It is already 20 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union. We were the generation who was filled with hope in 1989, who expected great transformation of the world after the demise of the totalitarian state. We expected so much.

This generation rebelled against domination and violence in the name of a State. We idealized liberal democracy and Western lifestyle and wanted to become ‘free citizens of the world’. And then the year 1992 came with its war in Abkhazia and violence in our streets. This was the year when Gaga Nakhutsrishvili wrote his famous poem ‘No Pal’ and Gio Mgeladze made one of the best short films that I have seen that is called the same name. This was the film about our generation and particularly, the tragedy of our generation. It was so prophetic, telling us the story of the contemporary world with its entire tragedy. What is more important, it was telling us the story of how things would feel in 20 years. It had this incredible power of prediction of the fact that instead of freedom we have surrendered ourselves to violence – constant violence. The poem No Pal was written in memory of Gio Ioseliani who fell the victim of senseless violence in 1992 and the film No Pal has starred the incredible young Georgian actor Levan Abashidze who has also passed away in the war in Abkhazia in 1992.‘No, my friend, it is a lot worse here now, dream and talent are scattered here, and the dream is disappearing, like Messiah, and the calm comes just with the wine and tobacco…There’s only a torture, .and with the speed of seconds I dedicate one of those seconds to your memory. No, my friend, please, don’t come back here, you’ll lose your talent to dream, dream is now rotten, corrupted, mugged, beautiful boy will even lose his tears.’

This is just a small excerpt from this transformational poem by Gaga Nakhutsrishvili. Many wondered in 1992 why was he seeing this new bright future in these tones. But now, 20 years after these words of Nakhtso (that’s how he is referred by his friends and admirers alike) proved to be more than true. The whole generation is feeling that the hopes of 1989 and the end of Cold War were turned into something very different. Now many of the former Soviet citizens from my generations would subscribe to the phrase: “it is lot worse here now”. It is something Shakespearean in Nakhtso’s poetic expression and I will try to explain how.

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“The Court is struck by how the different branches of State power… acted in concert in preventing justice from being done in this gruesome homicide case,” the Court said.

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“When you think about police employees in civilian clothes kidnapping ordinary citizens, torturing and killing them the only comparison that comes to the mind is notorious ‘death squads’ in Latin America. In fact, current Georgian leadership is closely following the authoritarian model of former Peruvian President Fujimori and other electoral autocracies.” – says A.S. Elliot, one of the experts on Georgia and the representative of Georgian Jewish community in the US.

Indeed, the dream of this generation about the democracy and rule of law is being tortured by these acts of violence committed by the police men in civilian clothes, who are later promoted for their ‘service’ to the state.

And indeed, the words of Gaga Nakustrishvili's poem sound prophetic.

“No, my friend, you can’t even smile, since I know that even smile is suffocated by these grudges.”

In some cases poetry becomes the only escape, when courts, parliaments, governments and presidents are suffocating our dreams. “Arts is an avenue where Georgian people run for escape” – A.S. Elliot says. Few experts cautiously express hope that retrial in Sandro Girgvliani case will produce a more fair result. But the majority of Georgians don’t feel the same way.

Sandro Girgvliani died young and was never given a chance to fulfill his dreams.

It was such a familiar picture from Shakespeare’s Richard III. Just before murdering Prince Edward and his younger brother, these are the cruel words that would also have applied to Sandro and many other young people, killed by ‘death squads’:"So wise so young, they say do never live long."