Soviet georgians rally for independence

MOSCOW — Thousands of people, shouting nationalist slogans and defying patrolling troops, demonstrated again Saturday in Tbilisi, the capital of Soviet Georgia, to demand independence for

the southern Soviet republic. For the fourth day, more than 20,000 demonstrators massed before government offices and thousands of others gathered in the city’s main thoroughfares, according

to Georgian and other Soviet journalists in Tbilisi. A general strike has paralyzed industry there and is spreading outside the capital. In an emergency meeting, the Georgian Communist

Party leadership rejected the nationalists’ demand for the republic’s secession from the Soviet Union, according to the official Soviet news agency Tass from Tbilisi, and decided on “further

measures to consolidate discipline and public order.” Dzhumber I. Patiashvili, the party’s first secretary, warned again that the protests were approaching “the dangerous line” when the

central government would feel obliged to intervene and place Georgia under military control as it did with the neighboring republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Combat troops, supported by

tanks and other armored vehicles, were deployed Friday afternoon when an estimated 100,000 people massed along the embankment of the Kura River in central Tbilisi, a city of 1.2 million, in

support of about 158 people who began an eight-day hunger strike Thursday to press nationalist demands. But the number of soldiers was reduced after a brief show of strength--an attempt to

drive a squadron of 10 tanks and armored cars through the ranks of the demonstrators--only provoked angrier protests. “Get off Georgian land!” demonstrators shouted, pelting the armored

vehicles with stones and smashing the windows of an army command car. “Death to the Russian occupiers! Down with this rotting Russian empire!” There were also protests reported in Kutaisi,

the republic’s second largest city, and in Sukhumi, a Black Sea resort. With Tass describing the situation in Georgia as “tense” and the government newspaper Izvestia saying the protests had

now assumed “a dangerous scope,” appeals for calm are being broadcast on local radio, and leading party members are being sent to factories, schools and other institutions to help restore

order. The leadership appeared from reports of the meeting to be ready to compromise on practical questions, such as greater use of the Georgian language, an enlarged role for traditional

culture, stricter measures to protect cultural monuments, greater attention to the environment and closer attention to efficient government. But there would be no compromise, the reports

indicated, on what both the government and the nationalists regard as the central issue--what kind of “sovereignty” does Georgia have as a Soviet republic, what kind of “independence” could

it reasonably hope to have in the future. “Georgia was, is and will remain always a socialist, sovereign republic in the fraternal family of the peoples of the Soviet Union,” the party

leadership declared Saturday, rejecting demonstrators’ demands for the republic’s secession. The nationalists, led by such longtime political dissidents as Zviad Gamasakhurdia, Merab Kostava

and Georgy Chanturiya, contend that under Moscow’s central control their culture, language and social traditions have been effectively suppressed and that they have no real voice in

Georgia’s political and economic decisions. Their solution is independence. Party leaders, while granting the validity of many of the complaints, have urged them to place their trust in

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reforms and not, as Patiashvili said, “turn off the road of democratization that has just been opened to them.” The protests have increasingly become

“anti-Soviet and anti-socialist,” Izvestia said, implicitly warning that the demonstrators were approaching the limit of what is acceptable here even under _ glasnost, _ Gorbachev’s policy

of political openness. The conflict has continued to build over the past six months with repeated protests by students and intellectuals, street demonstrations, general strikes and

intermittent discussions with the party leadership. The latest protests were touched off, however, by demands for full republican status from one of Georgia’s autonomous regions, Abkhazia,

which has long chafed under Tbilisi’s control. Tensions have risen sharply, according to Izvestia and other Soviet newspapers, in reaction to meetings this month and last demanding greater

autonomy for Abkhazia, which lies along the coast of the Black Sea, and now Georgian nationalists are accusing Moscow of putting forward the idea in an effort to undermine demands for

Georgian independence. The party leader in Abkhazia was replaced Thursday after he had endorsed the autonomy calls. MORE TO READ