“I had to study in Poti, and I had to study in Batumi. That's how it happened sometimes because we didn't have the means, and we didn't have an apartment at all. Wherever my mother started working, I had to go there too... My mother also taught in a village called Patara Tsemi for two years. There was a children's boarding school, and many children, like me, attended. They didn't have parents; some of them had their parents shot, some of them were exiled... There were so many of us together, people with the same fate, so I didn't have such feelings [of alienation] there anymore... And then I entered the Komsomol, and somehow we got a small room of 11 square meters...”
“When Stalin died, this period surprised me a lot. It was as if the country had collapsed. Now, when we see footage from North Korea mourning the death of Kim Jong Il on Facebook, it was like that back then. This is an inherent feature of the socialist system; it creates such a person. We children all cried, but when I saw that my mother also burst into tears, I was very surprised. When I asked why she was crying, she scolded Beria terribly, said that everything was his fault, and that Stalin was not such a person. Now we can see whose signatures are on the execution lists... Beria's signatures are not there, but Stalin's signatures are”.
“I know about my first impression of what happened in 1937 from my mother's story. I used to wake up at the same time every day, at 2 am, and ask to see my father. As far as I know, my father used to come back from the editorial office late at night because he was the editor of the newspaper and was afraid of making some mistakes. During such times, it turns out that he always woke me up and caressed me. This was my first perception. I asked for a month for my father to talk to me because every time he came, he brought chocolate. This was my first realization that he was gone...”
Guram Soselia was born on August 17, 1935, in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. His father, Grigol Soselia, was a newspaper editor, and his mother was a teacher. Guram was just 2 years old when his father was arrested on October 25, 1937, accused of organizing a terrorist attack against Lavrentiy Beria. The family, without an apartment, had to constantly change their place of residence because it was very difficult for the mother to find a regular job.
In 1958, Guram Soselia graduated from the Faculty of Construction of the Polytechnic Institute of Georgia and was awarded the qualification of an engineer-builder. He served as a senior scientist at the Georgian Academy of Sciences for decades, receiving numerous awards for his many years of scientific and public work.
Guram Soselia has been actively involved in researching the stories of his father and other repressed persons for decades. Since 1992, he was a member and chairman of the board of the “Memorial” Society of Georgia. He also took part in the creation of the draft law defining the status of the politically repressed, which was finally adopted by the Parliament of Georgia in 1997.
