During the collapse of the USSR, Georgia's first post-Soviet leader, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, emerged. The platform, known as "Georgia for Georgians", projected ethnic Georgians, who made up 70 percent of the population, as the country's true masters. A longtime anti-Soviet dissident, he derided South Ossetians as newcomers, saying they had arrived only 600 years ago and as "tools" of the Soviet Union.