Twentieth Century Soviet Georgia

in Twenty Snapshots
Twentieth Century Soviet Georgia
in Twenty Snapshots
Goal of the Twentieth Century Soviet Georgia in Twenty Snapshots
project is to stimulate discussion on our contemporary history for un-
derstanding of the spaces that keep the memory of the past. The proj-
ect is supported by the South Caucasus Regional Bureau of the Heinrich
Boell Foundation.
25 F e b ru a ry 1 9 21
Free dom Squ a r e
On the night of 24-25 February, the commander of the
Georgian Democratic Republics army, Giorgi Kvinitadze,
after a week of defensive combat at the approaches of
Tbilisi, decided to leave the city and reposition his forces.
Alongside the army, the government and the parliament,
and a large number of citizens also left the city. Some of
those who remained spontaneously formed a Defence
Committee to maintain order. They sent a delegation
across the front line, in order to inform the command of
the Red Army that there were only civilians remaining in
the city.
On the morning of 25 February units of Soviet Russias
11th Red Army commanded by General Anatoly Gekker
entered Tbilisi. In the city council building the Georgian
Revkom (Revolutionary Committee) issued its first de-
cree on creating the Cheka (Emergency Commission) of
the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. The people re-
maining in the city fearfully waited for the Red Army to
act as it had done elsewhere: raid the conquered city.
But as a result of the work of the Defence Committee,
there was total order in the city and the occupation gov-
ernment was interested in winning over the local pop-
ulation. Therefore no violence occurred. Tbilisis Soviet
history thus begins on 25 February 1921.
 2 9 Au g u st 1 9 2 3
the garden
of the Government Palace,
Comintern Street
The Soviet authorities attributed great importance to
symbolism as they themselves acknowledged. The 25th
was a lucky date in Soviet Georgia: on 25 October 1917
was the Great Bolshevik Revolution, 25 February was the
birthday of Soviet Georgia and now 25 August was to
be added to this list of important dates: the Communist
Party tried to prove to the outside world that the major-
ity of the people of Georgia had reconciled themselves
with Soviet authority while only a few anti-Soviet parties
alienated from the masses were against it. Furthermore,
the majority of members of these parties were recon-
ciled to the Soviet state and declared no-confidence in
their own leaders, who had either emigrated or gone
deep underground.
From late 1922 state punitive bodies and Soviet propa-
ganda press were spending great energy on working
over the imprisoned members and leaders of the oppo-
sition so that they would publicly quit their parties. On
25 August 1923 a conference of former members of the
most influential opposition party, the Georgian Social
Democratic Workers Party (former Mensheviks), began,
concluding on 29 August.
At the conference the party was officially disbanded.
Most of the delegates had been brought to the con-
ference hall straight from prison while some went off
script and exposed the event for the farce it was. Only
one picture from the chronicles of the political battles of
1921-24 was captured by a photo-correspondent.
2 Ju ne 1 9 26
Zemo Avchala
hydropower station
Communism is Soviet state plus the electrification of
the whole country. The Georgian Bolsheviks understood
this formula of by the leader of the revolution, Vladimir
Lenin, quite well and starting already in 1921 directed
public attention to the idea of constructing a powerful
hydropower station in Tbilisi which prior to their coming
to power had existed only on paper. Subbotniks (Sat-
urdays when people would gather to perform uncom-
pensated work for the public good) were organized for
the digging of the Zahesi canal and the building of the
station and special guests were regularly given tours of
the construction. The construction process took place
under the oversight of the Cheka and featured the use
of prison labour. During the last phase of construction, in
1926, the secretary of the Central Committee of the Com-
munist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, visited
Tbilisi. Unlike his first visit after the conquest of Georgia,
when his appearance was met with the hatred and pro-
test of workers in Tbilisis Nadzaladevi district, this time
no such unexpected outbursts took place.
After the crushing of an anti-Bolshevik rebellion in 1924
and subsequent mass repressions, both the authorities
and the majority of anti-Soviet-inclined citizens tended
to avoid open confrontation.
