Фота: "Наша Ніва".
Prominent Belarusian public figure and architect Maya Kliashtornaya has died in Belarus at the age of 89.
Her life embodied the tragedy of an entire generation of the Belarusian creative elite destroyed by Stalinist repression, as well as a decades-long commitment to preserving historical truth.
Maya Kliashtornaya was born on May 31, 1937, just six months after the arrest of her father, renowned Belarusian poet Todar Kliashtorny. When she was three months old, her mother was sentenced to exile in the Akmolinsk Camp of Wives of Traitors to the Motherland (ALZhIR), where the infant was taken to the camp’s orphanage. Todar Kliashtorny was executed in Minsk during the mass executions of October 1937, together with other representatives of the Belarusian intelligentsia.
Her mother was able to reunite with her daughter only in 1947. After years of deprivation, exile in Siberia and a severe spinal illness that confined her to a hospital bed for seven years, Maya returned to Belarus in 1955. After qualifying as an architect, she worked at Belprampraekt in the general planning department, focusing on urban development and spending most of her professional life there.
Her professional expertise and architectural experience directly contributed to efforts to protect and commemorate the victims of political repression. Maya Kliashtornaya served as the scientific supervisor of the Kurapaty memorial, cared for the site for decades, defined its protected boundaries, defended the national necropolis from development and initiated the installation of commemorative boundary stones. For her work to restore historical justice, she was awarded the Medal of the Centenary of the Belarusian People’s Republic, and she was a regular participant in the traditional marches to Kurapaty.
Even in later life, she continued her fight for the truth. In 2017, she succeeded in gaining access for the first time to the classified case file of her repressed mother. Maya Kliashtornaya leaves behind the memory of a person of unwavering strength who transformed personal suffering into a shield protecting Belarus’s national memory.