The Sun Does Not Shine Without You: A Memoir of Soviet Georgia

In 1989 the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact were at a crisis as the Communist political and military empire began to crack. In the spring of that year Elizabeth Scott, a student from Williams College studying abroad, found herself in Tbilisi little suspecting the events that would soon convulse this small republic. Her Georgian friends, like many of the youth throughout Georgia, backed the growing pro-freedom movement. When the Soviets brutally cracked down on the protests in April, Elizabeth found herself caught in the chaos, witnessing both her friends' courage and their peril under the weight of the Communist response, a brutal military crackdown that left death in its wake. Finding herself at times in the midst of Russian tanks and soldiers, Elizabeth also found herself drawn to the ancient Orthodox Faith of her hosts. The Sun Does Not Shine Without You recalls these harrowing events, their aftermath, and Elizabeth’s own part in them. {From the back cover} On the eve of the fall of Communism, high-level diplomatic treaty established a college exchange program between America and the Soviet Union.