Word: gamsakhurdia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Fate can be fickle. Georgian leader Zviad Gamsakhurdia made history eight months ago when he became the first person to win the presidency of a Soviet republic by popular election. It was a stunning triumph for the anticommunist nationalist, who had been at the forefront of Georgia's campaign to gain independence from Moscow. Gamsakhurdia's lead at the polls was so commanding -- he had 87% of the vote -- that few doubted his hold on power. Last week he made history again, this time in an ignominious way: he became the first elected President of a former Soviet republic...
...weeks, fighting had raged in the heart of the capital of Tbilisi between troops loyal to Gamsakhurdia and forces determined to end what they claimed was his dictatorial rule. By early Monday morning last week, after enduring heavy shelling, Gamsakhurdia finally decided it was time to retreat. Accompanied by his family and loyal supporters, he slipped out of the underground bunker in the parliament building where he had been living in a state of siege and fled to the neighboring republic of Armenia...
Tengiz Kitovani, a member of the country's self-proclaimed new Military Council and commander of the rebel National Guard units that helped topple Gamsakhurdia, triumphantly announced, "A new democratic Georgia has been born." But has it? The men who took over are just as strongly nationalistic and authoritarian as Gamsakhurdia, leaving it unclear what political changes they might make. Nor was it known whether the new leadership would move to join the Commonwealth of Independent States that groups together 11 other former Soviet republics. For now, Georgia seems to be playing a perilous lone hand...
...putsch leaders claimed that brute force was necessary to end Gamsakhurdia's brief, tyrannical rule. But they have set a dangerous precedent for the new republics. In overthrowing a popularly elected President, the Georgian rebels discredited the country's fledgling democratic institutions and opened the way for the kind of cyclical struggle between armed political clans that has hampered the growth of democracy elsewhere in the developing world. Says Soviet nationalities expert Paul Goble: "The idea that Gamsakhurdia is a fascist thug being replaced by liberals is nonsense." Not only is Georgia's own future clouded, but there...
Possibly because it was preoccupied with its internal power struggle, Georgia moved only last week to join the new Commonwealth. Yeltsin told Gamsakhurdia that his country will not be admitted until it restores peace and respect for human rights. Though the West was concerned that such violence could become the norm in other former Soviet republics, recent flare-ups have been limited to ethnically divided Moldavia and the Caucasian states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Most of the population, says Russian sociologist Yuri Levada, has proved -- for now, at least -- to be "more democratic, more restrained and more peaceful than...