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Ethnic Troubles in Georgia
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21946 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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1 / 1992 |
2,089 Words |
| Author
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Peter Klebnikov
Paul Klebnikov is an American free-lance writer living in
Moscow. |
For several nights in October, an armored car cruised the streets of the picture-postcard town of Tskhinvali, methodically shooting people as they sat in their homes.
The car, driven by renegade policemen, was routine traffic in a nasty, little-noticed conflict between Georgia and its rebellious province of South Ossetia.
The "Caucasus war" as it is called here, threatens to become the next flash point in the Soviet Union. "There is so much fighting here that no one even noticed the earthquake that hit our town," says Toraz Kulumbekov, chairman of the South Ossetian parliament. Shortly after being interviewed, Kulumbekov was kidnapped by Georgians and is now on trial for sedition.
The conflict between the Ossetians and the Georgians is one example of the trauma faced by the Soviet republics in their transition from freedom fighting to nation building. In Georgia, the growing pains are especially fierce.
A land of sweet wine, fanatical hospitality, and epic internal quarrels, Georgia has long been beset by its own contradictions.
Having declared its independence from the Soviet Union, Georgia sees itself as next in line for recognition by the world community after the Baltics.
Among the Soviet republics, it is one of the most open to outside influence, yet today this exuberant nation of five million is in the grip of a fiery nationalist leader who is building a dictatorship similar to the communist regime he once fought as a dissident. President Zviad Gamsakhurdia is a postcommunist original. Educated in Western culture, he exudes a Stalinlike mixture of paranoia and charm. He has imprisoned his most influential critics, created a ragtag army of killers, and opened and closed parliament at will. He even controls the media with a skill that the communists would envy.
Georgia's president is the most dubious member of a new generation of inexperienced leaders who have been propelled to power by the collapse of the centralized Moscow regime. Like many, he is populist to his roots, and he inspires either fanatical devotion or profound fear.
But Georgia's problems go far beyond Gamsakhurdia. Annexed by czarist Russia in 1801, this land had only a brief
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