Down with Big Brother (41 page)

“We have sworn.”

W
HILE THE PATRIARCH WAS ADDRESSING
the demonstrators outside the Georgian parliament, the man who would determine their fate was pacing up and down Lenin Square. At fifty-three, Colonel General Igor Rodionov was one of the most experienced commanders in the Soviet army. He had served in Afghanistan, where he had annoyed his superiors by refusing to open fire on unarmed civilians. As commander in chief of the Transcaucasian military district, he had spent much of the past year in endless negotiations with warring factions in Armenia and Azerbaijan. He had also been involved in relief operations in Armenia following the earthquake of December 1988. He was a fanatical believer in order and discipline, and his life revolved around the army. He regarded the region’s squabbling politicians with contempt.

Outsiders who met Rodionov were impressed by his intelligent, well-educated veneer. But they were also struck by another side to his character, a total, almost blinkered loyalty to the Communist Party. Here was a man who had grown up entirely within the system. Like many of his colleagues in the military, he was dismayed by the massive political upheavals taking place in the Soviet Union. The anti-Soviet and anti-Russian slogans pasted up all over Tbilisi—slogans like “Down with Russian Imperialism”—offended him deeply. He regarded the protesters who had taken over the plaza as revolutionary subversives, attempting to overthrow the constitutional order. As far as the general was concerned, this was not a peaceful demonstration. It was an “anti-Soviet orgy.”
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At first Rodionov had been reluctant to involve the army in the Georgian crisis. Ensuring public order was a matter for the police, not the military. But as the demands of the demonstrators grew steadily more outrageous, he changed his mind. The republic’s leaders were no longer able to control events. The local security forces were already stretched to the limit by the upheavals in the Black Sea region of Abhazia. Rodionov concluded that only the army had the means, and the political will, to restore order. The Defense Ministry in Moscow had dispatched two thousand troops to Tbilisi to assist him.

Precisely who gave orders for force to be used against the demonstrators outside the parliament building later became a subject of intense political controversy. Soviet leaders, from Gorbachev downward, denied any knowledge of the affair. But in those predawn moments in Lenin Square, the chain of command seemed perfectly clear. Despite his strong political views, Rodionov was not the kind of officer who would launch a military operation by himself without the authorization of his superiors.

A subsequent investigation showed that the general had received written instructions from the Soviet Defense Ministry to take the parliament building “under control.” How this was to be done was left vague, but “the center” was kept fully informed of the military preparations. A deputy defense minister and several senior Central Committee officials were in Tbilisi, monitoring the crisis. The decision to apply force was endorsed by local party leaders, who later claimed that they were in constant communication with the center, through KGB channels. Several minor operational details, including a last-minute decision not to use water cannon against the demonstrators, were also “agreed” with Moscow.
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At 3:30 a.m. Rodionov in Lenin Square received a telephone call from Dzumber Patiashvili, the first secretary of the Georgian Communist Party, who was at home. The two men spoke over a radiotelephone. Under the influence of his Russian deputy, Patiashvili had earlier firmly supported the use of force against the demonstrators. He was convinced that there was no other way of preserving Communist Party power in Georgia. But now he was beginning to panic. His subordinates had told him about the demonstrators’ refusal to heed the patriarch. There were too many people in front of the parliament building.

Perhaps, he suggested to Rodionov, the operation should be postponed for a little while?

The general said it was too late. Emotions were at a fever pitch. If the army backed down now and failed to restore order, anything could happen. He promised Patiashvili that there would be “no complications.”
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Rodionov returned to his commanders in a determined mood. The short, pugnacious man was convinced of the righteousness of his cause. His troops were lined up beneath the outstretched arms of the gigantic Lenin statue in the middle of the square, as if receiving the blessing of the father of Soviet communism. The armored cars were revving their engines.

