Eduard Shevardnadze

Eduard Shevardnadze (1997)

Eduard Shevardnadze ( Georgian ედუარდ შევარდნაძე ; Russian Эдуард Амвросиевич Шеварднадзе / Eduard Shevardnadze Amwrossijewitsch *  25. January 1928 in Mamati , Guria , Georgian SSR , Transcaucasian SFSR ; † 7. July 2014 in Tbilisi ) was a Soviet and Georgian politicians . He was Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1990 and at the end of 1991 . From 1992 to 1995 he was President of the State Council of Georgia and the second President until 2003.

Life

Eduard Shevardnadze was born the son of a teacher in the village of Mamati in Gurien and had a sister and three brothers. The father was arrested during the Great Terror of 1937 but was released with the help of a former student who worked for the USSR Interior Ministry (NKVD). His brother Akaki died in June 1941 fighting the German invasion forces in Brest-Litovsk .

Shevardnadze joined the state youth organization Komsomol in 1946 and the Communist Party in 1948 . He attended the party school until 1951 and became an official of the Komsomol. 1957 to 1961 he was First Secretary of the Komsomol of the Georgian SSR. In 1958 he became a member of the Central Committee of the Georgian Communist Party.

In 1959 he became a member of the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR. In 1964 he was the first deputy of the Georgian minister for public order , from 1965 to 1972 Georgian interior minister and from 1972 to 1985 first secretary of the Communist Party of the Georgian SSR.

After taking office as General Secretary of the CPSU in March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev surprisingly appointed Shevardnadze in July 1985 as the successor to Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, who had been in office since 1957 . Together with Gorbachev, Shevardnadze initiated a change in foreign policy and remained in office until 1990.

His courtesy in the German reunification and subsequent in the two-plus-four negotiations (1990) as well as the support of the western orientation of the Baltic Soviet republics and Eastern European allies earned him the title "Grave Digger of the Soviet Empire".

Shevardnadze was the second president of Georgia after the collapse of the Soviet Union . In 1992 Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia was replaced by a coup by the National Guard . The putschists called Shevardnadze into the country and appointed him chairman of the Georgian State Council. He took office on March 10, 1992. "I knew that I was not legitimized to take over the office of head of state," Shevardnadze said later: "But I was sure that only I would be able to get Georgia out of chaos and crisis and lead it to democracy."

Three attacks were carried out on Eduard Shevardnadze, the first by the Russian military on October 3, 1992 in Abkhazia . On August 29, 1995, he was slightly injured in a bomb attack in Tbilisi . In November 1995, Shevardnadze was elected President with 70% of the vote. On February 9, 1998, he was again target of an attack, be it from the German on the Federal Government geschenkter armored official car was attacked with machine guns and bazooka. He was confirmed in office in the 2000 presidential election.

Since the mid- 1990s , Shevardnadze tried to attract young political figures. He brought young, committed people who had studied abroad back to Georgia. The offspring no longer wanted to accept the traditional bribery and clan culture in Georgia and came into conflict with him. These included Mikheil Saakashvili , Zurab Schwania and Nino Burjanadze , who soon led the opposition .

Shevardnadze's bloc “ For a New Georgia ” officially emerged victorious from the parliamentary elections on November 2, 2003. However, the opposition and international election observers accused the president and his party of falsifying the elections.

With demonstrations and calls for civil disobedience , the opposition in the Rose Revolution forced Shevardnadze to resign. After demonstrators stormed the parliament building and the state chancellery on November 22, 2003 , Shevardnadze submitted his resignation on November 23. Although he had declared a state of emergency the evening before , he refrained from using the army against the demonstrators.

A year after the change of power, he was reconciled with the new Georgian government. He described them as "very young talented people" who are "going to succeed". In April 2004 the UN asked Shevardnadze to become an advisor to Secretary General Kofi Annan .

The surname Shevardnadze translates into German as "son of the falcon". Because of his political abilities he got the nickname Tetri Melia (Eng. "White Fox") in Georgia . He was married to the journalist Nanuli Zagareishvili-Shevardnadze . She died of a heart attack in Tbilisi on October 20, 2004.

He had a daughter and a son: Manana is the director of the Georgian television film studios, Paata is the head of the UNESCO office in Tbilisi . His granddaughter Sophie Shevardnadze is a journalist and presenter.

Notes from one of his employees indicate that Gorbachev and Shevardnadze suggested to Erich Honecker as early as 1987 that the Berlin Wall be torn down.

Shevardnadze died after a long illness at the age of 86 on July 7, 2014 in Tbilisi.

Awards

In 1993 he received the Immanuel Kant Prize of the Hamburg Alfred Toepfer Foundation FVS. In 1999 he was awarded the W. Averell Harriman Democracy Award of the US National Democratic Institute (NDI) and on October 15 of the same year under protests by Georgian oppositionists with the Honorary doctorate from Friedrich Schiller University Jena . In the United States he was awarded seven honorary doctorates and he was an honorary member of the Club of Rome .

