Hello and welcome to the witness podcast.

All this week we're looking back at the events that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union

in December of 1991.

Almost immediately the former Soviet Republic of Georgia was gripped by a political and economic crisis.

The country's president was forced into hiding and soon there were gunman on the streets.

Tom Eselement has spoken to one survivor. and soon there were gunman on the streets.

Tom Eselement has spoken to one survivor of the crisis.

It's Christmas 1991 and rebels are firing on government buildings in the streets of the capital, Tbilisi.

Georgia, newly independent following the collapse of the Soviet Union is on the verge of civil war.

The new Georgian president Zviad Gamsahudia is forced into hiding after a faction from within

his own government violently turns against him.

President Gansu Kordia himself in a radio broadcast from his bunker

said the opposition were bandits and criminals who had no right to form a government.

He called for a mobilization of the people.

Many men in Tbilisi are quick to take sides, either to protect the embattled president,

or by becoming members of the armed

paramilitaries who oppose him. The violence begins to seep into every corner of

the capital. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Doctors and nurses must do everything they can to protect their patients.

It's very hard for me to tell about that period when everything was ruined.

The earliest memory was noise because I live in the center of Tbilisi

and everything was happening not far from my house.

Lamora Vashikidse, a hospital doctor in Tbilisi, had already experienced the chaotic and at times violent breakup of the USSR earlier in

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