Belarus: Flight from the USSR

Hello peeps! I’m back with #booxploringtheworld again and this time we’re going to Georgia.

Georgia is a country situated on the landmass between the Black and the Caspian seas.It shares its northern border with Russia, which played a role in shaping its modern history. It was a part of the USSR as the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic.

This book is the true story of a group of young people who, fed up with Russia’s oppressive policies and enamoured by the glamour of the West, decided to hijack a plane and head outside the country. It was the peak of the Cold War, and permission to travel outside the USSR was restricted to very few people, thus the need for such drastic measures.

The hijackers are showcased as naïve individuals who underestimated the consequences of their actions for which they had to pay the ultimate price. The plan was to reroute the plane to Turkey, but the pilots landed it back in the capital city of Tbilisi. It was followed by a shoot-out between the hijackers and Special Forces which resulted in the deaths of 8 people. The book portrays the deaths as completely due to Soviet firing, but the author’s neutrality is questionable. Descriptions of their treatment under custody and how unfair the trial was, give us a good picture of Georgia under the USSR.

After I read the book, I also found a documentary called ‘Bandits’ on YouTube which covers the same incident. Seeing the people that I read about in the book was nice, but at the same time sad😕

Fun Fact: Followers of Greco-Roman mythology must’ve heard of Colchis. Yes! Colchis was the place Jason and the Argonauts sailed for to get the Golden Fleece. Ancient Colchis was on the eastern edge of modern Georgia on the coast of the Black Sea!