Eduard Shevardnadze - obituary

Eduard Shevardnadze, who has died aged 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 out of 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. In September 1993 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.

^{Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze gestures during a news conference in 1998 (REUTERS)}

Shevardnadze — known as the “White Fox”, as much for his smooth diplomat’s tongue as for his shock of silver hair — had emerged on to the international stage as one of the new breed of liberals who had flourished under Gorbachev’s reforms, helping to overturn communist ideology and build a new relationship with the West. It therefore caused an international sensation when, shortly before Christmas 1990, he suddenly turned his back on his beleaguered leader. The timing of his announcement was critical: the “countdown” to the United Nations deadline of January 15 for Iraqi troops to withdraw from Kuwait had less than a month to go, and Gorbachev was at the lowest ebb of his five-year rule.

“I’ll put it bluntly, comrade democrats,” Shevardnadze declared, in a dramatic and emotional speech. “You have scattered. The reformers have slunk into the bushes. Dictatorship is coming.”

The political turning-point for Shevardnadze had, he claimed, occurred in April 1989, long before his resignation, when Soviet troops used brute force to crush a nationalist uprising in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, killing about 16 people. “Any state needs order,” he lamented at the time, “and this is especially true of one plagued by a severe crisis like ours. But I am categorically against the use of the army in punitive operations.”

His outspoken remarks proved too much for the hardliners, who from then on, according to Shevardnadze, used every opportunity to pick on him. He was accused of undermining Soviet security through arms cuts, of being soft on America, of selling out on Eastern Europe, and finally — the last straw for the Red Army generals — of pitching the USSR against its former ally Iraq in the Gulf conflict.

In June 1991, six months after his resignation, Shevardnadze caused further dismay among the Politburo’s old guard with his announcement, on a visit to Vienna, that he was to set up a new movement for “democratically minded Communists”. A month later, he and a dozen prominent Soviet liberals — who included Alexander Yakovlev, the “father of perestroika”, and Stanislav Shatalin, one of Gorbachev’s foremost economic advisers — signed a statement calling for a new Democratic Reform Group to provide an alternative to the Communist Party. Shevardnadze cannot have been entirely surprised when he was forced out of the Party a week later.

In August that year, 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.

But if the death of the Soviet Union signalled the end of Gorbachev’s career, it marked a new beginning for Shevardnadze, who, early in 1992, took advantage of the political turbulence in the republics, and returned to his native Georgia pledging to rescue it from chaos. At first his intention of winning the Georgian leadership seemed a near impossible task. The recently-toppled nationalist leader, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a famous scientist and writer, still held broad popular support, and had vowed to fight on against the “Mafia” that had ousted him in a bloody coup in January. Moreover, it seemed unlikely that a former communist would be able to convince the people of his democratic integrity.

Indeed, Shevardnadze had been known in Georgia not so much for his work as a diplomat as for having being a tough interior minister and then party leader in Tbilisi in the 1970s and early 1980s. In these roles he had proved as ruthless in crushing dissidents (including Gamsakhurdia) as he had been in purging corruption. Nevertheless, on the bleak platform of Soviet public relations Shevardnadze stood out as a man with at least some grasp of the importance of image-making. By promising to use his international contacts to repair the country’s poor reputation — and by organising the occasional public display of devotion to the Georgian Orthodox Church — he succeeded in gathering popular support .

While Gamsakhurdia touched the romantic streak in Georgians, Shevardnadze appealed to their pragmatic instincts, which told them that isolation from Russia and the West was too high a price to pay for independence. Ultimately — and unlike Gamsakhurdia, who rushed to denounce anyone who dissented from his nationalist line — he was regarded as a skilled unifier.

In March 1992 Shevardnadze was appointed head of an interim ruling council in Georgia, formed to hold the fort until the next elections scheduled for the autumn. A month later his opinion poll rating was 70 per cent. In October he stood unopposed in Georgia’s first free elections since gaining independence from Moscow — he claimed he was “embarrassed” that no one had stood against him — and won 96 per cent of the national vote. When the presidency was restored in November 1995, he was elected with 70 per cent of the vote.

By this time the conflict with Gamsakhurdia’s supporters had been ended by Russian intervention on Shevardnadze’s side and Gamsakhurdia’s death in December 1993. Yet bloody separatist battles continued to rage in the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, while the conflict in neighbouring Chechnya began to cause friction with Russia, which accused Shevardnadze of harbouring Chechen guerrillas and supported Georgian separatists in return.

Further friction with Georgia’s big neighbour was caused by Shevardnadze’s good relations with the United States, through which Georgia became a major recipient of US foreign and military aid and a strategic partner with Nato.

At the same time, Shevardnadze’s much-vaunted image as an anti-corruption campaigner became tarnished. Shevardnadze himself was never directly accused of graft, but as his family and cronies became visibly richer, people’s feelings turned. 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, but the last straw came on November 2 2003, when voting for a new parliament was widely held to have been fiddled. Washington had warned Shevardnadze of the dangers of fraud, yet American and European monitors were united in their charges that the elections had been unfair.

^{Shevardnadze with cuts and bruises after an assassination attempt in 1995 (WTN PICTURES)}

For days afterwards supporters of the opposition United National Movement, led by Mikhail Saakashvili, stood outside the parliament building in Tbilisi, demanding that the elections be annulled or that the President resign. Shevardnadze called for dialogue, yet gave no sign that he would make concessions.

On November 22 he narrowly escaped the storming of parliament and the president’s office, and on the night of November 23, after the intervention of Igor Ivanov, the Russian Foreign Minister, he was finally persuaded to go. He had decided to stand aside, he said, to avoid bloodshed. In reality he was unfit to rule.