Meanwhile, inside the Communist Party itself the begin-
nings of a rift between Leon Trotsky and Stalins camp
were already apparent. At this point there were still op-
ponents of Stalin occupying top posts in Tbilisi. But the
people who hosted him during the visit to Zahesi would
in the future become active supporters of his in his po-
litical battles. The engineers Chichinadze, Mikeladze,
and Melik-Pashayev familiarized Stalin with the ongoing
works at the facility. One year later, during the plants
festive opening, against the backdrop of nasty intrapar-
ty fighting, the Soviet press and poets sang the praises
of the manacle laid across the Mtkvari River and Tbilisi
bore witness to a strange picture: prior to the filling of
the plants reservoir, the Mktvari was dry and curious on-
lookers rushed to the empty riverbed in Tbilisi.
 23 ianvari, 1930 23 Ja n ua r y 1930
w i Te l i v a r s k v l a v i s S e s a x v e v i R ed St a r L a ne

amJamad tyavis pirveli Cixi/ Nowadays Tkavi first lane

i a n v a r i | jan u ar y

23 Ja nu a ry 1 9 3 0
Red S ta r L a n e
After 1921, in the Soviet country, church bells occasion-
ally rang out as an echo of the old life during the abol-
ished religious holidays. A tiny and fragmented group of
brave and steadfast citizens had overcome countless le-
gal obstacles to register a Society of Believers and in so
doing put themselves in danger of being blacklisted or
having their civil rights curtailed. Their efforts effective-
ly preserved the existence of the officially nonexistent
church, a once powerful and rich institution.
In the late 1920s the authorities concluded the stage of
neutralizing and ignoring (abolishing their legal status)
active opposition religious leaders and proceeded to
the next phase: attacking heaven, as the press called it.
Priests became targets of public humiliation and perse-
cution. Societies of believers lost their rights to use their
places of worship en masse under the pretext of the
need to use them for administrative and cultural pur-
poses. In 1930 church bells were requisitioned in order
to fulfil metal protection goals.
The main bell at the bell tower of Sioni Church, the head-
quarters of the Georgian Orthodox Church, was consid-
ered a symbol of the rule of the Russian Church in Geor-
gia, and was therefore declared an official exception: it
was to be preserved as a museum exhibit.
1 July 1 9 3 3
Che l yu s k i n el ebi B r id g e
The unexpected gifts from the Avchala water pipeline
that came out of the tap after chlorine-smelling warm
water inspired numerous jokes. Despite such discom-
forts, at this point in the 20th century, the list of house-
holds with access to the water distribution pipe system
and their location in the city clearly set the bourgeois
neighbourhoods apart from the majority of Tbilisis resi-
dential zones.
Taking into consideration the water supply needed for
the new industrial facilities, Tbilisis already doubled
population and the terms of the first five-year economic
plan, the construction of a modern and powerful water
supply system was the next project of vital importance
after Zahesi.
Construction on the Natakhtari water pipeline started in
1929. The Communist Party set to make it a new symbol
of the citys Soviet communal economy. The Soviet Com-
missar for Heavy Industry, Sergo Orjonikidze (nicknamed
the Iron Commissar), was put in charge of the project
and set about getting necessary construction supplies.
A specially created organization and a group of young
engineers called Natakhtarmsheni worked on the plan-
ning and construction of the pipeline. In 1933, Tbilisi was
on the verge of the start of socialist reconstruction and
the architectural outline of the new pipe system aque-
ducts and distribution stations made it clear how the au-
thorities envisioned the visual aspect of the living space
of the socialist society. On 30 June 1933 the Natakhtari
pipelines festive opening was held and starting 1 July
the new water was dispatched to the taps of the citys
residents.
