Flight from the USSR

Soso’s Father

Soso’s Father was a famous professor, one of the best scientists of his era. Unlike the previous generation, in the 1960s and ‘70s they didn’t execute professors and scientists anymore. In return for their lives, the Soviet authorities forced them to cooperate. Most of them did, since the alternative meant never being able to travel abroad to attend important scientific conferences. Such cooperation, at first glance, was nothing special. Sometimes, nothing was requested in return for permission to take foreign trips, but this was superficial. In reality, freedom of speech and the right to self-expression were prohibited. Scientists and professors couldn’t openly express political views and had to always support the government. That’s what really happened. Of course, there were exceptions—those who didn’t want the privileges, apartments and cars given out by the government. Yet there were very few of these people. Mostly, they sat in the kitchens of their council flats. Only there, in the safety of their tiny homes, would they express negative opinions about the Soviet regime. Some academics chose not to speak in the comfort of their kitchens. They were labeled dissidents and thrown in jail.

Soso’s father was not one of these. He was one of the most prominent scientists in Soviet Georgia—an academician who was treated with special respect by Eduard Shevardnadze, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Soso hated his father’s close and warm relations with the authorities.

For the liberal and anti-Soviet Tbilisi youth like Soso, Shevardnadze was a completely unacceptable figure, regarded as just another power-crazy communist. Although promotion and career-building in the Soviet Union required little intelligence or education, it involved something else, and Shevardnadze had it. Having started his career in a beautiful village in Guria, he climbed to the top of the Soviet hierarchy. In the beginning of the 1970s, thanks to his zeal, Shevardnadze reached the top of the Georgian government and easily, managed to charm the country’s intelligentsia. This was helped by the fact that for years the intellectual abilities of the so-called Soviet intelligentsia had been deteriorating (alongside their morals). When Shevardnadze came to power, and immediately started arresting underground entrepreneurs in the black market, the Georgian intelligentsia was delighted because they believed that the arrests of people like Otar Lazishvili were an attempt to fight corruption. They failed to realize that the black market, though illegal, was still key to the foundation of the economy.

Aside from the fact that Soviet-era underground businessmen were extremely daring individuals, they were also gifted people that helped form the middle class. While Shevardnadze won over the intelligentsia with his fight against supposed corruption and the black market, younger Georgians understood that he was an extremely dangerous man. People like Soso hated Shevardnadze, and couldn’t understand why scientist like his father needed to cooperate with such people.

Soso was a student at the Fine Arts Academy and dreamed of financially independence after graduation so he could leave his parents. Soso practically never talked to his father anymore and hardly talked to his mother. She always tried to preserve a peaceful family atmosphere, but what was virtually impossible.

Soso pitied his father. He wouldn’t talk to him anymore, only answering his questions. Before going to the United States to a seminar, his father asked him what to bring him from abroad. Soso simply smiled in reply:

“Nothing,” he said very calmly.

But his father, whom he had madly loved from his early childhood, now looked miserable, so Soso added:

“Thank you.”

His father didn’t say anything else. He already knew what to bring him. He had students, and was keenly aware that the dream of any Georgian youth was a pair of genuine American jeans. For his son’s sake, Soso’s father decided to be brave on his next foreign trip for the first time. As soon as the KGB-employed minder let his attention wander, he would buy real jeans for Soso, even though it scared him stiff.

He was mostly afraid of the uncertainty. He didn’t really know what the punishment was for bringing American jeans into the country. He could be severely punished, or there could be an official reprimand entered into his private record. He could be fired from his position as the Institute Director and expelled from the Party. In that case, there would be TV coverage. Anonymous letters might appear in the press, saying a Soviet academician had been unable to resist the Western temptation and fell for the capitalist lure of Americans jeans. Any letter, or news anchor, would conclude with remarks that: “This is how a Georgian scientist appreciates the efforts of the government. This is how he betrays our country for a pair of cheap trousers.”

