in the first year.

However, two years later, the first book of Kostenetskaya was still published, which was helped by the patronage of Nikolai Zadornov ^[1] . In 1973, a young writer left the Medical Institute.

In 1975-1977, Marina Kostenetskaya studied at the Higher Literary Courses at the Literary Institute. Gorky in Moscow . In 1975, she was admitted to the Latvian Writers Union, in 1977, she began to work in the editorial office of the literary magazine Daugava .

After the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant twice in 1986, she visited the accident site on journalism trips, receiving radiation, which caused her joints to hurt in adulthood and was confined to a wheelchair.

In the Popular Front

On June 1-2, 1988, Marina Kostenetskaya was an active participant in the Plenum of Creative Unions of Latvia and the only Russian writer who spoke at it, raising her voice for her people , as she saw that the speeches of other participants against the Soviet system were sliding into anti-Russian rhetoric .

During the formation of the Popular Front of Latvia ^[3] became one of its activists.

She ran for the Preili constituency in the elections of people's deputies of the USSR and was elected among 10 competitors. “I won these elections, first of all, as a Russian writer, whom the Latvian electorate knew well ,” wrote M. Kostenetskaya ^[2] .

At the 1st Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, she was elected a member of the Supreme Council of the USSR .

After the self-dissolution of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, for some time she was unemployed, her close friend Lidia Durshits helped her through a difficult year, with whom they fed from the garden on the farm bought by Kostenetskaya as a “house of creativity” ^[1] .

From 1992 to 2009, Marina Grigoryevna was a leading author of the popular program “Dome Square” on Latvian radio .

Being a brilliant figure in the Popular Front of Latvia, Marina Kostenetskaya has consistently advocated for democratic values ​​after the restoration of Latvia’s independence, believing that “we have not achieved what, in fact, the revolution took place: real freedom. And this happened because we did not reach consensus between the two communities and we created a bicommunal state with our own hands ” ^[4] .

• In 1994 she was awarded the Order of Three Stars for Services to Latvia .
• In 2005 it was recognized as the “voice of the Latvian Radio ”.

Since the 1980s, Marina Kostenetskaya was fond of agni yoga, was friends with the daughter of the head of the Riga Roerich Society, Richard Rudzitis Gunta, in 1990, she first visited India ^[1] and then repeated her visits twice more.

• Cold Face Moon - Riga, 1973.
• Tomorrow at Dawn - Moscow, 1976.
• Long, long kilometers - Novosibirsk, 1976.
• Baltās kāpas (“White Dunes” (in Latvian)) - Riga, 1983.
• Far from the Gulf of Mexico: Stories and Tale. - M .: Mol. Guard, 1984. - 320 p. - 100,000 copies.
• They sat on the golden porch ...: [Stories]. - Riga: Liesma, 1984. - 304 p. - 30,000 copies.
• Aren't you afraid, apple tree, in the garden at night? [About orphans: Collection]. - Riga: Liesma, 1989 .-- 317 p. - 30,000 copies. - ISBN 5-410-00436-1 .
• Esmu nolemta dzīvei (“Doomed to life” (in Latvian)) - Riga, 1989.
• Šis biķeris man neies secen (“This cup will not pass me” (in Latvian)) - Riga, 1995.
• Lēti pārdodu klaunu (“A cheap clown is for sale” (in Latvian)) - Riga, 2007.
• Cheap sold clown. - Riga: Tapals, 2008 .-- 452 p. - ISBN 978-9984-796-49-9 .
• My twentieth century. In collaboration with Georg Strazhnov . - Riga, CREA, 2018 .-- 356 c. - ISBN 978-9934-19-428-3 .
• Books in Czech and Slovak languages: “The Moon of the Cold Face” (1980, Prague), “Tomorrow at Dawn” (1980, Bratislava).

• Biography (Latvian)