The April 9 Tragedy (or the Tbilisi Massacre of 9 April 1989) refers to the bloody events in Tbilisi, Georgia on April 9, 1989, when peaceful anti-Soviet and pro-independence demonstrations were brutally dispersed by the Soviet army using entrenching spades and toxic gas.
Prelude to the Tragedy
The anti-Soviet national liberation movement got more active in Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1988. Several strikes and meetings were organized by “informal movements”, i.e. anti-Soviet political organizations in Tbilisi. The conflict between the Soviet government and Georgian nationalism deepened after the so-called Lykhny Assembly on March 18, 1989, when several thousand Abkhaz demanded the secession from Georgia and restoration of the Union republic status of 1921 - 1931. In response, the “informal movements” organized the series of unsanctioned meetings across the republic, claiming, that the Soviet government was trying to oppose the national movement with the help of separatism.
The protests reached the peak on April 4 1989, when ten thousands of Georgians gathered before the House of Government on Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi. The protesters led by the Independence Committee (Merab Kostava, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Giorgi Chanturia, Irakli Bathiashvili, Irakli Tsereteli and others) organized a peaceful demonstration and hunger strikes demanding the punishment of Abkhaz secessionists and restoration of Georgian independence. Local communist authorities lost control over the situation in the capital and the protests became irrepressible.
The Bloody Sunday
In the evening of April 8 1989, Colonel General Igor Rodionov, Commander of Transcaucasian Military District, ordered the troops to mobilize. Local militsiya (police) units were disarmed just before the operation.
On April 9, 3.45 a.m., Soviet tanks and troops under General Aleksandr Lebed surrounded the demonstration area. The demonstrators met them dancing and singing national songs. Soldiers began massacring with entrenching tools and toxic gas. Twenty people, mostly girls and older women, were killed, over 4,000 injured and poisoned. Disarmed militsyia officers were trying to evacuate panicked people. The soldiers did not allow emergency doctors to help injured people. A film and photograph of a young man beating a stick over a Soviet tank became a symbol of anti-Soviet movement in Georgia.
Aftermath
On April 10, in protest of the crackdown, Tbilisi and the whole Georgia went out on strike and a 40-day period of mourning was declared. The people brought massive collections of flowers to the place of the massacre. Demonstrations were held repeatedly despite a state of emergency was declared.
The government of Soviet Georgia resigned as a result of the event. Moscow claimed the demonstrators attacked first and the soldiers had to repel them.
At the first Congress of the USSR People's Deputies (May-June 1989) Gorbachev disclaimed all responsibility, shifting it on the army. The revelations in the liberal Soviet media, as well as the findings of the "pro-Perestroika" Deputy Anatoli Sobchak's commission of enquiry into the Tbilisi events, made known at the second Congress in December 1989, resulted in a massive "loss of face" by the Soviet hardliners and army leadership implicated in the event.
Legacy
The April 9 Tragedy radicalised Georgian opposition to the Soviet power. A few months later, a session of the Supreme Council of Georgian SSR, held on November 17-November 18 1989, officially condemned occupation and annexation of Georgia by Soviet Russia in 1921.
On April 9 1991, the two-year anniversary of the massacre, Supreme Council of the Republic of Georgia, proclaimed the Georgian sovereignty and independence from the Soviet Union according the March 31 1991 referendum results.
A memorial to the victims of the tragedy was opened at the place of the crackdown on Rustaveli Avenue on November 23, 2004.
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