Yakov Kostyukovsky was born in 1921 in the town of Zolotonosha (Ukraine). Yakov's father, Aron, had fought in World War I, and was awarded the Cross of St. George. This gave him the right to attend academic institutions, bypassing the "Jewish quota" adopted by the Tsarist authorities and sitting for the exams on equal terms with non-Jewish students. However, Aron passed this privilege on to his cousin, who eventually became a doctor, while Aron himself went on to work as an accountant for the rest of his life.
Shortly after Yakov's birth, the Kostyukovsky family moved to Kharkov. Yakov finished school there. As a boy, he showed an aptitude for literature. In school, he was an active member of a literary circle, and visited the city's literature studio. Even at this tender age, Yakov Kostyukovsky already ran into trouble with the censors: The satirical sketches that he wrote for the school newspaper were rigorously vetted by his teachers and the Komsomol leaders.
After finishing school with a gold medal, Yakov enrolled in the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy, and Literature (IFLI). At the time, this was considered an elite institution, with a relatively liberal atmosphere that fostered open intellectual inquiry (as far as this was possible under the Stalinist regime). In 1941, IFLI was closed down, and its students were transferred either to the Literary Institute or to Moscow State University.
Yakov Kostyukovsky studied at IFLI for only a year, before being drafted into the Red Army in 1939. He then took part in the Soviet invasion of Poland, which resulted in the eastern Polish regions being annexed and incorporated into Soviet Ukraine and Belorussia. Yakov returned to Moscow in 1940, and went on to attend IFLI for another year.
Following the outbreak of the Soviet-German War in late June 1941, Yakov was invited to work for the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, to which he contributed articles about the Soviet People's Militia. Even at this early stage in the war, he was puzzled as to why the Militia was recruiting untrained individuals, and tried to write about it. His superiors did not appreciate his free-thinking spirit, and had him transferred to the frontline section of Komsomolskaya Pravda. As part of his job, Yakov made periodic trips to the front. On one occasion, the car in which he was traveling hit a landmine, and he suffered shell-shock. Fortunately, he quickly recovered. Apart from working for Komsomolskaya Pravda, he served as executive secretary of the military youth magazine Smena. Eventually, Yakov became embroiled in a scandal: He was accused of paying higher fees to the Jewish contributors to the magazine. Yakov, for his part, accused his denouncers of stupidity and antisemitism. This conflict resulted in him being demoted, exiled from the central press to the peripheral divisional newspaper Za Otechestvo! ("For the Motherland!"). Afterward, Kostyukovsky became a contributor to Kransy Voin ("Red Warrior"), the official press organ of the Moscow Military District. He remained executive secretary of Za Otechestvo! until the end of the war.
When the war was over, Yakov Kostyukovsky was discharged from the military, and resumed his work at the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. He was responsible for its culture section, and later for the satire and humor sections. He went on to edit the same sections at the Moscow-based Komsomolskaya Pravda.
Apart from that, Yakov contributed short stories and feuilletons to the satirical magazines Krokodil and Perets', which were based in Moscow and Kiev, respectively.
In the late 1940s, at the height of the "anti-cosmopolitan" campaign, the Jew Yakov Kostyukovsky was fired from Komsomolskaya Pravda. He then devoted himself exclusively to literature. However, his output still included feuilletons, satirical poems, and screenplays.
In late 1952, despite the growing antisemitic campaign in the country, Yakov Kostyukovsky was admitted to the Soviet Writers' Union.
Gradually, Kostyukovsky switched to writing for the screen. In 1963, he penned the script for the movie Penalty Kick, which starred the celebrated actor, poet, and singer-songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky.
Together with Leonid Gaidai and Moris Slobodskoy, Kostyukovsky wrote the scripts for three comedies that went on to achieve cult status in the USSR: Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures (1965), Kidnapping, Caucasian Style (1966), and The Diamond Arm (1968).
Each time, the screenwriters had to battle the Soviet censors, and the script would be checked and rechecked repeatedly before going into production. Often, the texts and dialogues had to be rewritten. Still, thanks to their use of the "Aesopian language" of Soviet dissidents, the writers managed to get their point across to the viewers.
Kostyukovsky authored scripts for both live-action and animated films.
In October 1993, Yakov Kostyukovsky was among the signatories of the "Letter of Forty-Two" – an appeal by the Russian liberal literati to President Boris Yeltsin in connection with the constitutional crisis of 1993, in which Russian tanks shelled the House of Soviets in Moscow.
1998 saw the publication of a collection of Kostyukovsky's comedic scripts, under the title Life is Good, And a Good Life Is Even Better.
In 2010, Kostyukovsky endorsed a petition against putting up posters depicting Joseph Stalin in Moscow.
Yakov Kostyukovsky died in Moscow in 2011.