Quotes

"The suppression of freedom of thought inevitably leads to an energy congestion that will ultimately bring down any wall built by a totalitarian system or dictatorship."

Fonts

• Sovetskaya Gruzija . Izdatel'stvo Političeskoj Literatury, Moskva 1982
• Peace has become more secure . Novosti, Moscow 1989
• The Soviet attitude towards European unification . in: Europa-Archiv , Bonn. Vol. 45 (1990), pp. D127-D136
• Europe. Time of change . APN, Moscow 1990
• German reorganization . Fromm, Osnabrück 1990
• Revolution in Moscow. The coup and the end of the Soviet Union . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-499-13122-6 (with Andrej Gurkow, Wolfgang Eichwede [Ed.])
• The future belongs to freedom . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-498-06255-7
• Georgia, a paradise in ruins . Structure, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-7466-0155-X (with Naira Gelaschwili)
• The new silk road. Transport route into the 21st century . Econ, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-430-17955-6
• Pikri Tsarsulsa da Momawalze - Memuarebi [ Eng . Thoughts About the Past and the Future ]. Tbilisi 2006
• When the Iron Curtain tore - encounters and memories . Peter W. Metzler, Duisburg 2007. Updated, redesigned and supplemented edition of Pikri Tsarsulsa da Momawalze - Memuarebi . The German edition is the basis for all translations and editions outside of the Georgian language. ISBN 978-3-936283-10-5
• Когда рухнул железный занавес . Встречи и воспоминания.Эдуард Шеварднадзе, экс-президент Грузии, бывший министр Иностранных дел. Предисловие Александра Бессмертных. Translation from German into Russian. Russian licensed edition of "When the Iron Curtain Tore". The Russian edition is based on the German edition. М .: Издательство “Европа”; 2009; ISBN 978-5-9739-0188-2

literature

• Reinhard Bettzuege: Hans-Dietrich Genscher - Eduard Schewardnadse. The principle of humanity . Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1994, ISBN 3-404-65101-4 .
• Georg Machnik: Eduard Shevardnadze - builder of a human Europe of the future . Friedrich Schiller University, Jena 2003, ISBN 3-932218-12-4 .
• Nicolas Jallot: Chevardnadzé: le renard blanc du Caucase . Belfond, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-7144-4047-9 .
• John VanOudenaren: The role of Shevardnadze and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the making of Soviet defense and arms control policy . Rand, Santa Monica 1990, ISBN 0-8330-1076-X .
• Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl, Melvin A. Goodman: The wars of Eduard Shevardnadze . Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park 1997, ISBN 0-271-01604-3 .
• RB Dobson: Georgians fast losing faith in Shevardnadze and their democracy . Office of Research, Department of State, Washington, DC 2001.
• Eduard A. Schewardnadze , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 08/2004 of February 9, 2004, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Eduard Shevardnadze  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Eduard Shevardnadze in the catalog of the German National Library
• Eduard Schewardnadze's curriculum vitae on chronikderwende.de
• Portrait of Eduard Schewardnadze, ZDF today, 2003 ( Memento from November 27, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
• Eduard Shevardnadze's birthplace in Mamati
• Douglas Martin: Eduard Shevardnadze, Foreign Minister Under Gorbachev, Dies at 86th obituary in The New York Times, July 7, 2014

Individual evidence

1. ^ Heinrich August Winkler : The long way to the west - German history: From the "Third Reich" to reunification . 7th edition. tape 2 . CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-66050-4 , p. 582 .
2. ↑ Uwe Klußmann On the death of Eduard Shevardnadze: Pallbearers of the Soviet Union , Spiegel Online, July 7, 2014
3. ↑ Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel (FDP) had sent the armored car (value: 190,000 marks) to Shevardnadze after the president was injured by broken glass in the assassination attempt on August 29, 1995.
4. ↑ Bonn's Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel and the Daimler-Benz company have already sent a new armored car for Shevardnadze.
5. ↑ Klw: Contemporary History: Should the Wall fall in 1987? In: Der Spiegel . tape 45 , November 3, 2014 ( spiegel.de [accessed December 3, 2017]).
6. ^ Ex-Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze has died. In: Handelsblatt of July 7, 2014 (accessed July 7, 2014).
7. ↑ Eduard Shevardnadze, actually Eduard Amwrossijewitsch Shevardnadze quotes and sayings. Retrieved on October 20, 2017 (German). 

predecessor	Office	successor
Andrei Gromyko	Soviet Foreign Minister 1985–1990	Alexander Bessmertnych
Boris Pankin	Soviet Foreign Minister 1991	-