“Let’s begin,” the general announced. It was exactly 4:00 a.m.
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E
VERYONE DOWN ON THEIR KNEES
,” shouted Tsereteli as the troops began their slow march up Rustaveli Avenue, in the direction of the parliament building. “They won’t beat you if you are on your knees.”
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A chant of “Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name” echoed from the loudspeakers around the plaza. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”

“Give us this day our daily bread,” shouted the hunger strikers, sitting on the grass alongside the broad steps leading up to the parliament building, itself set back some fifty yards from the avenue.

Ten thousand voices-young, defiant, seemingly ready for any sacrifice—joined in the prayer. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.”

The demonstrators could see the headlights of four armored personnel carriers moving toward them through the darkness, occupying the width of the avenue. Behind the APCs they could see a line of Interior Ministry troops, thwacking their plastic shields with heavy rubber truncheons. Behind those troops came several companies of paratroopers, who had been given the task of guarding the parliament building once the plaza in front of it was cleared. Except for the sharpened metal spades that were part of their regular equipment, the paratroopers were unarmed.

Cries of “Georgia, Georgia” filled the air, as the
spetsnaz
troops moved forward behind the APCs, herding people in front of them. By 4:10 a.m. the troops had formed a human barricade of shields and armor across the middle of Rustaveli Avenue, splitting the crowd in two. Riot police swarmed down side streets next to the parliament building, trapping everybody sitting in the vicinity of the fourteen stone steps and the adjacent patch of lawn. By barricading the side streets with trucks, the demonstrators had sealed off their own means of escape.

The patch of lawn next to the parliament building was filled with frantic people, crammed into an increasingly tight space. As the troops pushed inward from both sides, the hunger strikers struggled to their feet, kicking and screaming. Several dozen riot police were equipped with aerosol cans of a
toxic nerve gas, known familiarly as cherry gas, or
cheryomukha
, which they sprayed at the demonstrators. Others lashed out with rubber truncheons. At one point the police line seemed to be breaking. Rodionov ordered paratroopers into the breach. In order to gain some breathing space, they struck out with the only weapon at their disposal, their metal entrenching tools. In the general crush of human bodies, the weakest were trampled underfoot and were soon struggling for breath.

“They’re killing people in there. Help them,” shouted the demonstrators outside the police barricade. “Fuck the bastards.”

Determined to rescue the hunger strikers, the demonstrators found a large wooden pole, which they attempted to ram through the line of shields and rubber truncheons. Occasionally a bloody figure ran through a chink in the line, assisted by Georgian militiamen, many of whom were beaten by Soviet soldiers as they helped the demonstrators form an escape route. Soon the entire avenue became a battleground. Tear gas canisters exploded overhead as young men, wearing kerchiefs, attacked the armored cars with sticks and stones. Ambulance sirens wailed. Curses filled the air.

“This is for Stalin,” yelled a Russian soldier, beating a demonstrator with his truncheon.

“Fuck the bastards, they’re all drunk,” shouted a Georgian, smelling the alcohol-soaked breath of one of the riot police.

When it was all over, sixteen bodies were collected from the patch of lawn next to the parliament building and the nearby steps. The faces of the victims were bloated and swollen, symptoms of asphyxiation.
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Ambulance teams noticed a smell of rotten fruit on the breaths of some of the victims, suggesting that nerve gas had been fired at them from close range. Most of the victims were women, ranging in age from sixteen to seventy, the least able to defend themselves in the crush.

After the violence outside the parliament building, the troops chased the crowds down Rustaveli Avenue, toward Republic Square, firing tear gas as they went. By sunrise another three demonstrators had been fatally injured in other parts of the city. Some 250 people were taken to the hospital. Many were suffering from a combination of “crowd crush” and toxic gas poisoning. Others displayed deep welts from the long rubber nightsticks of the
spetsnaz
. Several dozen had stab wounds, apparently caused by the little spades wielded by paratroopers.

T
HE MEN WHO ORDERED
the violent dispersal of the Tbilisi rally wanted to prevent the disintegration of the Soviet empire. But as frequently happened
during the final crisis of communism, the outcome of their action was the precise opposite of their intention. Instead of dampening the nationalistic spirit of the Georgian people, they gave it a tremendous boost. Instead of establishing a precedent for the use of force to suppress unauthorized gatherings, they provoked a furious debate over the role of the army in domestic political conflicts. Instead of saving communism in Georgia, they only hastened its end.

