The fact remains that the massacre was carried out by all-Union troops. Indeed, there were rumors of clashes between them and Georgian police. And the revelations about the use of poison gas have come from the Georgian minister of health. At the same time, the central party leadership has been bringing strong pressure to bear on the party in neighboring Armenia in particular to harden it up against nationalist pres-
Undoubtedly, the tangle in Tbilisi will take a long time to unravel. But it already illustrates clearly two points. First, while the Gorbachev leadership is ready to crackdown hard to stop perestroika from getting out of hand, it cannot afford to lose its liberalizing image. Secondly, the attempt to shift from open terror to political means of retaining control puts tremendous pressure on the intermediate and lower levels of the
They are damned if they yield too much to local pressures and damned if they do not give enough and in time. That risks undermining very quickly the bureaucracy's essential instrument of power. *
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USSR repression