Vakhtang Dzabiradze ვახტანგ ძაბირაძე

“Dato Berdzenishvili was arrested first, and on January 3, 1984, we were arrested as well, they did not even let us celebrate the New Year. When Dato was arrested, we stopped our activities. By the way, it was very difficult for them to find clues on us. As the KGB members said later on, they did not expect that we could be the authors of these magazines. They were not expecting 25-year-old guys, but more experienced people, 40-45 years old, therefore they were looking elsewhere. In the end, they still got the person who knew it all. When they caught us, they already knew everything. When Dato was caught, one of the members of our main committee had already told everything [to the KGB]. Then he told us that he might have said something on accident to some woman. When they realized that they were looking in the wrong place, they began to hang around Dato, and the man who told them everything was his relative. They were checking everyone and one of the people who was arrested was this person. He was a member of the main committee, he knew everything and he told them everything he knew.”

“What was written, printed and staged in the cinema and theater in our country, nothing similar happened in other republics. Our intelligentsia then, one might say, was playing on the edge of dissidence. We entered the period when the communist ideology was beginning to break down. Our generation did not actually obey the communist ideology. The Communist Party existed, but people went there to make a career, and everyone knew it. I assume that only one in a hundred people believed in the ideology itself. The rest of the space was anti-Soviet and in Georgia, of course, there was a desire for independence. The emergence of the Helsinki Union was also an added factor.”

“When I entered the Polytechnic Institute, my youth and student years, it was the 70s, some changes were beginning to happen. A very important fact was that Eduard Shevardnadze appeared on the political scene in the 1970s, and this was the period when the conflict within the party was going on and a new force was coming, and indeed Shevardnadze came in 1972. As always, in such a situation, when one ruler leaves, another comes (still similar to today), there is always a free space, because the one who is leaving no longer has the power to fully maintain his influence, and the newcomer has not yet taken power in such a way that would allow him to control everything, and such a situation creates space. I say this because this period coincided with my student years. Also, in Georgia, unlike other republics of the Soviet Union, the field of culture was quite free. What was written, staged and filmed in Georgia, such freedom was rare in other republics. A new generation came along with these transformations, which began in the 70s, when Shevadnadze came and brought a new wave. Today, we are surprised that 20-22-year-old boys are appointed governors, it was like that then, they were just appointed secretaries of the Raikom”