1921-1990 story of one man and country

I was born in a country called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Soviet Union for short, or USSR for short. I was always pleasantly excited by the Stendhal title "Red and Black" in literature, and in life this abbreviation - the USSR, which was best described by the strange title of Stendhal's novel: I was born in a communist ("red") and all desperate ("black") country. I had to come out like this myself, I had to apply for the membership of the Communist Party of the USSR and do black work. I didn't come out like that, and it's thanks to a lot of people, starting with parents, continuing with teachers, ending with foreign "voices" and Samizdat-Tamizdat.

When I look back at the Soviet kindergarten, school and university, I can't believe that the Soviet education system really existed, that even in the mathematics problems communist propaganda was somehow hidden next to the fetishized trigonometry, that the history textbook did not even mention the word "independence" in connection with the word Georgia, and the physics textbook did not even mention the names of Marconi and Tesla in connection with the radio, giving the title of its inventor to Popov; Kindergarten children really sang "Lenin, dear uncle" with all our voices, we really wore pioneer's neckbands, we suffered terribly from being refused even a temporary admission into the Communist Union, and even in our conversations we openly condemned Western Europe and the USA, and as soon as we started to climb out of this quagmire, we lost friends at a catastrophic rate.

On May 21, 1978, four young people formed the Republican Party. The same evening I had a fever of 40 degrees. Then I forgot about this story for a long time. 

When I remembered, I also understood its nature - it was panic fear. We created an underground party and we were afraid, we voted and we were afraid, but we were proud if we voted anyway. Now I look at my students who do not know fear and I am glad that we have achieved this.

One of the main joke texts of my youth started like this: "Flight G1 2001 Chokhatauri-Paris..." and now on the Tbilisi-Batumi road I deliberately went to Kopitnar airport to see with my own eyes the completely non-joking "Flight W6 2837 Kutaisi-Vienna..." My dream has come true: sick or well, my country is moving forward.