8 J u n e 1 9 37
S h ot a Rust a v eli Av enue
In the second half of the 1930s citizens bore witness to
a strange and frightening change: the Bolshevik rulers
had set about reconstructing the past. Up to this point,
independent thinking about or investigation of the time
before could have got a person declared an internal em-
igrant or class-alienated. But now, in this society on the
verge of implementing real socialism, it was necessary
to give correct and exhaustive answers to the awkward
questions which even self-confident members of the
Komsomol (Communist Youth League) might have had
when coming into contact with the shattered fragments
of the partys and the countrys past. Where were the
leaders of the party prior to the revolution, why were
they not involved in public life and who were the unusu-
al people who used to be in charge but whose names
now caused awkwardness upon mention?
The propaganda machine soon began printing new ver-
sions of history in record numbers which were to be-
come irrefutable truth to young party members. These
versions convincingly stated how the Bolshevik party
course proceeded from the demands of the masses and
how all progressive thinkers, consciously or unconscious-
ly, took part in the victory of the proletarian revolution
alongside Comrade Stalin.
It was during the peak of the transformation of collective
memories, in 1937, that Ilia Chavchavadze, 100 years af-
ter his birth, was suddenly recast as a progressive leader
of the national revolutionary movement. For the pre-
vious 20 years, in conditions of total fear in society, the
prominent Georgian writer and statesman had been
either not discussed at all or portrayed as a reaction-
ary and oppressor of peasants. Now people would tell
their children about the poem submitted to the journal
Iveria which Chavchavadze edited - by a young Ioseb
Jughashvili (later to become Stalin).
1 2 De ce m be r 1 9 37
University Street
On 12 December many citizens of Tbilisi were rude-
ly awoken by banging on their doors and the calling
of their surnames. This rude awakening resembled a
mini-rehearsal of that horrible movement that people
had been awaiting every night at nightfall since spring.
But this time the state apparatus had mobilized early in
the morning and arrived not to ask a few questions at
the local NKVD station but to encourage the masses to
do their civic duty and vote.
They had prepared for this day for a long time, posting
propaganda posters and placards and organizing meet-
ings with candidates so that citizens would know that
they were to elect people to represent them in the Su-
preme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The direct vote with secret ballot, as guaranteed in the
Stalinist constitution, was to be the most democratic
poll in the world. They were to enter a closed voting
booth and underline one of the candidates names on
the ballot and then place it in the ballot box.
Upon seeing the names of the candidates, any desire vot-
ers may have had to spoil their ballots died immediately.
The candidates included Lavrenti Beria, Avksenti Rapa-
va, Grigol Gvishiani, Aleksandre Sajaia, Sergo Goglidze,
Vladimer Dekanozov and Grigol Karanadze. These names
were associated with whispered stories about all manner
of people - neighbours, co-workers, acquaintances, rela-
tives, workers, unemployed people, party members and
political independents - being taken away in the middle
of the night never to be seen or heard from again. These
stories took place before, during and after the elections.
1 94 1
Lavrenti Beria Square
Starting in the late 1930s signs of preparations for a
Great War against an imaginary and many-faced enemy
could be seen in Tbilisi. Physical fitness programmes for
young people and propaganda about the importance
of discipline were used to package these preparations
and to cover up the horrifying expectation that the city
would find itself on the front line. But still it was clear to
everyone why citizens were being dispatched en mass
for field exercises, why chemical weapons shelters were
being set up and why stricter controls were being placed
on strategic facilities. The face of the enemy gradually
emerged in sharper relief on the pages of the print me-
dia and in the fiery speeches of orators.
Starting with Nazi Germanys invasion of the Soviet
Union on 22 June 1941, the everyday happenings during
the tense months before the war demonstrations of
force at parades, promotion of closer ties between the
army and civilians, and patriotic rhetoric were replaced
by a mild panic, the hum of the gossip machine, the mix
of truth and untruth brought in by a stream of refugees,
blackouts, fights with night patrols, hunger, breadlines,
the sharp smell of evacuation hospitals, the rampaging
of military commissars and secret police and the bile
that followed the appearance of the postman.
There are no longer any people alive with detailed
knowledge of the chronicles of life in Tbilisi from 1943.
The city, as it turned out, had remained deep in the rear
and far from the fighting. Probably the majority of peo-
ple instinctively chased away their unpleasant memories
of these cold and difficult years. These days the remain-
ing people who were around during that time have only
sweet memories of air raid sirens during their childhood
and the fact that they could only walk on the right side
of the pavement.
