This chapter focuses on the formative moment, the events that precipitated it and its immediate consequences. It shows how the use of repression failed in its purpose of keeping the lid on nationalist mobilization in Georgia, and how instead its main effect was to radicalize the population and to undermine the possibility of a negotiated settlement between the opposition and the authorities. The chapter also shows how the seeds of conflict that were sown in the early morning of 9 April 1989 would prevent the opposition from achieving any unity of purpose and would, despite the victory of the opposition 'Round Table – Free Georgia' bloc in the 1990 parliamentary elections. It also ensures the failure of Georgia's first non-communist government. The chapter attempts to measure the relative impact of actor-driven events on the one hand, and structural factors on the other, by comparing the Georgian case with other former Soviet republics where cultural and institutional legacies were somewhat similar.