Gorbachev:
Reaping the Whirlwind 2: Bloody Sunday
Panorama presents the second of two reports on the Soviet Union in escalating crisis.
Six months ago in Tblisi, the capital of Soviet Georgia, troops encircled a crowd of peaceful demonstrators and attacked them with truncheons, entrenching tools and gas. Twenty people were killed - more than three-quarters were women - and over 500 taken to hospital. Most of the casualties were victims of gases which the Soviet military authorities have refused to identify.
Tblisi's 'Bloody Sunday' has become a critical test for
Mikhail Gorbachev 's reforms.
Will the Soviet armed forces, for the first time, have to answer to the law?
Charles Wheeler investigates the atrocity and pieces together what really happened. He reports on the attempts by two
Parliamentary commissions to fix the blame and how the massacre has led Georgian opposition leaders to rally support for independence from Moscow's rule.
Producer CHARLES FURNEAUX Editor TIM GARDAM
(Postponed from 6 November)