Word: gamsakhurdia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Chaos in Georgia With ethnic war threatening to fracture the former Soviet republic of Georgia into several smaller units, ousted President Zviad Gamsakhurdia seized the western province of Mingrelia. ''This can be compared to the French Resistance,'' said Gamsakhurdia. Meanwhile, separatists who captured Abkhazia, the westernmost region of Georgia, continued ''ethnic cleansing''-style expulsions...
...Eduard Shevardnadze, Georgia's head of state, suffered this humiliating defeat than he too began receiving military assistance from the Russians. Those weapons, however, were not for fighting the Abkhazians -- who had already consolidated their victory -- but for putting down another insurrection by Georgian followers of former President Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Thanks to the Russian guns, Gamsakhurdia's resistance finally collapsed. Now rival leaders on both sides of the rope boundary find themselves indebted to Moscow. To Chachua, at least, the logic is all too obvious. "Everything here," the Georgian commander concludes, "depends on Russia...
...than a decade later, he became Georgia's first freely elected President, only to stun everyone again, this time by forging a brutish dictatorship whose excesses provoked his own violent ouster. Last week, after a 20-month exile in which he fought an unsuccessful war to regain power, Zviad Gamsakhurdia carried out his most baffling flourish yet, shrouding his apparent death in the same jumble of contradictions with which he lived his life...
...story provided by his wife and a spokesman was that after being surrounded by government forces, Gamsakhurdia committed suicide as "an act of protest against the existing regime" in Georgia. But did he really? Opponents said that he was killed by one of his own associates. And others raised the possibility -- perhaps farfetched -- that he may still be alive...
...Georgia's most beloved writers, Gamsakhurdia was imprisoned in 1977 for founding a human-rights organization in Georgia. His televised repentance bought his release, allowing him to run for President in 1991. Once in office, however, he muzzled the press, imprisoned rivals and stonewalled parliament. He was overthrown in 1992. Undeterred, Gamsakhurdia unleashed a civil war that was quieted only after Russian troops joined the fray on the side of President Eduard Shevardnadze, who, when he heard of his rival's death, pronounced that the man had been "a political corpse for a long time." Without confirmation of when...