4 Nov e mb e r 1 9 5 1
Tbi l i s i S ea
A city with straight, broad, brightly lit streets, tall fac-
tory smokestacks, and electricity transmission towers,
surrounded by green gardens, grazing lands and farms
such was the model for the future of socialist Tbilisi set
out in the 1920s. This lofty plan had to be implemented
in conditions where in fact the city was surrounded by
lifeless and barren plains and the existing infrastructure
had to accommodate a growing population and indus-
trial output.
In the late 1920s work began on a grandiose plan to
irrigate and cultivate the Samgori valley but it stalled
because of World War II. After the war, this ambitious
project to transform nature was resumed. Work began
on creating a reservoir to the west of Tbilisi, in the upper
part of the Samgori valley, where a few salty lakes had
remained in what used to be the Mtkvari riverbed. It was
to get its water from the Iori River via a canal. Water from
the reservoir was then to be distributed to infrastructure
in the barren highlands of the Left Bank of the Mtkvari
and to the Samgori valley.
On the morning of 4 November 1951, an endless stream
of people filed up to the upper lakes in order to witness
the spectacle of the waters of the Iori flow from a spill-
way into the Tbilisi Sea, which was christened as Great
Stalins irrigation system.
9 m ar ch 1 9 5 6
Joseph Stalin Embankment
Stalins death in 1953 was followed by a struggle for
power that witnessed a wave of purges in the Commu-
nist Party and the upper echelons of the state lasting
several months. Many were arrested and many were re-
leased but the disappearance of Stalins right-hand man,
the Georgian Lavrenti Beria, and his entourage bore in
some a faint hope of better times to come and in oth-
ers a desire to decode a vast conspiracy. Here and there
people began returning from cold prison camps.
Life went on by force of inertia. Portraits of the Great
Leader still hung from the walls of offices, cafeterias and
factories. The secret speech delivered by the new So-
viet Leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1956 came as a shock
to many in the party organizations. Soviet citizens were
now hearing the same kind of fantastical recriminations
regarding the past 20 years that they had heard during
the height of meat grinder of 1937 purges, but this time
the characters had switched roles. Back then, the ex-
planation was that Great Stalin didnt know about the
atrocities being committed. Now it was being said that
the party failed to stop the evildoers led by Stalin
who had infiltrated its ranks.
Despite the fact that the people had been conditioned
to the level of instinct to accept the party line, this
time many could not hide their dissatisfaction over the
fact that the elites were attempting to wash their hands
of the previously so revered Great Leader. Rumours of
the Great Leader being denounced and cursed outraged
many in the city.
What happened over the following days would have
been easy to understand for a person looking in from
outside: a group of people, influenced by years of propa-
ganda, got out of control and staged tragicomic demon-
strations against de-Stalinization. The regimes panicked
and heavy-handed response, to open fire on the young
protesters, left an enormous trauma on the city and led
to Stalin being given one more nickname: the dead de-
stroyer.
2 1 Ma rc h 1 9 5 9
Iv ane M a ch a beli S t r e e t
Rows of citizens with sad faces stretched along the street
near the building of the Writers Union, an image fitting
of the tragic fate of the late poet Galaktion Tabidze. Silk-
screen signs with words of farewell, an honour guard
and an enormous crowd of people accompanied the
coffin up towards the Mtatsminda Pantheon. The high-
ly original symbolist poet was universally popular and
loved, but on a personal level he lacked support and
care and lived in isolation. The poets lifestyle in Tbilisi
was presented as bohemian but in fact more resem-
bled a battle for survival. As the procession headed up
the hill, unpleasant rumours circulated about the lonely
hours Galaktion spent leading up to his suicide.
1 1 May 1 9 6 1
Petre Melikishvili Street
In 1961, forty years after Georgias Sovietization, the 1 May
International Workers Day celebrations were extended.
