Eduard Shevardnadze: Georgian leader whose about-turn helped topple the Soviet Union
1928-2014
EDUARD Shevardnadze, who has died at the age of 86, played a key role in precipitating the collapse of the Soviet Union when he resigned as minister of foreign affairs at a crucial moment during the presidency of Mikhail Gorbachev.
He later rose from the communist ashes to become president of the newly independent republic of Georgia.
Yet the fragmentation of the union did not stop there and Shevardnadze did not escape the troubles unleashed by its break-up.
He failed to quell an Abkhazian separatist rebellion and, as Georgia’s internal troubles spread beyond its borders, it became caught up in the many small wars that broke out throughout the Caucasus.
The republic’s economy, once the most buoyant in the Soviet Union, came close to collapse and Shevardnadze’s presidency was increasingly dogged by rampant corruption and accusations of nepotism.
Shevardnadze — known as the “White Fox” — had emerged on the international stage as one of the new breed of liberals who had flourished under Gorbachev’s reforms. It caused an international sensation when, in 1990, he suddenly turned his back on his beleaguered leader.
In August 1991, when the tanks rolled into Moscow during an attempted military coup against Gorbachev, Shevardnadze joined Boris Yeltsin on the barricades. The coup soon crumbled and in November, in a vain attempt to shore up his position, Gorbachev asked Shevardnadze to return as foreign minister. To widespread surprise, he accepted — only to find his post abolished weeks later as the Soviet Union disintegrated.
In 1992, Shevardnadze returned to his native Georgia pledging to rescue it from chaos and soon became its leader, unlikely as this had seemed for a former communist leader.
Shevardnadze survived assassination attempts in 1992, 1995 and 1998. He secured a second term as president in April 2000 in an election that was marred by widespread claims of vote-rigging.
In 2003, he narrowly escaped the storming of parliament and the president’s office, and was finally persuaded to go.
Shevardnadze was born on January 25 1928 in Mamati, western Georgia. He joined the Communist Party in 1948.
In 1951, he married Nanuli Tsagareishvili, a Georgian journalist, who died in 2004. He is survived by their son and daughter. — © The Daily Telegraph, London