Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

Russian soldiers. The strip was only a few seconds long.
"These shots were taken by a bystander with an infrared-sensitive video camera. In the
morning of the 9th of April the bodies of twenty young women, all under twenty-five, and one
young man, were found laid out in the morgue of the Tbilisi hospital."
Tears were streaming down Eliso’s face. When CNN changed to other news I turned off
the TV. And then she started shouting at Gorbachev. Rowing her arms, her face distorted by
years of hatred, she tore apart the man whom the West considered the "Good Man in Moscow"
if not the new Russian saint. "Perestroika is a farce, and Gorbachev is a murderer. He ordered
this massacre to scare Georgia back into submission."
This appeared an exaggeration to me. I shook my head. How could Gorbachev have
ordered this massacre? Eliso was not to be quieted down, with renewed anger she continued.
"You think Gorbachev will bring freedom and democracy to the Soviet Union? You do not
understand this man, he is a Russian Communist as intent on saving the Communist Party and
the power of the Soviet Union as any of his predecessors. Perestroika is at best an illusion and
at worst a smokescreen behind which the old Russian imperialism lies in wait. As you see,
ready to forcefully break the back of any republic which tries to secede from the union."
She looked into space. "This massacre will unmask perestroika, and that will be the end
of it. After everybody will have understood what happened today, the Soviet Union is going to
fall apart. Deda Sakartvelis will put an end to Ruskaya Derzhava, Russian power."
Eliso’s prophesy would be proven true. The death of the twenty Georgian girls set the
stone rolling. Within a year the Berlin Wall came down, Eastern Europe was free, and
Transcaucasia, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Baltics had split from the Union. Gorbachev
was powerless to stop this process, and in the end he decided to help it on. He would be given
the Nobel Peace Prize by a grateful West.
And Georgia would, for the second time since 1917, declare its independence from
Russia—and within another year skid into a terrible, humiliating fratricidal war…
The End
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