Kastus Tarasov

Konstantin Ivanovich Tarasov was a Soviet and Belarusian writer.

Konstantin Tarasov was born in Minsk into a clerk’s family on October 10, 1940. After graduating from secondary school in 1957, he worked for three years as a fitter-assembler at the Minsk Mechanical Plant, as an employee in the South-West Geological Prospecting Expedition, and as a fitting installer in the organization Spetselevatormelstroy. In 1965 he graduated from the Faculty of Chemical Technology of the Belarusian Polytechnic Institute. After graduating from the institute, he worked as a glassmaking foreman at the Neman glassworks and as a technologist at the Monolit plant in Vitebsk. He was an editor and head of editorial staff at the Vysheyshaya Shkola publishing house (1967–1975), a journalist and head of the propaganda and agitation department of the newspaper Znamya Yunosti (1975–1977), editor of the art and criticism department of the magazine Neman (1977–1983), and special correspondent for the newspaper Litaratura i mastatsva (1986–1987). Since 1989 he had been the executive secretary of the magazine Spadchyna. In 1995 he founded his own publishing house, Lektsiya. As an author, he collaborated with the newspapers Svaboda, Naviny, Nasha Svaboda, and Novy Chas. He was a member of the USSR Writers’ Union since 1982.

He first came to prominence as a writer in 1976 with the novella Investigative Experiment (in the magazine Neman, Minsk). He wrote in Russian and Belarusian, in the historical-adventure and detective genres. Many of his works are connected with the history of Belarus. He is the author of the books Day of Dispersion (1980), In the Archer’s Time (1981), the collection of historical and literary essays Memory of Legends / Memory of Legends in Belarusian (1984), Journey in a Close Circle (1986), The Chase at Grunwald (Moscow, 1986, Prize of the USSR Ministry of Defense), Golden Hill (1998), The Prince of Mindaugas’s Last Love (2000), Belarus. A Historical Journey for Children (2000), The Cross of Memory, the Sword