"We are in grief." Writer and human rights activist Nina Katerli, grandmother of Yevgenia Berkovich, accused of "justifying terrorism," has died.
“We have grief: Nina Semyonovna Katerli died. A wonderful person, writer, anti-fascist, human rights activist,” — the deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly reported on his social networks Boris Vishnevsky.
Nina Katerli was 89 years old.
She began writing in the 70s. She published her first collection of stories, "Window," in 1981. She worked in the genre of "fantastic realism" and also satire on Soviet reality.
She was involved in human rights activities and supported political prisoners. She was a member of Memorial and the PEN Club of St. Petersburg (she was designated a "foreign agent" and self-destructed in May 2023).
Katerli's signature appears under appeals and open letters from the Russian intelligentsia in defense of political prisoners and against human rights violations in Russia.
In the late 90s, she defended a naval officer accused of treason. Alexandra Nikitina, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other defendants in the Yukos case. She was against rewriting the Constitution.
“I say ‘NO!’ to the so-called ‘amendments to the Constitution’, which were devised with one sole purpose – to reset presidential terms and give Putin lifelong rule, — Katerli wrote in 2020. "I say 'NO!' because the unchangeability of power leads any country to a dead end. We've been trying to get back on our feet for 20 years—and where have we ended up in this awkward position?"
In May 2023, Nina Katerli's home was searched in connection with her granddaughter's case. directed by Evgenia Berkovich, who is in pretrial detention on charges of justifying terrorism in a play "Finist the Bright Falcon"The Golden Mask-winning play tells the stories of Russian women who married Islamists and fled to Syria.
Photo: open sources