My last post chronicled the large numbers of people (45% of Russians and up to 62% of Ukrainians) made worse off by the fall of the USSR. But what about the rest?

One man who certainly did not figure among them was Misha, the hero of a vivid, at times zany, groteque and poignant fictionalised account by Georgian writer and journalist Irakli Iosebashvili, the first part of which was published in the current issue of Guernica Magazine.  By following this post-Soviet ‘Gentleman of Fortune’,  the story paints a hustler-eye view of the absurdist, tragic and exhilitaring transition from state socialism.

Misha, the narrator’s streetsmart and charismatic Tbilisi father-in-law, was known even in Soviet times for his entrepreneurial spirit; in a nearly car-less society, he was called “Misha-you know, the one with the car”. As a result of his black-market prowess during the Brezhnev years, Misha “wore fedoras from Turkey and sheepskin coats bought in the Baltics, bell bottoms and shiny boots with big heels”.

Later, as Georgia spiralled into nationalist chaos, the “Soviet Union began to shiver and howl like some great poisoned beast, then went off to its noisy, drawn-out death”, and hyperinflation left Misha “suddenly bereft of one hundred thousand roubles”‘, he headed to Moscow to make dollars instead.

Iosebashvili evokes a Russia which freedom had hit “like a great slap, and people were still reeling from the shock”, where “almost every day, somebody took to the streets—Communists, ultra-nationalists, unhappy miners, cavorting paratroopers” and “pyramid schemes, faith healers, and nationalist movements, each stranger than the next, sprang up on a daily basis”.

This is required reading.