During his school years, Giya was an outstanding athlete and was part of the Soviet reserve Olympic team in sprint on 100 and 200 meters. In his childhood Giya was growing up in multi-language environment speaking in Russian, Georgian, and English in school and Ukrainian at home. In 1986 Giya enrolled in the Foreign Languages Institute in Tbilisi with specialization in English language, but in 1987 he was already drafted in the Soviet Army serving in Turkmenistan on the border with Iran. His mother said that she had to pay to avoid for Georgiy to be sent to Afghanistan (Soviet–Afghan War). During that time the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev started his reforms perestroika along with liberalization of censorship (glasnost). The process only sped up the process of dissolution of the Soviet Union. Trying to stop the process and preserve the Soviet state, several armed and civil conflicts arose in the Soviet Union among which was the April 9 tragedy (Soviet troops killed 20 unarmed civilians) which radicalized many Georgians including Georgiy Gongadze.