Tbilisi was expecting an honoured guest, with great ea-
gerness as well as fear and anxiety. The local elite needed
to show the chief, Nikita Khrushchev, that it was loyal, that
it was pursuing an effective course, and that the hatred
that Georgians had felt for him since 9 March 1956 had
subsided.
Khrushchev was met at the Tbilisi railway station and tak-
en in an open-roofed Chayka car towards Rustaveli Ave-
nue, with citizens gathered at the roadside all along the
route welcoming him. Afterwards, he travelled along the
Stalin Embankment to the citys newest neighbourhood,
Saburtalo, where he toured pride-inspiring architectural
objects: the buildings of the Polytechnical Institute (which
was oddly adorned with large portraits of Lenin, Stalin
and Khrushchev), the Sports Palace and large residential
apartment blocks. He then went to another new architec-
tural space, the Peoples Economy Exhibition Pavilion in the
Didube neighbourhood. In the evening, he took in The
Demon at the Opera and Ballet Theatre.
In a speech at the Sports Palace the next day, after pro-
nouncing the obligatory sentimental and saccharine words
about his hosts, he explained to the masses the secret of his
political course based on examples he had spotted during
the previous day in Tbilisi. He did some rough math to de-
termine how many schools and hospitals could have been
built with the money used to construct the Sports Palace.
Sensational stories about behind-the-scenes details of
Khrushchevs visit circulated for a long time. To this day
there is lively discussion about how the KGB showed spe-
cial vigilance in ensuring that no-one even think of attack-
ing the Soviet leader in revenge.
1969
Palace, Rustaveli Avenue
In 1969 the Pioneer Palace (which served in years past as
the residence of the Russian viceroy and a government
building for both democratic and communist regimes)
earned its spot on the world chess map. Two former
students of the chess club at the palace, Nona Gaprin-
dashvili and Tigran Petrosyan, became world champions.
Nona, known as the Queen of Chess won it for the third
time and Iron Tigran won his second championship.
By that time the 1960s had already been declared the
era of Nona Gaprindashvili in womens chess and the
Soviet press wrote exultantly about how she would
bravely defend her title after falling behind early on. The
victories of the Tbilisi natives encouraged peoples fan-
tasy and soon many were naively believing a legend ac-
cording to which Tigran had secretly helped Nona in her
final match by pronouncing the mysterious word achu.
The memory of the triumphs of the 1960s remains alive
today at what is now called the Youth Palace, whose
chess club carries the seemingly unusual abbreviation
NTN (Nona, Tigran, Nana).
9 May 1 9 73
Kamo Street
On the 28th anniversary of the victory over fascism,
the citys relaxed and festive mood was disrupted by an
event that seemed to come right out of the past. People
looked on with shock mixed with interest as an enor-
mous fire engulfed the building of the Opera and Ballet
Theatre, ultimately leaving only the faade intact. In the
blink of an eye a century of history had turned to ash, in-
cluding the pride of the theatre, the curtain designed by
Sergo Kobuladze. Ninety-nine years after the facility was
completely burnt to the ground, history repeated itself.
Soon it became clear that the fire had been no accident,
though it took several years to find those responsible.
In 1977 a group including technical and administrative
staff and former soloists of the opera were charged with
arson. According to the investigation, a soloist who had
a beef with the director enlisted a deputy director, a
lighting manager, a sound technician, an electrician and
the head of storage to help with the plan. During the 9
May festivities they caused the fire by triggering a reac-
tion of chemicals used in special effects.
Despite prosecutors best efforts in the trial, the investi-
gators conclusion was met with distrust by many in so-
ciety. Questions had been left unanswered, such as who
financed the culprits, and doubts were further raised by
the light sentences handed down by the court. The Op-
era building was soon restored to its nearly original ap-
pearance but the story of those convicted of destroying
it was soon forgotten.
2 7 Oct o b er 1 9 7 9
Metekh i C h urc h co u r t y a r d
It was a time that many long for: there was no war and
no hunger, money was not lacking, friendship ties were
strong. Yet still it was called an era of stagnation. The
ideologues of the Soviet nation reasoned that it was time
to fundamentally reconstruct the last vestige of personal
interaction remaining outside state control: that harm-
less human instinct to gather and spend time together
on various occasions, be they local holidays with pagan
roots, or feasts with forgotten religious significance.
