biography
| name: |
Shevardnadze, Eduard Amvrosiyevich
|
pronunciation:
[shevernadze]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1928– )
|
| biography:
| Georgian head of state (1992– ) and former Soviet statesman, born in Mamati, W Georgia. He studied at the Kutaisi Pedagogical Institute, joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1948, and worked in the Komsomol Youth League during the 1950s and the Georgian interior ministry during the 1960s, where he gained a reputation as an opponent of corruption. He became Party chief in 1972, and introduced agricultural experiments. In 1978 he was inducted into the Politburo as a candidate member, and in 1985 was promoted by the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to full Politburo status and appointed foreign minister. He resigned in 1990, expressing concern over some of Gorbachev's decisions and warning of dictatorship. He helped defeat the attempted coup in August 1991, and was briefly foreign minister again at the end of that year. He then returned to Georgia, which had become an independent republic following the break-up of the Soviet Union (1991), and was elected Chairman of the State Council in December 1992, but was unable to prevent the country's slide into civil war. |
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