Eduard Shevardnadze
Eduard Shevardnadze was the Soviet foreign minister who let eastern Europe go, and then ran Georgia for eleven years. He was a career party official who made his name as Georgian interior minister prosecuting corruption in the most corrupt republic in the union, and became its party first secretary in 1972. Gorbachev made him foreign minister in 1985, to general astonishment: he spoke no foreign language, had no diplomatic experience, and replaced Gromyko, who had held the post for twenty-eight years. What followed was the dismantling of the Cold War. He negotiated the intermediate-range missile treaty, wound up the war in Afghanistan, accepted German reunification inside NATO over the objections of his own military, and told the Warsaw Pact governments in 1989 that Soviet tanks would not come - which is the reason the revolutions of that year were almost bloodless. He resigned dramatically in December 1990, warning the congress that dictatorship was coming; the coup attempt followed eight months later. He went home in 1992 to a Georgia in civil war after a coup against Gamsakhurdia, and governed it until 2003 - surviving at least two assassination attempts, holding the state together, and presiding over an administration whose corruption became the complaint against him. The Rose Revolution of November 2003 removed him without violence when protesters led by his own former justice minister walked into parliament carrying roses, and he resigned the next day rather than order the army out. He stayed in Tbilisi afterwards and gave interviews for another decade. The verdict on him divides on which half you weigh: abroad he is the man who let the Cold War end without a shot, and at home he is remembered for a decade of blackouts, unpaid pensions and a police force that worked for itself.
- Lived: 1928 CE – 2014 CE
- Nationality: Georgian
- Roles: head_of_state, foreign_minister