When Soso’s father bought the jeans, he could hear this voice ringing in his head. Yet, he was happy that he had finally used some free choice for the first time in his life. Then again, the jeans weren’t as cheap as he thought they would be. They were quite expensive, especially considering the limited funds officially allowed for scientists on trips abroad. Any fee allotted from a public lecture was alwys kept by the authorities. But still, the purchase itself wasn’t the main scare. It was crossing the border control at the airport on the way back. Again, he could hear the voices in his head. For a split second he even thought of taking the jeans out of his luggage and turning himself in, but he managed to build up his courage and dried his sweaty palms. In reply to the Russian border guard’s question about bringing anything illegal goods into the country, Soso’s father smiled at the guard:

“It’s hot,” he said, as he dried his forehead with a handkerchief.

The border guard failed to notice the sweat and repeated his question.

“Nothing,” replied Soso’s father, without much conviction. “Of course not, nothing that’s forbidden,” he added with more conviction.

The border guard looked at him with such penetrating eyes that he was reminded of his students during exams.

“Shall we have a look?” The border guard asked him as he looked down at the scientist’s suitcase.

Soso’s father didn’t trust his voice, so he simply nodded. The only thing he could think of was the cardiac pills he had in his pocket, but he would need to put the medicine under his tongue without the border guard noticing. It wasn’t that easy—the pain began to spread from his heart through his whole body and wouldn’t stop.

When Soso’s father opened his eyes, everything was already over—a woman in a white coat was feeling his pulse, shaking her head ruefully.

“You’ve traveled a long way, so no wonder you’re exhausted. Also, I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but you’re not a young man anymore and you shouldn’t be taking long trips.”

He didn’t know what had really happened at the airport, whether his luggage was checked or not, but when he returned home he found the jeans were still in his bag. What worried Soso’s father the most was that they might have spotted them and said nothing.

He said nothing to his wife or son about the incident. Instead, silently and proudly, he handed the genuine American jeans to his son. Soso simply smiled and thanked his father, but inside he kept thinking about how much worry it must have caused his father to cross the border with them.

Soso mother asked her son to try on the jeans for her to see if they fit but Soso only smiled, kissed his mother and locked himself in his room. He wasn’t a little boy anymore.

He spent the whole night painting and listening to Led Zeppelin. Once in a while he would glance over at his new jeans hanging on a chair below the Mick Jagger poster on the wall. When he became tired, he smoked a cigarette, but he still didn’t try the jeans on. It was dawn by the time he fell asleep.

He didn’t even have breakfast in the morning. He tucked the jeans under his arm and went to see his friend Irakli Kostava.

Irakli was the son of the well-known Georgian dissident, Merab Kostava. Merab, a man of amazing integrity and absolute resolve, was serving the fourth year of his sentence in some remote Siberian camp for his anti-Soviet activities. Soso knew that Irakli’s father would never be able to bring his son real American jeans and would not be coming back to Georgia for a long time. So it didn’t take Soso long to make his decision before he went off to see Irakli.

Irakli had been writing poetry, and had hardly slept. When he saw the jeans, he rubbed his sleepy eyes repeatedly before he finally believed that the jeans were really his. When he eventually realized what he was being given, he smiled, hugged Soso and quietly, but very convincingly, told him:

“I can’t take them.”

Soso had known this would happen, because of Irakli’s pride, and had an answer ready:

“If you don’t take them, I’m going to tear them up.”

“Are they real?” Irakli asked with a laugh.

“Authentic and American,” said Soso, with a trace of resentment in his voice.

“Then you can’t tear them up, real jeans don’t tear.”

“Then I’ll burn them!”

“They don’t burn either, and they’re waterproof,” said Irakli, laughing again.

For almost a year Irakli had worn some authentic jeans his friend had given him. When he wore them, people on the streets of Tbilisi followed him with their eyes, while teenagers came up to him to take a closer look.

Soso was surprised, so Iralki explained:

“I’m just extremely tired and very sick of it,” he said, apologizing to his friend.

Soso thought he was talking about the jeans, but when he heard about his suicide the next day, he understood what he had meant. When he heard the news, he initially thought Irakli had beaten them all, but then he grew angry with himself as he thought about the previous day and how he hadn’t noticed that anything was wrong. Then he cried like a child.

After Irakli Kostava’s funeral, Soso put on Irakli’s jeans and drew a shining sun above the left knee. He wore them up to his own death.

He was buried in those jeans, in secret. They would help Natia Megrelishvili identify his corpse fifteen years later…