A few years before, such incidents would have been hushed up. In conditions of glasnost, this was impossible. The spectacle of soldiers beating and killing defenseless civilians, just as the country was starting its transition to democracy, shocked people throughout the Soviet Union. In Georgia itself the events of April 9 soon became the stuff of popular legend, much of it distorted.

No one exploited the myth of “Bloody Sunday” in Tbilisi more effectively than Zviad Gamsakhurdia. The fifty-year-old son of the republic’s best-loved writer, Gamsakhurdia identified himself with Georgian national aspirations. His father, Konstantine, specialized in historical epics, describing the long struggle of the Georgian nation against the other peoples of the Caucasus. His novels were set against a background of snowcapped peaks and rugged mountains and peopled by beautiful Georgian maidens, noble princes, and heroic warlords, after one of whom he named his son. It was easy for Zviad, listening to these stories, to imagine that he had been given the mission of uniting Georgia against its many enemies.

The older Gamsakhurdia’s writings had found favor with the most eminent Georgian of all. Born Joseph Djugashvili, Stalin had listened to similar tales of Georgian bravery and banditry from his mother. Although he was a scourge of Georgian nationalism, Stalin had a sentimental attachment to Georgian folklore. He permitted Konstantine Gamsakhurdia several eccentricities that would have got other writers into serious trouble. Older residents of Tbilisi still remember how the writer liked to parade around the town dressed in medieval Georgian costume like a prince. As long as he stuck to historical themes and avoided politically delicate subjects, such as the war between Russia and Georgia, nobody bothered him. He was on good terms with the local Communist leaders, including Eduard Shevardnadze. In return for his services to Georgian literature, the Gamsakhurdia family was rewarded with a magnificent villa overlooking the capital, protected by a high iron gate.

When Georgian nationalism began to stir again in the aftermath of Stalin’s death, Zviad Gamsakhurdia was right in the middle of the ferment. He had had his first run-in with the authorities in 1957, at the age of eighteen,
when he was convicted of “anti-Soviet agitation” for distributing subversive pamphlets. Two years later he was in trouble again, this time for getting into a fight with a policeman. On both occasions, however, he received relatively light suspended sentences. His father’s fame helped him stay out of jail. Like his father, Zviad Gamsakhurdia had an ambiguous relationship with the Communist regime, a mixture of defiance and accommodation. He was sent to prison in 1978 for founding a Georgian human rights group and giving interviews to foreign correspondents. The following year, however, he was released after a television interview in which he publicly recanted his “mistakes.” Rival dissidents accused him of collaborating with the KGB.

By 1989 the Georgian dissident movement had splintered into dozens of factions and subfactions, as opposition leaders vied for influence. In the struggle to shape public opinion, Gamsakhurdia junior coined the slogan “Georgia for the Georgians.” Although Georgians accounted for only two-thirds of the republic’s 5.5 million people, he believed they deserved an exclusive voice in its political affairs. In his view, minority groups, such as Abhazians, Ossetians, and Armenians, were all second-class citizens.

“Georgia is a unitary independent state, and therefore there can be no concessions to the separatists in Abhazia and southern Ossetia,” he told the meeting outside the parliament building. “The representatives of all other nations are merely guests on Georgian land, who can be shown the door at any time by their hosts.”
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In many ways, Gamsakhurdia’s brand of xenophobic nationalism was as authoritarian and myopic as the Communist ideology it sought to replace. He convinced his followers that independence would lead automatically to prosperity, as the Kremlin would no longer have the opportunity to “exploit” Georgia economically. In his patriotic zeal he ignored the fact that Georgia relied on other Soviet republics for practically all its oil and gas, 94 percent of its grain, 93 percent of its steel, and 82 percent of its timber. His assumption that ethnic minorities would meekly accept the will of the Georgian majority turned out to be another fatal miscalculation, which laid the basis for a prolonged civil war.