Key Leaders in Soviet Georgia Ousted for Failing to Control Clashes That Killed 19

The Communist Party of Georgia, in a decisive move intended to put a lid on tensions still simmering in the republic’s capital after five days of martial law, ousted its key leaders Friday for failing to control clashes between demonstrators and army troops that led to 19 deaths.

In an emergency session attended by Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the party named the republic’s KGB head as Georgia’s new party chief, a post once held by Shevardnadze himself.

“There is no way anyone or anything can justify the death of innocent people,” Shevardnadze told the party meeting in a speech partially broadcast on Soviet television. “We have now one supreme duty: to figure out the truth and exclude forever the possibility of such a tragedy happening again.”

The mood in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi remained tense. Troops patrolled the streets, stopped cars at roadblocks for searches and cordoned off squares with tanks and armored personnel carriers to prevent mass gatherings, residents said. Foreign journalists were not permitted to visit.

Demonstrations in the republic’s capital of 1.2 million people began last week with protesters demanding independence from the Soviet Union. Soviet troops invaded the republic in 1921 and it was then annexed. Georgian nationalists contend their needs are not adequately met by the Russian-dominated government in Moscow.

Deaths at Demonstration

The Tbilisi protests became bloody on Sunday when troops attempted to break up a gathering in front of the republic’s Government House. Sixteen people were killed during the demonstration and three died later, according to official figures, which listed 13 of the dead as women.

Most of those killed were bystanders, according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov. A government commission, which is to include members of the public, has been appointed to investigate the tragedy.

Placards posted at Tbilisi State University after the clash said that Dzhumber I. Patiashvili, the republic’s Communist Party chief, was a “murderer.”

Patiashvili, speaking on Soviet television Monday night, admitted that he mishandled the protest, apparently by ordering troops to suppress the demonstrators. Two days later, Patiashvili offered to resign.

The 49-year-old party leader was appointed in 1985 to succeed Shevardnadze. He will be replaced by Givi G. Gumbaridze, Georgia’s 45-year-old KGB chief, Gerasimov told reporters.

Two Others Ousted

Also ousted from their party posts on the republic’s ruling Politburo were Zurab Chkheidze, chairman of the Georgian Council of Ministers, and Otar Y. Cherkezia, president of the republic’s Supreme Soviet, Gerasimov said.

Gerasimov said that the decisions were made after a “heated discussion” but did not elaborate except to say that the session was attended by Shevardnadze, who postponed a visit to East Germany to try to defuse the crisis in his native Georgia.

The spokesman said that nationalist rallies in Georgia and earlier this year in the republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan were damaging President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s efforts to reform Soviet society by permitting greater openness.

“These events are like sticking a dagger in the back of perestroika, “ he said, referring to Gorbachev’s policies of reform.

Gerasimov also defended the government’s ban on travel to Georgia by foreign journalists, saying: “My view is that we are providing you with enough information so that your readers can judge the situation by themselves.”

Radio Moscow reported Friday that 328 people had been detained in Georgia over the last 24 hours and handed over to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Factories and public transportation were operating normally, but attendance was down by about 50% at the city’s secondary schools, the radio said.

A dusk-to-dawn curfew remained in effect and the army continued to hold about 66,000 hunting rifles and privately owned guns collected earlier this week.

About 2,000 people, many carrying black flags, marched through a central Tbilisi street Thursday for the first funeral of one of the victims, residents said. Additional funerals were planned for the weekend.

The square outside the republic’s Government House apparently has spontaneously become a memorial to the victims.

“There are mountains of flowers. Every day, people place fresh flowers,” Leda Archvadze, sister-in-law of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a jailed Georgian human rights activist, said in a telephone interview.

The army newspaper Red Star said Friday that reports were circulating in Tbilisi that troops who broke up the demonstration were drunk and “butchered women and girls with military shovels.” But the newspaper said doctors who had examined some of the bodies of the victims found no signs of cuts. Gerasimov has said that initial autopsies showed most of the victims were crushed by the crowd.

Gorbachev, in a statement broadcast in Tbilisi two days ago, sharply rejected demands that the republic be granted independence and called on the Georgians to restore order to their republic.

Georgia declared independence in May, 1918, in the chaos following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Moscow recognized that declaration in a treaty signed in 1920, but Soviet troops invaded in February, 1921, and took over the region.