Nationalists, Minority Battle in Soviet Georiga

There are only four roads leading into Tskhinvali, and three are under the control of the Georgian militia. The fourth, which leads through the Caucasus Mountains to Vladikavkaz in northern Ossetia, is the town's only real point of contact with the outside world. But it too is hazardous, because it passes through several Georgian villages, and Ossetian convoys carrying supplies from Vladikavkaz frequently are ambushed.

After the Georgian militia withdrew from Tskhinvali on Jan. 26, Soviet Interior Ministry troops took up positions between the two sides. After some haggling, an Armenian agreed to drive a reporter into the besieged town, crossing himself repeatedly as the car passed between the rival militia posts.

"Georgian Democracy is a Fascist Spree," announced the red banner strung up outside Communist Party headquarters in Tskhinvali. Inside, party officials were sweeping up the fragments of a bust of Soviet state founder Lenin that they said had been destroyed by Georgian police. The local party leader, Thorez Kolembegov, was arrested by the Georgian militia in January and is now sitting in jail in Tbilisi.

The town's electricity has been partially restored after being cut off for much of the past two months. Doctors at the local hospital said the power shortages forced them to postpone several urgent operations. Residents huddled around wood fires to keep warm in freezing temperatures because of the lack of central heating.

Georgian officials insist that the decision to cut off electricity to Tskhinvali was made by an independent power-supply union to prevent Ossetian separatists from manufacturing weapons. But a tour of factories in the city produced no evidence to support Georgian allegations that they had been converted to produce rifles and hand grenades.

Georgian mistrust of the Ossetians is deeply rooted. For Gamsakhurdia, along with most of his compatriots, the present conflict is a replay of what happened in 1920-22, when a fledgling Georgian state was crushed by the Red Army. The Ossetians sided with the Bolsheviks against the Menshevik government in Tbilisi during the Soviet civil war. In return, the Georgians say, the Ossetians were rewarded with an "autonomous region" within Georgia in addition to the autonomous republic of North Ossetia in Russia.

In return for protection from their larger Georgian neighbor, the Ossetians have repaid the Kremlin with devotion to the socialist cause. Tskhinvali is one of the few places in the Soviet Union where dictator Joseph Stalin is still revered. Local residents claim that Stalin, who was born just down the road in the Georgian town of Gori, was descended from Ossetians.

It is impossible to check Georgian claims that the Ossetian "extremists" are being armed by the Soviet military. What is clear, however, is that the Ossetians have access to some fairly sophisticated weapons. In a recent attack on the Georgian village of Avnevi, near Tskhinvali, Ossetian guerrillas used grenades, mortars and rockets.

"They couldn't have stolen such weapons from the army. That means they either bought them or were given them," said Givi Fadaviditze, recovering in a hospital in Gori after being shot in the leg.

The Georgians never made good communists, as Stalin recognized. During the "era of stagnation," as the years before Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet Communist Party leader in 1985 are officially labeled here, Tbilisi was the unchallenged wheeler-dealer capital of the Soviet Union. There are more private cars in Tbilisi than in any other Soviet city.

The southern climate, Georgian temperament and fragmented ethnic mix give Tbilisi an almost Levantine feel. This is a city of violent passions, elaborate conspiracy theories and some remarkably good restaurants. The collapse of communism has spawned dozens of political factions organized on the basis of personal loyalty rather than ideology.

In the end, all Georgian politics boils down to personalities. Gamsakhurdia, 51, a nationalist who was jailed during the 1970s for anti-Communist activity, is the son of one of Georgia's best-known writers. The man who was once his closest ally in the dissident movement, Georgi Chanturia, is now his bitterest foe.