^{Georgian protesters near the residence of President Shevardnadze, Tbilisi, 2003 (AFP)}

Eduard Amvrosiyevich Shevardnadze was born on January 25 1928 at Mamati, in western Georgia, where his father ran the village school. His older brother, Ippokrat, who died in 1978, became a department chief in the central committee of the Georgian Communist Party.

Young Eduard studied history, before plunging himself into party youth work in the republic, long regarded as the most corrupt of the 15 in the Soviet Union. He joined the Communist Party in 1948, and rose to become head of Georgia’s Communist Youth League before being appointed Georgia’s Interior Minister in 1965.

Seven years later he assumed the leadership of the republic’s Communist Party, under dramatic circumstances: the party leader, Vasily Mzhavadze, had dismissed Shevardnadze from his post in charge of the KGB at the Interior Ministry for “excess of zeal” in cracking down on racketeers closely linked to the Georgian party.

Shevardnadze boarded the first train for Moscow, allegedly armed with a briefcase full of incriminating documents about the Georgian party secretary’s corrupt rule, and managed to turn the tables on Mzhavadze. He then embarked on a 15-year rule of Georgia that won him respect and hostility in equal measure .

“Is there anything here that is not for sale?” he thundered, shortly before his appointment. “If there is, I cannot think of it.” At an assembly in 1972, Shevardnadze reiterated his intentions to clean up the Georgia. “We Georgians,” he declared, “a people of farmers, heroes and poets, have become thieves, cheats and black marketeers.” In his first two years in power, his Moscow-backed crusade resulted in the arrest of some 25,000 people, including 9,500 party members and 70 police and KGB officials. He cracked down on every walk of society: peasants were prevented from sending the fruits of their private plots for sale on the black market in Moscow; officials were stripped of illegal possessions including Mercedes Benz motor-cars and luxury villas.

On one occasion “Mr Clean”, as he became known, saw a glittering collection of imported watches on the raised wrists of members taking a vote. In future, he suggested, perhaps his comrades could set an example by contenting themselves with the cruder home-made variety. He also had a notably liberalising influence on cultural life. Long before glasnost had even been thought of, Shevardnadze was approving the publication of books and plays that had previously been banned.

In 1973 the Georgians responded to the purges with a spate of violence, which culminated with an arson attack on Tbilisi’s opera house. A number of attempts were made on Shevardnadze’s life. But Shevardnadze would not be swayed and his efforts were finally recognised by the Kremlin in 1978, when he was appointed a non-voting member of the Politburo. None the less, he was virtually unknown outside the Soviet Union when Gorbachev appointed him Foreign Minister in July 1985 — not quite four months after his accession to the presidency.

^{Eduard Shevardnadze at home in Tbilisi, Georgia, 2003 (AP)}

Initially world leaders were astonished by the promotion. And for a while, given Shevardnadze’s evident inexperience, there was speculation as to the president’s motives. When Shevardnadze made his international debut in August 1985, however, at the 10th anniversary celebrations of the Helsinki Declaration, his rough-hewn unstuffy personality won over his Western audience, while his friendly manner and natty suits could not have presented a more engaging contrast to his truculent predecessor, Andrei Gromyko. George Shultz, then US Secretary of State, lost no time in telling Mrs Shevardnadze that he “could do business” with her husband.

All over the world the “Shevvy smile” came to be welcomed as testimony to the profundity of the changes being effected in the USSR while, undaunted by his lack of experience, Shevardnadze rapidly familiarised himself with the immense spectrum of foreign policy and arms control issues, and began to steer Moscow’s Cold War politics on to a new course.

At Soviet-US summits he proposed international space peace agreements and cuts in strategic arms; in Beijing he met Deng Xiaoping and paved the way for the first Sino-Soviet summit in 30 years; in Phnom Penh he opened talks on Cambodia; in Afghanistan he acted as a troubleshooter, in preparation for the Soviet withdrawal; in the Middle East he strove for a settlement between Arabs and Jews, and revitalised Israeli-Soviet relations.

Shevardnadze’s most resounding success, though, was his key role in forging a new understanding between East and West. His American counterpart came to talk of him as a friend. They went on boating and fishing trips and relaxed together in the sunshine. In November 1989 he made an unprecedented visit to the Nato HQ in Brussels, where he announced “The Cold War is over” and, soon afterwards, signed Russia’s first major trade agreement with the EEC.

In the young democracies of eastern Europe, too, Shevardnadze was hailed as “Eduard the Peacemaker”. He encouraged perestroika; announced Moscow’s willingness to accept a Solidarity government in Poland in 1989 and, the same year, publicly sanctioned the “Sinatra Doctrine”, allowing east Europeans to go their own way. He described the dismantling of the Berlin Wall as “sensible” and, after initial misgivings, persuaded a vacillating Gorbachev to accept a united Germany as a member of Nato. With typical pragmatism, he out of the “two plus four” talks (between the two Germanies and the four wartime allies) with firm guarantees on borders and a sound friendship treaty with Germany, which agreed to provide aid to the Soviet Union.

Perhaps the most convincing display of the new order came in August 1990, when Moscow pledged its support for the anti-Iraq coalition.

The last year of his tenure of office was one of diminishing returns. As plans to convert the Soviet Union into a market economy came unstuck, he appeared tired, and resigned to the impotence of his position. None the less, by 1990 he could look back over the previous five years, with satisfaction. “It has become routine now to say that the Cold War is over,” he said in an interview in that year. “But just think what that really means: a new era, a new quality of life in the world. We have been able to do something good, and I have made my small contribution.”

His experience in Georgia subsequently provided less cause for satisfaction.

In 1951, Eduard Shevardnadze married Nanuli Tsagareishvili, a Georgian journalist, who died in 2004. He is survived by their son and daughter.

Eduard Shevardnadze, born January 25 1928, died July 7 2014

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