Uneternal Fire

Why Georgian soldiers stayed at home

One for all. During the Great Patriotic War, a fifth of the population of the USSR was mobilized into the Red Army - approximately 43 million people, of which about 60% died. Without the contribution of all the union republics, their human and material resources, victory would have been unattainable. Therefore, it is quite logical to invite the leaders of all post-Soviet states to the Victory Day Parade. Everyone except Georgia. How this story is seen from Tbilisi - learned The New Times ...

During the Great Patriotic War, the republic sent 700 thousand soldiers to the front - almost a third of its population. 35 Georgians became generals. And 300 thousand did not return from the battlefields. Today in Georgia, according to official data, there are 7,408 veterans of the Great Patriotic War and about 16,000 home front workers. Veteran's pension - from 82 to 129 lari.

* * 1 lari - about 18 rubles. Eternal fire
Victor Petrovich Japiashvili, an 86-year-old professor and war veteran, did not know that veterans from all former Soviet countries would gather in Moscow on May 9 and that everyone would be there except for the Georgian delegation and Georgian veterans. “Georgians, with their blood, deserve to be where they remember the victory over fascism. It is a pity that we have such relations with Russia,” he said.

On this day, Professor Japiashvili is going to go to the Victory Park in Tbilisi, where a commemorative fire will be lit. It burns here only on May 9th. And there are fewer and fewer people in military uniforms with orders and medals every year in the park. “No, I'm not offended. Why would? It just doesn't have that elevated mood that was earlier that day. That time has passed,” he says. And with a grin, he recalls the dilemma he faced two years ago. He had to choose what kind of pension to receive: a veteran of the Great Patriotic War or a doctor of science, a scientist who had worked for 60 years at the Abastumani Astrophysical Observatory, the first high-mountain observatory in the USSR. Georgian legislation prohibits receiving several pensions at the same time. The scientist's pension turned out to be 8 lari more, and therefore the choice was made in her favor. Then, having learned that the veterans' pension was increased, he wrote an application and became a veteran pensioner. “Since then I have been watching,” he says, “maybe the second one will increase.”

Victor Japiashvili recalls with pleasure the year 1942, himself - an 18-year-old student of the Faculty of Engineering, who voluntarily, secretly from his parents, signed up for the army. “I could not go. But then I clearly decided: you can’t betray the Motherland when it needs you.” He recalls how he was wounded near Tuapse by a German shell and he was left without fingers on his hand, how he and his comrades went on reconnaissance, how together, the whole country rejoiced at the capture of Berlin. And he concludes: "Young people do not like Soviet history, I think today not everyone knows that the Soviet flag was hoisted over the Reichstag by Georgians."

sad coincidence
The struggle against the Soviet past in Georgia began in the early 1990s, when a national liberation movement was emerging in the country. Japiashvili recalls an incident that happened to him in 1990, when the memory of April 9 was still fresh (the dispersal of a rally in Tbilisi by the army). “I was late for the train to Abastumani, I was hungry and decided to buy a sandwich. There were 3-4 people in line. I apologized, asked permission to skip the line, and showed my war veteran ID. A young man in line said, “Are you a veteran? And what were you fighting for? Your place is at the end!" I left without buying anything. He says that even then he realized that he would have to live in a completely different country. With the fact that the communist past should be comprehended and re-evaluated, few argue in Georgia. But not everyone approves, for example, the opening of the Museum of the Soviet Occupation of Georgia in Tbilisi in 2006 or the demolition of the monument to the victims of World War II in Kutaisi at the end of 2009. Historian Lasha Bakradze believes that Georgia must by all means step over the Soviet past, not by blowing up monuments, but by "rational comprehension" of this past. “Otherwise, it doesn’t look like a struggle against Stalinism and totalitarianism, but like a distortion of one’s own history. On the unwillingness to take responsibility for history.

By not inviting Georgian veterans to Moscow to celebrate Victory Day, Russia offended veterans first of all: for the young, Red Square is the square of a country that is foreign to them. However, it is unlikely that even the Georgian official delegation would have agreed to go to Moscow, even if they had received an invitation. “There is little glorious in the history of Soviet Georgia. But we should only be proud of the fact that the Georgians fought together with the rest of the world for the victory over the evil of fascism,” says literary critic Zaal Andronikashvili. It is symbolic that the point of view of the Kremlin and Tbilisi coincided so sadly with respect to the Georgian veterans.