were many drunks and drug users, were called upon to organize the entire population of the Republic to strike, commit civil disobedience, and violence against those who did not support them. Groups of extremists began to be delegated together with demonstrators to nearby cities and rayons of the Republic. An attempt was made in the city of Rustavi to seize a metallurgical works.

The leaders of the so-called "National Liberation Movement" have begun to publicize their plans to seize power in the Republic. In order to ensure public order and prevent unforeseeable consequences in this situation, a decision was made at 4:00 a.m. to use force to clear the square and Government House of the demonstrators. Subunits of the Republic MVD and the Transcaucasian Military District were used in accordance with a plan developed earlier by competent authorities. As they approached the place where the demonstration was being held, its participants were called upon by leaders of the Republic, members of the CP CC, Party and government activists, and also the Catholicos of Georgia Ilya II to stop the demonstration and peacefully disperse. However, the demonstrators did not react to this. In turn, the organizers of the demonstration inflamed passions to hysteria, calling upon them not to spare their blood or their lives to confront the forces of law and order.

The MVD subunits and ZAKVO [sic] troops did not use small arms or silent weapons [kholodnoye oruzhiye]. Instructions about the cautious treatment of women and adolescents were strictly observed. As the first ranks of the demonstrators were driven back, accompanied by fierce resistance by extremists using sticks and stones, the crowd began to become disorderly and moved toward a youth lying on a sidewalk who had declared a hunger strike. Moreover, there were quite a few provocateurs in the crowd who were using silent weapons. As a result of the crush which had formed, 16 people died (13 young women and 3 [young] men) and more than 100 received injuries of varying severity, among whom were 22 servicemen (13 of them were hospitalized). First aid was given to the victims.

At the present time the square at Government House has been cleared of demonstrators and has been taken under guard by troops. The necessary measures are being taken to detain and arrest the ringleaders of the disorders and prevent new demonstrations. A governmental commission has been formed headed by the Chairman of the Georgian SSR Council of Ministers, Cde. Z.A. Chkheidze in connection with the tragic consequences of the measures which were taken.

A plenum of the CC GCP is planned for today to review the current situation and identify the measures ensuing from it.

We request your agreement to introduce a curfew in

the Commission considered its mission to be to explain the actual nature of the events which took place on the night of 9 April in the city of Tbilisi, the reasons for the tragedy, the legality of the decisions adopted at various levels of the Party, state, and military leadership associated with them [the events], and to evaluate a number of the consequences of these events. In the process of the Commission's work the need was uncovered to respond to a more general issue: the conditions and permissible limits of using Soviet Army sub-units to maintain public order.

The members of the Commission familiarized themselves with documents received from the commissions which investigated these events under the chairmanship of G.S. Tarazevich, the USSR Ministry of Defense; Chairman, General-Major of the Medical Service G.A. Sofronov; and the Georgian SSR Supreme Soviet, Chairman, Professor T.G. Shavgulidze; and also with materials (cipher messages, notes, written reports, stenographic records of meetings, etc.) received from the CC CPSU and CC GCP, the Presidiums of the USSR Supreme Soviet and the Georgian SSR Supreme Soviet, the USSR Ministry of Defense, the command of the ZakVO, the Ministries of Internal Affairs of the USSR and the Georgian SSR, the USSR Procuracy, and other state and public organizations.

The Commission met with the Chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet, General Secretary of the CC CPSU, Cde. M.S. Gorbachev.

The Commission heard the Politburo members who are CC Secretaries: Cdes. Ye.K. Ligachev, and V.M. Chebrikov; USSR Foreign Minister Eh.A. Shevardnadze; Candidate members of the Politburo: First Deputy Chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet, A.I. Luk'yanov; CC CPSU Secretary G.P. Razumovskiy; USSR Minister of Defense, D.T. Yazov; USSR Minister of Internal Affairs, V.V. Bakatin; several senior officials of the CC CPSU staff; the leaders of the CC GCP; the leadership of the USSR Ministry of Defense, MVD, the Georgian SSR MVD, the USSR KGB, and the Georgian KGB; representatives of the Main Military Procuracy and the Procuracy of the Georgian SSR; and also the commands of ZakVO, units, and subunits of the Soviet Army, Internal Troops, and militia who took part in the 9 April 1989 operation. Conversations were held with eyewitnesses to the events: militia members [rabotniki]; Georgian SSR Ministry of Health and first aid workers; servicemen of the Soviet Army and Internal Troops; representatives of the public; veterans of Afghanistan [voiny-internatsionalisty]; clergy (including the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Catholicos of Georgia Ilya II); representatives of the Popular Front and the unofficial organizations of Georgia; and individual citizens, in particular, those victims who were treated in medical institutions in the city of Tbilisi.

