ABSTRACT
For many in the West, the Cold War is symbolized by the crushing of the anticommunist uprisings in Berlin in 1953, Budapest in 1956, and Prague in 1968. But during those long years on multiple occasions, Georgians also flooded the streets of Tbilisi to demand that their small nation be allowed to leave the USSR and with the same result: Red Army tanks rolled out of the barracks and crushed the protestors claim to freedom. If the bloody crackdowns are known in the West at all, it is as distant events in a distant country deep behind the Iron Curtain, which, having given birth to Stalin, somehow deserved its fate.