Old, vague, often harmful traditions were to be re-
placed in the Soviet consciousness with new, beneficial
holidays with clear-cut significance. Accordingly, a num-
ber of official holidays ending in the Georgian feast day
suffix -oba were introduced. Some of them were fixed
on certain dates while others varied year by year. They
ran the gamut from celebrations honouring individual
cultural or revolutionary figures to festivals honouring
certain towns or villages.
Initially, the capital citys festival, Tbilisoba, focused on
themes such as the superficial reinvigoration of old
neighbourhoods, theatrical celebrations of ethnic di-
versity, the bounty of the autumn harvest entering the
capital from the regions, and the celebration of birth
and marriage statistics. These features are evident even
today in this unusually long-lived Soviet holiday. It is
interesting to ponder whether the ideological policy of
the stagnation era filled these folk celebrations with a
socialist essence or whether this experiment yielded an
unintended combination thereof.
1 Ap r i l 1 9 87
Vict ory ( Va ke) Pa rk
In 1987, the Iron Lady, British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher, paid her second visit to the other side of the
Iron Curtain. Her first had been in 1969 as a member of
a parliamentary delegation.
Against the backdrop of tense negotiations on strate-
gic nuclear weapons reduction, there was great interest
in the West regarding the Soviet Unions new policy of
transformation (perestroika). Westerners wondered
what the process of great change would mean for the
rest of the world, whether or not the USSR was going to
stop its efforts to spread communism around the globe
and stop posing a military threat to Western Europe, and
what kind of prospects there were for revising the prin-
ciples of economic unions.
After the closed talks, despite the diplomatic gestures,
the clearly stated differences of opinion showed that
fundamental changes were still far off. At the end of her
visit, as an expression of diplomatic etiquette, the guest
visited Tbilisi, where she was given a rushed tour of Geor-
gias cultural sites: the restored Old Tbilisi featuring open-
air exhibitions, the art museum, and the newly reopened
Wedding Palace. But the tour was highly controlled and
tightly orchestrated and had a superficial quality to it.
It was precisely because of the subject of the guests in-
terest perestroika that Tbilisi was soon to become an
undesirable place for guests, as the processes that had
been under way behind the facades broke through into
the public arena.
1 2 nov e mb e r 1 9 8 8
t b i l i s i h i pp o d r o m e
Bored with decades of tedious compulsory and heavily
planned festivals and state-organized demonstrations
and now in conditions of crisis, some people took the
risk of holding spontaneous rallies in what was the first
step towards Soviet citizens self-expression and partici-
pation in political processes. But this phenomenon was
a temporary simulation of freedom devoid of rational
calculations.
A basic blueprint of tactics, routes and demonstration
spaces was created over time alongside the growth in
the frequency and size of demonstrations that for its
part occurred in direct proportion to the intensity of the
crisis. The fact that the blueprint is still used to this day
offers striking insight into the psychology of the post-So-
viet society.
The formal start of this tradition the first such large
demonstration looks strange in retrospect. People un-
happy about various matters, political and non-political,
gathered in large numbers at the Hippodrome in what
could be considered a test of their own strength. The
demonstrators carried placards with slogans promoting
such a diverse array of causes that normally they would
not have reason to occupy the same space. Some were
protesting against a new law restricting freedom of as-
sembly, some protested against the planned construc-
tion of the Khudoni hydropower plant, others adorned
themselves in religious symbols and some stood with a
placards of the extremely nationalist sense.
1 9 88
Republic Square
The culture of public discourse on political issues with
broad citizen participation was a relatively new phenom-
enon for citizens unaccustomed to speaking openly.
Public lectures, founding congresses of political organi-
zations, presentations of political platforms, like street
demonstrations, became common at this time of crisis
and often there was little distinction to be made.
