A Soviet anti-corruption crusader became the face of Gorbachev's foreign policy
Eduard Shevardnadze built his career by jailing corrupt party bosses in Soviet Georgia, turned the republic into a rare economic bright spot in the stagnant 1970s, and then became Moscow's foreign minister, second only to Mikhail Gorbachev in shaping Soviet diplomacy as the Cold War wound down.
He was born on 25 January 1928 in Mamati, Georgia, to a teacher and committed communist, while his mother disliked the regime and opposed both men's party careers. During the Great Purge of 1937 his father was arrested but freed after an NKVD officer who had once been his pupil intervened; a cousin, the painter Dimitri Shevardnadze, was not so lucky. In 1951 Eduard married Nanuli, whose father had been killed in the purges. She first turned him down, fearing her background would wreck his prospects, as it did for many couples.
He joined the party in 1948 and rose through the Georgian Komsomol, where he first met Gorbachev. Khrushchev's Secret Speech and the crackdown on the 1956 Georgian demonstrations left him disillusioned, and in 1961 he was demoted for offending a senior official. After some years in obscurity he ran a Tbilisi city district, had the city's party chief Otari Lolashvili charged with corruption and jailed, and moved into the interior ministry, becoming minister in 1965. His campaigns made him enemies at home but impressed Moscow.
From 1972 to 1985 he led Georgia as first secretary, tasked with stamping out the black and grey markets that had flourished under Vasil Mzhavanadze, when Georgia was the most corrupt Soviet republic. By 1974 industrial output was up 9.6 percent and farm output 18 percent, and food queues in Tbilisi shortened while Moscow's grew. His 1973 Abasha experiment, modelled on János Kádár's Hungarian farm policy, rewarded farmers with a share of crops for beating plan targets. He also went on live television and asked to be criticised more.
Gorbachev made him foreign minister in 1985, a post he held, with a short break, until the Soviet Union dissolved, and abroad he came to embody perestroika. Returning to independent Georgia, he became its leader in 1992 and president in 1995, but corruption and nepotism marked his rule. Protests over a disputed 2003 election, the Rose Revolution, forced his resignation, and he died on 7 July 2014.
Source: Eduard Shevardnadze
