Word: tbilisi
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Shaking their fists defiantly, protesters last week massed at the government house in Tbilisi, capital of the Georgian republic, chanting, "Lithuania! Lithuania! Lithuania!" For this fiercely independent nation of 5.4 million in the Caucasus, the troubles in the Baltics far to the north seemed alarmingly near. Georgians had already felt the Kremlin's determination to keep the union intact, when Soviet paratroopers armed with sharpened spades brutally dispersed a nationalist demonstration in April 1989, killing 20 people. Just as the Baltic states showed support in that hour of crisis, Georgians embraced the tragedy in Vilnius last week...
...impossible to preserve an empire by democratic means!" cried a speaker at the rally. Zviad Gamsakhurdia, chairman of the parliament in Tbilisi and leader of the republic's drive for independence, urged Georgians -- and all ethnic peoples in the Caucasian melting pot -- to set aside their differences and join in opposition to the Kremlin. But he warned against giving way to provocations or taking up arms alone...
...Ossetians as a reward for their political loyalty after the Bolsheviks took control of the republic in 1921. Last September, as the rest of Georgia was moving toward independence, the South Ossetian regional council declared the area to be a "Soviet Democratic Republic" loyal to Moscow. The parliament in Tbilisi responded by dissolving the autonomous region altogether. Conflicts between the Georgian police and local separatists have resulted in at least 12 deaths...
...shaping up in Georgia. The ferociously independent Caucasus republic was ordered by Gorbachev to withdraw its police from the autonomous enclave of South Ossetia. While asserting their own right to go it alone, Georgians have clamped down vigorously on Ossetians venturing to break away from Georgia. Lawmakers in Tbilisi called Gorbachev's fiat "interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign republic...
...festering crisis in the Baltics is only the most obvious manifestation of the problem and by no means the most alarming. The resolve of the leaders there is still tempered with restraint. That is not necessarily so in the southern republics. Speaking privately in Tbilisi two weeks ago, one of Georgia's most popular nationalist leaders denounced as "traitors and collaborationists" any of his countrymen who participate in Soviet-approved parliamentary elections this fall. Such epithets give off a distinct aroma of gunpowder...