Life in Soviet Georgia. 70 stories

Description

Until only recently, Georgia was part of a country whose falsity began with its very name. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as it was called in full. Four assertions, and all four of them lies! Nevertheless, we lived, laughed, grieved, joked, studied, and experienced both fear and joy all the same. Gathered together here are 70 stories that recount the personal experiences of 70 authors, or of individuals very close to them. The majority of these people were unfortunate enough to spend a significant portion of their lives in the sort of country that you talk about and talk about, and can no longer believe yourself what you're saying. Why there are 70 stories should be clear: there's one for every year that the USSR existed - an entire lifetime! But why the same number of authors? Couldn't fewer artisans of the pen and word (of whom you'll encounter many here) have managed more? The thing is that each one of us lived through a Soviet Union of our own, filled with our own experiences both bitter and sweet. I believe that the canvas we have succeeded in painting together is far more engaging, and far closer to the truth. Cover Contents Foreword 1. Disclosures from sports broadcasting 2. Selective medicine 3. How I didn’t become a KGB agent 4. A land of beautiful cakes 5. The tin box 6. The wheels in the attic 7. Hello, Comrade Petrov! 8. “Chakrulo” or “Moscow nights”? 9. The truth 10. My doodle of Lenin 11. The blood of the proletariat 12. A story once heard 13. “Be prepared!” 14. Kiev versus Moscow 15. Forbidden activity 16. The young doctor and the granny who saw the war 17. The Georgian Pavlik Morozov 18. The lighter and arker sides of education in Soviet Georgia 19. The instruction to mourn 20. Forbidden genetics 21. The passport 22. Squaring the circle 23. I only know one bank 24. Mania 25. The bliss of ignorance, and dictated freedom 26. A tale of God and white bread 27. The mystery of the opened envelope 28. Gnulovka 29. White blotches 30. “Verbovka” 31. The last supper 32. Total control 33. Two times I cried 34. A wedding night at the Hotel Rossiya 35. “Until he dies” 36. Babrak Karmal 37. By rote 38. Subscribing to newspapers and magazines 39. War and peace 40. Bombs 41. The reward 42. Forbidden literature 43. The Chernobyl tragedy 44. The Georgia beyon the border 45. Domestic censorship 46. A tragicomic tale 47. How I learned to mask my faith 48. Don’t look back, go in peace! 49. To study without studying 50. Title: Fear 51. Persona non grata 52. The Soviet embassy to France and May ʻ68 53. Служу Советскому Союзу?! 54. The silent “Resistenza” 55. Surveillance by child 56. First pain 57. The inverted vineyard 58. The “labour” semester 59. Compensation for a loss 60. Not until Moscow reports it 63. The troublesome book 62. The montage 63. The black box recorder and the apprentices of the absurd 64. Night-shift in the vineyards 65. “Himmler” 66. Long hair and the Komsomol 67. 1984: The Soviet army, Pink Floyd, and the modest charm of “soft power” 68. How Ateni and Tsromi became Athens and Rome 69. My first meeting with the security services 70. The leather dust cover-clad computer The contributors