Georgia Descending Into Chaos

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 to be ousted in a paramilitary coup.

For two 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.

The high cost of the victory by the violent and well-armed opposition was visible everywhere in the center of Tbilisi. A heavy pall of black smoke hung over the parliament building, where artillery shells had blown away huge chunks of the walls. On nearby Rustaveli Avenue only the scorched facades remained of graceful pastel houses. Gutted buses, twisted car wrecks and hundreds of scattered machine-gun cartridges bore silent witness to the ferocity of the fighting, which, officials said, left at least 90 people dead. Some estimates put the total closer to 400.

The 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 is no guarantee that similar events might not be repeated tomorrow in any of the former Soviet republics, given the explosive mix of ethnic, economic, political and military problems confronting them.