Flight from the USSR

The First

The Georgians have always liked saying that there’s nothing accidental in this world. With this in mind, it is important to mention the period when Soso rented a small cozy flat on Lvov Street. The place was basically a bedsit, accommodating a group of friends who regularly socialized at night. The living room on Lvov Street was meant to be Soso’s temporary studio, but with all the boarders living there, he could paint only half the day. With little time to work, Dato helped with the rent, sometimes paying for the whole month. Besides having money, Dato had a heart of gold.

One evening on Lvov Street, before they began to discuss the possibility of a hijack, the friends reminisced about the events of April 14th 1978. It was a day when the streets of Tbilisi were packed with people protesting the Kremlin’s decision to remove the constitutional status of the Georgian language in favour of Russian. The rally famously reached such a scale that it forced Moscow to reconsider their decision. As they talked about how to escape from the USSR, no one could later recall who mentioned the word ‘hijack’ first. They were unable to recollect this detail even when they were locked in KGB cells and had time to go over all the stages of their plan. They failed to answer the recurring question during long interrogations: “Who was the first to mention a hijack?” They weren’t asked to provide reasons for why they wanted to flee the USSR. Supposedly, every Soviet police officer knew that answer all too well.

That evening on Lvov Street, several nonviolent methods of fleeing the USSR were tossed around before a hijack was mentioned. Nothing was said about the reasons for escape. Everyone in the group agreed that it was impossible to stay in the country where their human rights were neglected, voices of opposition sat in prison and the media was tightly controlled. For young artists or innovators, any creative initiative was subject to harsh KGB censorship. All of these were reasons to want to escape from the USSR. Yet that evening, as they sat in that rented room heavy with cigarette smoke, none of the gathered friends mentioned them aloud.

Their memories of that evening were strange. They could all remember the discussion, and could recount every single detail to the investigators, except for that one detail.

They remembered listening to Dark Side of the Moon, which Gega had brought over. They recalled arguments about various alternative methods for fleeing. Eventually, they agreed that any method other than a hijacking was a waste of time and effort.

The argument seemed watertight; there was no other way. In Georgia, it was impossible to get travel visas to Western countries except in the rare cases where you had influential parents. It was more realistic to go to one of the East European countries but, they reasoned, what was to use of moving from one prison to another, even if the latter was slightly better? Back in the ’20s, up until 1929, the border between the USSR and Turkey was only partially controlled and hundreds of Georgians took advantage of the security slackness to cross the border. Inhabitants of the mountainous region of Achara were familiar with all the mountain paths and clandestine routes into northern Turkey and would help for the right price. Those who made it then moved on to Europe.

But by 1929, this escape route was blocked forever.

After World War II, the so-called ‘Iron Curtain’ was truly impossible to lift, even an inch. In the 1950s, some embarked on a seemingly inhuman task of swimming the Black Sea. Amongst several decades of failed attempts, there was evidence of at least one successful attempt. A Russian from Batumi managed to reach the Turkish shore, probably because he was a professional swimmer. However, he was immediately arrested by the Turkish police and put in prison for three years because no one believed a Soviet citizen could swim all the way to Trabzon without the KGB helping him. He was accused of spying, even after he suggested he swim from Trabzon to Istanbul along the seashore to demonstrate his skill and physical abilities.

But that summer evening in 1983, when Soso and Gega’s friends got together on Lvov Street, they could only discuss these escape attempts as myths and legends. The idea of escaping by swimming was far-fetched at best.

Then someone mentioned a hijack as another peaceful option of escape. They argued there was no need for violence, or risk of casualties, as they would only use weapons to threaten the pilots. The plan sounded so simple that some smiled, while others thought it was a joke. It was maybe the fantastic and unlikely nature of the plan that helps explain why no one was able to later recall the author of the suggestion. Throughout the nine months of close interrogation and imprisonment, every single detail of their plan came out. But without exception, everyone completely forgot the simple detail that was crucial to the investigation. The prisoners might have erased it from their memory the moment they heard it. As the investigation wrapped up, the authorities gathered every other fact and feature of that evening on Lvov Street except one—who said it first?