The World - News from Sept. 8, 1989

A Soviet general who reportedly ordered an army assault that killed 19 demonstrators in the Soviet Georgian city of Tbilisi in April has been removed from his post, officials said. Col. Gen. Igor Rodionov, who was head of the Transcaucasian Military District, was replaced by Col. Gen. Valery O. Patrikeyev, said an editor at the official Gruzinform news agency in Tbilisi, the capital of the Georgian republic. Nationalists have accused Rodionov of ordering soldiers armed with shovels and irritating gas to attack a crowd in Tbilisi on April 9. Rodionov has defended his actions by saying that the protest turned into a “pure orgy,” with anti-Soviet slogans, appeals to overturn the government and appeals to “exterminate Communists.”