Materials were studied which had been published in

the periodic press and also the numerous letters and telegrams which had been sent to the Commission from citizens who live in various regions of our country.

In the process of their work, members of the Commission travelled to the city of Tbilisi and met with representatives of the Georgian public and Zak VO, and visited hospitals and the military units which participated in the

events.

To gain a correct evaluation of the events which occurred in the city of Tbilisi on 9 April 1989 it is necessary to proceed from the idea that the country has entered upon an irrevocably democratic path of development which is meaningless without the constant exercise of the most diverse forms of popular social activity. The main substance of this is the aspiration to express one's own interests and take a realistic, constructive part in democratic development by legal means, within the bounds of a strict observance of public order. And in these conditions the duty of state authority and law enforcement bodies is to afford realistic guarantees and protection for such activity.

But of course actions of an anti-social, illegal, and violent nature are possible in the course of these processes. And here the duty of state authority is to display firmness and use force within necessary limits.

The principal significance in this connection is an objective evaluation of the situation. Inaction by the authorities against violence and violations of law would be unforgivable. But the use of force against a peaceful meeting or demonstration which results in casualties is also unforgivable. In both cases this is a blow against perestroika and democracy.

Evaluating what took place, the Commission found that perestroika has caused an awakening of national consciousness and an attempt to achieve genuine economic independence and state sovereignty, which today characterize the social and political situation not only in Georgia but in other union republics. The conditions for the tragic events of 9 April 1989 in Tbilisi developed over a long [period of] time. Signs of a crisis were displayed in them which involved many areas of government administration and public life in the Republic and in the country as a whole.

The Commission notes that in the process of democratization unavoidable differences and extremes appeared in the views and appeals expressed, in the evaluations of trends, and the paths and forms of future political development of the Republic and the entire country. Together with public movements and organizations striving for democratic renewal of the economic and political system of socialism, unofficial organizations appeared in the Republic

whose program also contained positions of an antisocialist and nationalistic nature. Their activity ran counter to perestroika and seriously inflamed the political situation in the Republic.

In these conditions, the most important task for the government and Party leadership of the Republic was to justify its role as the political and ideological vanguard, to act in the spirit of perestroika with the conviction [that it could] influence the mood of people and not permit its own estrangement from the actual development of the political processes of the Republic. However the leadership of the CC GCP did not manage to find contact and establish dialogue with the public. Subsequently, as social processes developed the popularity of unofficial groups increased and the leadership embarked on a course of confrontation. It is this which in particular could explain the circumstance in which petitions to hold demonstrations were greeted with refusal, as a rule, with few exceptions, as a result of which illegal meetings began to be held in practice without previous notification to the authorities. Thus the leadership of the Republic gradually lost control over political processes, Party influence over the masses waned, and its authority fell among the broad strata of the population. This occurred back during the events of 1988, when only an active political position of the Georgian intelligentsia and an appeal by M. S. Gorbachev to the Georgian people helped relieve the situation. But the leaders of the Republic themselves were already inclined to use force by then.

Unfortunately the necessary changes in the position and actions of the Georgian leadership did not subsequently occur.

The Commission thinks that such facts as the selfisolation of the leadership of the Republic and the inadequate, at times panicky, evaluation of specific situations, and the inability to positively influence the situation with political methods were some of the main causes which led, in the final account, to the tragic consequences of the events of 9 April in the city of Tbilisi.

2. The Situation in the Republic on the Eve of the Events of 9 April and the Mechanism of the Decisionmaking to Halt the Demonstration

At the end of March and the beginning of April 1989, a serious worsening of the political situation occurred in connection with events in Abkhaziya, which served as a direct pretext for the unofficial organizations to hold an unauthorized multi-day demonstration in front of Government House in Tbilisi. However by 6 April, the antiAbkhazian nature of the demonstration had sharply changed, in connection with the replacement of the leadership of the Abkhazian Oblast' of the GCP, and an extremist demand was advanced for the withdrawal of Georgia from the USSR. At the same time, many urgent

issues troubling the public were discussed at the demonstration. Thousands of citizens participated in it (from morning to late evening). Hundreds of demonstrators remained at Government House at night. All this led to the disruption of the operation of transportation and of several government institutions in the center of the city and to breaches of the peace in the capital. The appeal of the CC GCP, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and the Council of Ministers of the Georgian SSR broadcast on republic radio and television had no positive effect on the demonstrators. [The] organizers [of the demonstrations] sent their representatives to work groups, higher educational institutions, and schools with a call to begin a strike and join with the demonstrators, and they resorted to picketing. Many higher educational institutions and schools suspended classes.

