Eduard Shevardnadze - Minister of Foreign Affairs Soviet Union (1985–1991)

Minister of Foreign Affairs Soviet Union (1985–1991)

He subsequently played a key role in the détente which marked the end of the Cold War. He was credited with helping to devise the so-called "Sinatra Doctrine" of allowing the Soviet Union's eastern European satellites to "do it their way" rather than forcibly restraining any attempts to pursue a different course. When democratization and revolution began to sweep across eastern Europe, he rejected the pleas of eastern European Communist leaders for Soviet intervention and smoothed the path for a (mostly) peaceful democratic transformation in the region. He reportedly told hardliners that "it is time to realize that neither socialism, nor friendship, nor good-neighborliness, nor respect can be produced by bayonets, tanks or blood." However, his moderation was seen by some communists and Russian nationalists as a betrayal and earned him the long-term antagonism of powerful figures in Moscow.

During the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union descended into crisis, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze became increasingly estranged from each other over policy differences. Gorbachev fought to preserve a socialist government and the unity of the Soviet Union, while Shevardnadze advocated further political and economic liberalisation. He resigned in protest against Gorbachev's policies in December 1990, delivering a dramatic warning to the Soviet parliament that "Reformers have gone and hidden in the bushes. Dictatorship is coming." A few months later, his fears were partially realised when an unsuccessful coup by Communist hardliners precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union. Shevardnadze returned briefly as Soviet Foreign Minister in November 1991 but resigned with Gorbachev the following month when the Soviet Union was formally dissolved.

In 1991, Shevardnadze was baptized into the Georgian Orthodox Church.

Read more about this topic:  Eduard Shevardnadze

Famous quotes containing the words minister, foreign, affairs, soviet and/or union:

    [T]he minister preached a sermon on Jonah and the whale, at the end of which an old chief arose and declared, “We have heard several of the white people talk and lie; we know they will lie, but this is the biggest lie we ever heard.”
    —Administration in the State of Miss, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    the young men who watch us from the curbs:
    They hold the glaze of wonder in their stare
    Our crooked backs, hands fetid as old herbs,
    The tallow eyes, wax face, the foreign hair!
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)

    Dance with a girl three times, and if you like the light of her eye and the tone of voice with which she, breathless, answers your little questions about horseflesh and music—about affairs masculine and feminine,—then take the leap in the dark.
    Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)

    One difference between Nazi and Soviet camps was that in the latter dying was a slower process.
    Terrence Des Pres (1939–1987)

    My whole working philosophy is that the only stable happiness for mankind is that it shall live married in blessed union to woman-kind—intimacy, physical and psychical between a man and his wife. I wish to add that my state of bliss is by no means perfect.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)