We have a 20 years rule, so ask historians can only help you with the least controversial parts of it.

Zviad Gamsakhurdia (a jailbird dissident nationalist akin to the American black panthers) won the first multi-party elections in Georgia in October 1990 (a year before USSR was dissolved) and in December same year his government abolished the Autonomous Republics of the Osetians, Abkhazians and Muslims in Georgia which prompted the (elected, too) authorities in Adjara, South Osetia and Abkhazia to declare indepedence.

Source: Georgia's Conflicts by Niklas Nilsson.