Igor Kostin - Early Life and Conscription

Early Life and Conscription

Kostin was born in Bessarabia, in Greater Romania (present day in Moldova), on 27 December 1936, three years before his father, Féodor Kostin, an economist working in a bank, was sent to fight the war for the newly created Moldavian SSR, after Greater Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia to the Soviet Union under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Before the cession, the Kostin family relocated to Kishinev, Moldavian ASSR (present day the capital city of Moldova, Chişinău). They subsequently resided in the suburb of Kishinev for the next thirty-two years, when his father was sent to the war.

From June 1941 onward, under German and Romanian occupation, Kostin was forced to feed on leftovers disposed by the Germans and better off Moldavians with his mother, Nadejda Popovitch, since his father was the sole breadwinner in the family, and there was widespread famine during the occupation. He and his mother frequently transported food such as borscht illegally to the German concentration camps around Kishinev for the Soviet prisoners of war. It was later revealed by Kostin in his photographic book that his mother hoped to find his father in the camps, only to realise later that his father was killed during a bombing years later.

In August 1944, the Soviet Union re-established control over Moldavia, and drove the German and Romanian forces out of Moldavian SSR. The entrance of Soviet forces was ushered by aerial bombardment, and almost killed the Kostins, when a bomb obliterated their residence, when they hid under a bed. They later hid near a German armored vehicle, until Soviet forces enter the city.

The Soviet Union began purging native Moldavians, and send richer farmers and the intelligentsia to concentration camps in Siberia. Private business operations became illegal, and Kostin’s mother operated a small family business, at the risk of being exposed to the officials by neighbors. In the mornings the Kostins would wake up to the clamor of some of their neighbors packing up and being deported. It was at this point of time that Kostin turned into a gangster and lost interests in schooling. His early life turned into a game of survival of the fittest. Most people were preoccupied with obtaining the basic necessities of life.

In 1954, he began military service as a degenerated athletic youth in the army, where he was reformed and became a sapper. He revealed that on at least one occasion he was instructed to dig trenches along the Soviet border in anticipation of an American invasion. By the end of his service he grew more insubordinate and went absent without official leave adding seven months of military jail term to his three year military service. His deputy commander assigned him the task of redecorating the “Leninrooms” — political meeting rooms of the barracks. His jail term was immediately commuted upon the completion of the job.