For the radically inclined public - which was only now
coming to learn from its experience the awesome re-
sponsibility borne by citizens individually and collec-
tively the process of taking decisions and engaging in
politics meant coming forward with populist and bold
proposals and action plans. For them political engage-
ment did not include weighing threats and possible neg-
ative scenarios and planning accordingly.
The dilemma of getting the support of the masses and
taking responsibility for managing risks at the same time
was hard for many to overcome. Some prominent think-
ers, most notably the philosopher Merab Mamardashvili,
attempted to insert a sense of responsibility and ratio-
nality into the political agenda, but their efforts were fu-
tile and ended in them being demonized.
9 Ap r i l 1 9 89
Gov ernm ent Pa la ce
Rust a v eli Av enue
The brutal break-up of an anti-Soviet demonstration out-
side the Government Palace on 9 April 1989 was a water-
shed moment for an entire generation. The phrase after
the events of 9 April appears in many an autobiography
and self-vindicating statement.
It was the third occasion following 21 February 1921
and 9 March 1956 that the city witnessed foreign sol-
diers violently and cold-bloodedly exacting revenge on
behalf of the Soviet regime, which then downplayed the
severity of the event. The mobilization of efforts to face
the reality and gravity of the incident firmly imprinted
on our collective memory the poor quality video foot-
age of the trench shovels used to beat protesters and
ensured that the trauma would last for generations. As
a result, any effort to hold an emotionless discussion on
the causes and consequences of the tragedy was pub-
licly denounced.
To this day, the morning of 9 April and the ensuing days
are recalled as a shining expression of solidarity and
unanimity which sadly disappeared in the civil unrest
and conflict of the following years. But few are willing
to ask the question as to whether the 9 April tragedy
might have been a link in a logical chain that included
that same unrest and disunity.
The location of the tragedy, thanks to the irony of fate,
had already been associated with tragedy. It is the site
of a mass grave of soldiers who died defending Tbilisi in
1921. That notwithstanding, the place is first and fore-
most linked to the memory of 9 April, specifically to the
emotions surrounding that event, and little else.
28 Augu s t 1 9 9 0
Lenin Square
Starting in 1989 communist monuments and symbols
had a tough time of it. They were easy targets for expres-
sions of pent-up hate. More and more frequently they
were damaged or covered in paint, in particular imag-
es of Lenin and Sergo Orjonikidze. In parallel, the newly
uncensored press was now freely printing documents
which undermined the reputation of the Great Leader
and so guarding monuments to Lenin from hooligans
became an additional burden for the police. Despite the
enhanced protection, one day an unknown group of
people attempted to dismantle the giant Lenin Monu-
ment in Lenin Square on their own. In the evening, as
people gathered round the square, there was an attempt
to remove the statue already covered in paint with
a crane. In the course of the effort, the monument was
destroyed.
The next day the chairman of the Tbilisi city council, Niko
Lekishvili, said that in fact it was the councils presidium
that had decided to remove the monument from the
square, as protecting it was consuming too many city re-
sources. In addition, there was no need for so many mon-
uments to one person in a single city, and this particular
statue was associated with the bloody events of 9 March
1956, thus strengthening locals aggression against the
system, he said. Lekishvili practically thanked the peo-
ple who helped the city council remove the monument
and promised that the square would soon be cleaned up
and a competition announced to determine what would
replace the Lenin monument.
The project is supported by the South Caucasus Regional
Office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation and its aim is to fos-
ter the debates how to keep the memory about our modern
history and understand how and why the places where sig-
nificant historical events take place are changing.

Project staff: Irakli Khvadagiani, David Kopaliani, Nano

Zazanashvili, Levan Goguadze, Tornike Mamatsashvili,
Ia Ghadua
Design: Magda Tsotskhalashvili
Consultant: Guram Tsibakhashvili
Photographer: Sandro Khutsishvili
Special Thanks to: Levan Kalandarishvili, Aleksandre Sarali
dze, Nestan Chkhikvadze, Giorgi Giutashvili, Tsira Elisashvili,
Vakhtang Mikeladze, Nana Shengelaia, Ketevan Sadagishvili,
Nino Satkoeva