Word: tbilisi
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
Some balance nevertheless crept in from more liberal radio stations and newspapers. Komsomolskaya Pravda carried a front-page picture of a body under a tank and the question "Tbilisi, Baku, Vilnius, what next?" Under the headline BLOODY SUNDAY, Moscow News published a statement from 30 well-known intellectuals, including two of Gorbachev's most important former economic advisers, labeling events in Lithuania "a crime...
...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...