Kote Makharadze as a legend

Kote Makharadze, a legendary Georgian sports commentator, would have turned 90 this year. A new revised and corrected edition of the book about him, entitled ‘A report without microphone’ has been released on this occasion in St. Petersburg. A chapter ‘Kote Makharadze in the friends and colleagues’ recollections’ has been added to the book.

Viktor Shenderovich, a Russian writer, shared his memories of Kote Makharadze with JAMnews:

‘Kote Makharadze, who was destined to become a legendary person, used to work at Shota Rustaveli Theatre at that time and had some odd jobs as a master of ceremonies in some other places. A short play about Soviet partisans was his favorite performance.

At around 7:30 p.m., Kote Makharadze, who played a fascist, would get a partisan bullet in his fascist back, fall backstage crying, then would immediately rush to change his fascist clothes into the ordinary civil ones and would leave to win his bred on a side work.

Once, the ‘partisans’ ganged up and Makharadze got shot not in his back at the backstage, but rather in his chest amongst the theatrical scenery. So, there was nothing he could do but fall down, as usual. The stage was long and the performance was due to begin in 20 minutes. The partisans saw that the fascist wasn’t killed, but was just wounded. He was moaning and crawling towards the backstage – the SS-man demonstrated an extraordinary will to live!

And then, an old partisan, the legend says it was great Sergo Zakariadze, overtook the creeping fascist almost at the backstage and barred his way. Young fascist Makharadze jabbed his head into the coryphée’s boot and froze in apprehension. Zakariadze hunkered down near the body, grabbed the fascist by the hair, slightly raised his head, looked into his face and said meaningfully: ‘He’s dead’. And Makharadze was lying there till the end of the scene.’

• The book entitled ‘A report without microphone’ was released by the Humanitarian Academy publishing center. Among those, who contributed to the book  chapter ‘Kote Makharadze in the friends and colleagues’ recollections’, were: Valery Asatiani, Oleg Basilashvili, Kirill Nabutov, Alexander Nilin, Nadezhda Ozerova (Kote Makharadze’s daughter), Gennady Orlov, Arkadiy Ratner, Aleksey Samoylov, Ernst Serebrennikov, Nikita Simonyan, Jamlet Khukhashvili, Tengiz Pachkoria, Mamuka Kvaratskhelia, Viktor Shenderovich.