Flight from the USSR

de Datʻo Turašvili, Maya Kiasashvili

Aeroflot Flight 6833, en route from Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, to Leningrad, Russian SFSR, with an intermediate stop in Batumi, was the scene of an attempted aircraft hijacking by seven young Georgians on 18-19 November 1983. The crisis ended with a storming of the Tu-134A airliner by Soviet special forces that resulted in eight dead. The surviving hijackers were subsequently tried and executed. The novel is based on the most tragic and scandalous story of Soviet Georgia of 1980s. Seven young people hijacked an airplane to escape from the Soviet Union, which was an exceptional action, because at that time even a mere thought of escaping from the Soviet Union was a criminal offense! The Soviet government condemned most of these young people to death for their naive, even if dangerous, attempt. The public opinion was split. A part of the public considered the youngsters to be just ordinary terrorists. The other part would argue that living under the Soviet regime was so unbearable that this could even justify the hijacking of a plane.