„Their Eyes Should Not See Blood, Mariam!..“ (Food for Thought About Leo Kacheli’s Novel „Gvadi Bigva“)

Abstract

Despite the fact that the famous Georgian writer Leo Kiacheli (1884-1963), in his youth, was engaged in certain revolutionary activities, his "interest" in the principles of socialist realism still leaves the impression of a kind of political compulsion. Nevertheless, Leo Kiacheli in the novel “Gvadi Bigva” managed to portray, more or less faithfully, the struggle of different social forces on the example of a Georgian village in the 1930s. In the last phrase of Gvadi ("Their [children’s] eyes should not see blood, Mariam!..") one can quite possibly read veiled criticism of any kind of violence (including the Bolshevik one).