ABSTRACT
It was not Stalin who returned to Georgia from his Kremlin-wall grave, but Eduard Shevardnadze from his office in Moscow.
The date was March 8, 1992, and it was his first visit to Georgia in eight years. Meeting him at the airport were Mkhedrioni warlord leader Jaba Ioseliani,
National Guard commander Tengiz Kitovani, and the third leg of the troika, Tengiz Segua, who had served as prime minister under Zviad Gamsakhurdia, and whose presence thus gave a fig leaf of legitimacy to the coup. Together, the three formed the “State Council,” with Kitovani holding the defense portfolio and Ioseliani that of interior, the so-called power ministries that theoretically maintained a monopoly on organized violence in the country. Others referred to the group simply as “the junta.”
