The white flags

Author's name: Nodar Dombadze Publisher: Al-Takween for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2021 Literary classification: Politics and History Brief about the book: The Georgian writer Nodar Dombadze (1928 - 1984) spent his childhood and youth in a heavy, harsh historical era, both socially and personally. He was born to two educated Georgian parents, and his father was one of the well-known communist leaders locally in Tbilisi, the capital of the Georgian Caucasian republic. However, violent conflicts that erupted from the beginning of the revolution, effectively, between communist leaders, and which after Lenin's death (1924) led to Stalin's victory over Trotsky and his expulsion from the Soviet Union (1929), continued to escalate and expand, especially after the 17th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party (1934), reaching a peak during what is known as the Stalinist purges in the late 1930s. At that time, the revolution began to devour its own children with brutality that knew no mercy or law. In "The White Flags," Dombadze addresses a topic that touches the core of the social and political system in his country in 1967, when it was part of the communist system, fifty years after the founding of the Soviet Union. He directs our attention to some of the fundamental problems (what we now call corruption in administration and judiciary, and the destruction of social fabric...) that the Georgian society and the totalitarian political system generally suffer from. He places these issues under the microscope, in a narrow, revealing space—an interrogation room—where there is no need for lying.