The republic of Georgia declared its independence today, further confounding President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's uncertain hold on the deeply troubled Soviet nation. The unanimous decision by the southern republic's Parliament was made in a surprise session in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, nine days after a plebisicite in the republic in which more than 98 percent of the voters favored independence. The Parliament's action was timed to coincide with the second anniversary of the killing of 19 civilian protesters at the hands of Soviet troops in Tbilisi.
The declaration turned the anniversary day of mourning into a street festival that continued long into the night as Georgians congratulated one another and celebrated a further step in regaining a freedom they counted lost since 1921, when Bolshevik troops first occupied the republic. But the parliamentary vote was not the final step, as the Georgian President, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, conceded in his celebration speech when he declared that "this act of independence is not a de facto withdrawal from the Soviet Union." He said it would have to be followed in the next two or three years by a series of legal steps to fully establish self-rule.
Still, for President Gorbachev, the declaration was another blow against his campaign to preserve the Soviet Union as a nation of heavily centralized authority and not as the federation of largely sovereign or independent republics that a dozen separatist movements are demanding of him. Georgia is a proud, ancient land of five million people, many of whom have long made clear their animus toward Communism and the Kremlin's central rule. Its long-established, long-suppressed independence drive gained considerable momentum in elections last year, when the Communists lost control of the Parliament to an insurgent coalition led by Mr. Gamsakhurdia.
As a practical matter, the declaration did not radically alter the current state of confusion over power sharing between the Kremlin and the republics, and in fact only compounded it. Mr. Gorbachev has been trying to interest the republics in his proposal for a new union treaty, which he has promised would insure greater self-rule, but many republics are skeptical, particularly in the face of the Gorbachev Government's continuing resort to central authority in dealing with the Soviet Union's deepening economic and political crisis.
Georgia is following the lead of the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in making a unilateral claim to restoration of a state of independence that was forcibly ended by Soviet military power, rather than pursue the formal, drawn-out secession process theoretically permitted under the Soviet Constitution. Mr. Gamsakhurdia said Georgia would need support from other nations to secure its claim. He pleaded for recognition of its historic state of independence, which is rooted in an ancient culture whose previous peak was as a Caucasian empire presided over by Queen Thamar at the end of the 12th century.
Modern Georgia is an economically shaky land, clearly dependent to some degree on aid from Moscow. It recently became a hotbed of Soviet nationalist clashes, with the Georgian majority represented by the Gamsakhurdia government trying to put down a separate independence claim within its borders by the no less ancient South Ossetian minority of 65,000. Fighting in Breakaway Region More than 60 people have been killed in South Ossetia in factional fighting as Mr. Gamsakhurdia has demanded that Mr. Gorbachev withdraw Soviet troops dispatched to the region, in northern Georgia, after a state of emergency was declared by the Soviet Parliament.
There was no Kremlin reaction to he Tbilisi declaration of independence, although by coinicidence President Gorbachev today offered his latest "anti-crisis" plan for holding the nation together. He emphasized the importance of last month's referendum endorsement by the Soviet nation at large of his vague call for a "renewed" Soviet Union in which he has promised greater sovereignty for the 15 republics.
Source: New York Times
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