Eduard Shevardnadze (25 January 1928-7 July 2014) was the head of state of Georgia from 10 March 1992 to 23 November 2003, preceding Nino Burjanadze. Shevardnadze served as the Soviet Foreign Minister from 1985 to 1990, and he also served as President of the Republic of Georgia following the Dissolution of the Soviet Union. His government was marked by rampant corruption and nepotism, and he was deposed in the Rose Revolution of 2014.
Biography[]
Eduard Shevardnadze was born in Mamati, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union in 1928. He joined the Communist Party of Georgia in 1948 and became a leading member of the Komsomol, whose Georgian first secretary he became in 1957. He then worked in the CPSU party machine and served as Deputy Prime Minister from 1964-5 and then as First Minister of the Georgian Ministry of Public Order from 1965-72. There, he worked assiduously to reduce the influence of the Georgian Mafia, and in 1972 took his case against the Mafia activities of his local party boss, Vasil Mzhavanadze, to Leonid Brezhnev. He was appointed first secretary of the Communist Party of Georgia in Mzhavanadze's stead, and became the most reform-oriented leader of a Soviet republic, within the limits tolerated by Brezhnev. A candidate member of the Politburo from 1978, he supported Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he had known since the 1960s, in his rise to power.
His appointment to replace the grim and dreary Andrei Gromyko as Foreign Minister was the first indication of Gorbachev's earnest will to reform. His charm, efficiency, and imagination contributed greatly to the success of the country's more relaxed foreign policy and the establishment of a genuine working relationship with US presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He resigned to general surprise on 20 December 1990, apparently in protest against Gorbachev's increasingly unpopular policies. In November 1991, he returned to his office after the August coup against Gorbachev until the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 31 December 1991.
He became President of the newly founded Republic of Georgia on 10 March 1992, and subsequently used his energy again to fight against Mafia corruption, to end his country's civil war, and to prevent the break-away of Abkhazia. He was re-elected with 51% of the popular vote in the elections of 6 November 1995. His presidency would, however, be marked with rampant corruption and nepotism. After accusations of electoral fraud during the 2003 legislative election that led to a series of public protests and demonstrations in the "Rose Revolution", Shevardnadze was forced to resign, and he died in Tbilisi in 2014 at the age of 86.