However, it is necessary to stress that a majority of workers and employees of the capital of Georgia did not support these calls and continued to work.

In the course of the demonstration, irresponsible calls to disobey the legal instructions of authorities were spread, and slogans of a nationalistic, anti-socialist, and antiSoviet nature were advanced, in particular: "Down with the Communist regime!", "Down with Russian imperialism!", "USSR the prison of peoples!", "Down with Soviet power!", "Liquidate Abkhazian autonomy!", etc. The organizers of the demonstration continued to inflame the situation and called for the demonstrations, strikes, and hunger strikes to continue until 14 April.

Thus, the political situation in Tbilisi on the eve of the events of 9 April was characterized as an emergency and demanded the adoption of urgent and crucial decisions from the leadership of the GCP and the government of the Republic.

The Commission notes, however, that in the course of the investigation no terrorist acts were identified and no facts were established indicating that there was a real attempt to seize power or that there were politically motivated incidents of violence or assaults [pokusheniya] against workers of government and Party organizations, Party members, or citizens of non-Georgian nationality.

It is typical that the demonstration was accompanied by such a passive form of protest as the declaration of a mass multi-day hunger strike (more than 100 [people] at Government House took part in a hunger strike).

It was necessary to stop the unauthorized demonstration during this period, but this task should have and could have been carried out by the authorities who were entrusted by law with ensuring public order, the authorities of the Republic MVD. The Commission notes that the MVD of the Georgian SSR and the Directorate of Internal Affairs

of the city of Tbilisi did not perform the responsibilities entrusted to them to stop the unauthorized demonstration, although, according to a statement of the Georgian MVD, they repeatedly raised with the leadership of the Republic the issue of stopping the demonstration that was underway in front of Government House and restoring the normal situation in the capital with the aid of the forces at their disposal. However, this suggestion was not approved by the leadership of the Republic for fear of complications in the form of mass demonstrations by the population which, in their opinion, the available forces of the Internal Troops and militia could not handle.

The leadership of the Republic considered that this measure could have been implemented on condition that a curfew was introduced, for which additional military subunits needed to be brought in.

Therefore they decided to appeal for help to the Soviet authorities. At 8:35 p.m. on 7 April, a well-known telegram, prepared by the Second Secretary of the CC GCP, B.V. Nikol'skiy, was sent to the CC CPSU over the signature of the First Secretary of the CC GCP, D.I. Patiashvili. In the opinion of the Commission, the evaluation of the political situation in the Republic contained in this telegram did not completely correspond to the real state of affairs and was not a sufficient justification for concentrating military subunits in the city of Tbilisi and introducing a state of emergency (curfew).

The Commission notes the existence of serious oversights and violations of law committed by both Soviet as well as Republic authorities in the process of preparing and implementing measures to stop the demonstration at Government House in Tbilisi on the night of 9 April.

A meeting was held in the CC CPSU on 7 April 1989 under the leadership of Politburo member and CC CPSU Secretary Cde. Ye. K. Ligachev in which the following took part: Politburo members Cdes. V.A. Medvedev, N.N. Slyun'kov, V.M. Chebrikov; Candidate members of the Politburo Cdes. A.I. Luk'yanov, G.P. Razumovskiy, D.T. Yazov; Chairman of the USSR KGB, V.A. Cde. Kryuchkov; Deputy USSR Minister of Internal Affairs Cde. V.P. Trushin., and a number of senior officials of the CC CPSU staff. The issue of the situation in Georgia was examined.

The work of the meeting was not recorded and its conclusions were not documented. One can judge the content of the decisions worked out only from the explanations of the participants of the meeting. At the meeting consent was actually given to granting the verbal requests of the leadership of the Republic to make Internal Troops and Soviet Army subunits available. A directive of the General Staff of the USSR Ministry of Defense and an order of the USSR MVD were issued on this basis to send the corresponding military subunits to Georgia.