600 Said To Have Died In 1956 Georgia Revolt

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29178, 12 April 1960, Page 17

600 Said To Have Died In 1956 Georgia Revolt

(Rec. 10 p.m.)

WASHINGTON, April 11.

The anti-Communist revolts of late 1956 in Hungary and Poland actually began in the Soviet Union itself early in the same year, a witness has told the House of Representatives Committee on Un-Ameri-can Activities.

More than 600 Georgians were killed by Soviet troops in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, in March, 1956, Guivy Zaldastani, of Milton, Massachusetts, told the committee last January. His testimony was made public yesterday.

Georgia, one of the Soviet republics, is situated in the Caucasus between the Black and Caspian Seas. Joseph Stalin was a Georgian by birth. Mr Zaldastani, a native Georgian, who now is manager of a Boston department store, told the committee that on March 7, 1956, several thousand students and workers demonstrated on Tbilisi's streets shouting for “individual liberties.”

The demonstrators, he said, were allowed to disperse, but next day Georgia was virtually isolated from the world. “The next morning all communications with Georgia ceased,” Mr Zaldastani said. “The visiting French President, Mr Vincent Auriol, was flown out of Tbilisi. Prime Minister Hansen, of Denmark, scheduled to land in Tbilisi that day, was rerouted to Stalingrad at the last minute. Six United States physicians scheduled to visit Tbilisi for a few days ‘agreed’ to drop the

Georgian tour from the itinerary, at the suggestion of Soviet officials."

Then Soviet troops were ordered out of their barracks. Tanks were used against barricades erected by the demonstrators. Many of the rioters, trapped by the advancing tanks,- tried to escape by jumping from cliffs into the river Kura, running through the centre of the city, the witness said. “This obvious death Jump was the only chance to escape. The casualties were reported to exceed 600,” he said. He told of two boys and a girl whom he called “the heroes of the day” who, through a radio transmitter, told the free world about the revolt They were bayonetted by the soldiers and thrown into the street Mr Zaldastani, under questioning, said the Soviet Prime Minister, Mr Nikita Khrushchev, was responsible for suppressing the revolt “The crime which I have related could not have occurred without his acquiescence and approval,” he said. The committee was holding hearings on what it billed as “the crimes of Khrushchev.” Mr Zaldastani told the committee his information came from documentary material he had. and confidential sources stemming from Georgia which he could not reveal because it would jeopardise their fives.