TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/051589/05158900.042

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                Ωⁿ                                                            NATION, Page 29

The Boss of Smolensky Square


If Gorbachev is the architect of foreign policy, Shevardnadze is
the master builder

By John Kohan/MOSCOW


    Eduard Amvroseyevich Shevardnadze begins his work day the
moment he climbs into his black ZIL limousine for the 15-minute
ride from his suburban dacha to downtown Moscow. Speeding along
the boulevards of the Soviet capital, he telephones the Foreign
Ministry for a summary of international news. By the time he
arrives at the pinnacled Stalinist skyscraper in Smolensky
Square just before 9 a.m., he has been briefed on events and can
plunge immediately into the pile of diplomatic cables and
documents awaiting him in his seventh-floor office.

    Every minute counts these days for Shevardnadze, 61, who
combines the duties of Foreign Minister with full voting
membership on the Communist Party's ruling Politburo. This week
Shevardnadze confers with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker
in Moscow, then flies to Bonn to meet with Chancellor Helmut
Kohl. Early next week he heads to Beijing for the long-awaited
summit between Gorbachev and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. The
swift pace of change during Shevardnadze's almost four-year
tenure at Smolensky Square has left foreign diplomats, to say
nothing of his weary staff in Moscow, a bit breathless.

    If Gorbachev is the architect of "new thinking" in
international affairs, Shevardnadze is his master builder. Like
the General Secretary, the amiable, white-haired diplomat has
a smile that can melt ice. And like Gorbachev, Shevardnadze
sometimes shows a glint of iron teeth. Thanks, in part, to
Shevardnadze's diplomatic labors, Soviet tanks and troops have
been withdrawn from Afghanistan and are being partially
withdrawn from Eastern Europe. A whole class of nuclear weapons
has been marked for destruction under the INF treaty signed in
1987. As the Soviets and their allies disentangle themselves
from conflicts in Namibia and Cambodia, they are making
diplomatic inroads in the Middle East and China. "Shevardnadze
has mastered the foreign policy agenda," says Robert Legvold,
director of Columbia University's W. Averell Harriman Institute
of Soviet Affairs. "He is of a similar creative mind as
Gorbachev, not simply his tool."

    Shevardnadze has proved to be an equally trusted Gorbachev
lieutenant on the domestic front. He confers with the Soviet
leader at least twice a day, discussing topics that might range
from the country's ethnic unrest to land leasing and family
farms. Foreign Ministry staffers, with their boss's
encouragement, have lobbied other branches of the bureaucracy
to improve the country's human rights image. Foreign Ministry
spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov, 59, has smoothly refined the notion
of glasnost in government at daily press briefings, packaging
information with slivers of barbed wit. When clashes between
troops and nationalist demonstrators in Shevardnadze's native
republic of Georgia claimed the lives of 20 people last month,
the Foreign Minister canceled a visit to East and West Germany
and flew to Tbilisi. He has called the peacekeeping mission "my
toughest challenge" so far. The result: a purge of the party and
government leadership.

    When Shevardnadze replaced veteran diplomat Andrei Gromyko
as Foreign Minister in 1985, capitals around the world greeted
the news with the question Eduard who? Even in the Foreign
Ministry, the Georgian Communist Party First Secretary had not
figured on anyone's short list of candidates. But Gorbachev knew
what sort of man he wanted for shaking up the ossified Moscow
foreign policy establishment. He had met Shevardnadze when both
were active in regional Communist Youth League organizations in
the late 1950s. Though Shevardnadze says little about those
early contacts ("We met, we talked, we discussed things"), a
senior Soviet diplomat speculates that Gorbachev's first
impressions of Shevardnadze may have led the Soviet leader to
pick him for the Foreign Ministry job a quarter-century later.
"Georgians are a sophisticated people," says the diplomat. "Well
educated, natural bargainers, with a fine sense for the art of
the possible."

    Although Shevardnadze speaks Russian fluently (unlike
Gromyko, he does not speak English) and writes out his notes in
Cyrillic script, he has a noticeable Georgian accent and makes
no effort to hide his national heritage. During his years as
local party leader, Shevardnadze (whose name is derived from the
Georgian word for falcon) showed a deep interest in his region's
cultural life, contributing at least two literary essays under
a pseudonym to local newspapers.

    Shevardnadze's wife Nanuli shares her husband's literary
interests, and worked as a journalist for a woman's magazine
before moving to Moscow in 1985. The couple has a daughter,
Manana, 36, an editor for Georgian television, a son, Paata, 31,
who studies philosophy, and four grandchildren (three girls, one
boy). Like most Georgians, the Shevardnadzes are a close-knit
clan. "My family thinks as I do," Shevardnadze told a Soviet
newspaper. "They are my support in life."

    The son of a history teacher, Shevardnadze was born in the
village of Mamati in southwestern Georgia, an area famed for
its crusading politicians and sharp-tongued wits. He displayed
a bit of both qualities in his climb up the ranks of the
regional Communist Youth League and party bureaucracy. And a
steely side too. From 1965 to 1972 Shevardnadze headed Georgia's
interior ministry, serving, in effect, as the republic's top
policeman. His ruthless campaigns against corruption brought him
into conflict with Party First Secretary Vasili Mzhavanadze, who
tried to fire him in 1972. But Shevardnadze packed a suitcase
with documents proving that Mzhavanadze was neck-deep in black
marketeering; within 24 hours Soviet officials had fired
Mzhavanadze and given Shevardnadze the job.

    According to an anecdote that stubbornly clings to
Shevardnadze, he ended one of his first meetings as the new
Georgian party chief by asking officials to vote by raising
their left hands. "Keep them up a minute," he said. Then he
walked around the room checking out the expensive foreign
watches on display. Shevardnadze, who wore a Russian-made Slava,
ordered the officials to "donate" their prized Western goods to
the state. Over the course of the following year, Shevardnadze's
relentless drive against corruption reportedly made him the
target of at least two assassination attempts. He was equally
unorthodox in promoting family farming, independent decision
making at factories and pay incentives to workers long before
they became principles of perestroika.

    When students massed in a Tbilisi square in 1978 to protest
a new constitution that no longer acknowledged Georgian as the
republic's official language, Shevardnadze courageously went
out to speak with them, promised to consider their demands and
led them from the square with bullhorn in hand. On another
occasion, after referees made an unpopular call in favor of a
visiting Russian team during a Tbilisi soccer match, he ran out
onto the field to keep the furious Georgian crowds in line.

    Whatever Shevardnadze's gifts as a politician, Gorbachev
took a calculated risk in thrusting him unprepared into the
diplomatic spotlight. When Shevardnadze made his international
debut, four weeks after his appointment at the tenth-anniversary
conference of the Helsinki accords, he relied heavily on his
aides and 5-in. by 7-in. note cards. On the eve of a meeting
with then Secretary of State George Shultz at the U.N. General
Assembly session that year, he summoned an adviser at midnight
to do more preparatory work. Realizing how late it was,
Shevardnadze suggested they both get some sleep -- and meet
again at 4 a.m.

    Whatever early-morning cribbing went on, the Georgian has
proved a quick study in mastering details about everything from
sea-launched missiles to human rights. "It was quite amazing,"
says a senior British diplomat. "He was essentially a shrewd
but provincial figure when he took over. Within just a few
months, he became a sophisticated world statesman."

    By the end of 1986 Shevardnadze had replaced nine out of
twelve deputy ministers. Under his stewardship, three-quarters
of the ambassadors and two-thirds of the consuls general have
been reshuffled. New departments were created to handle
disarmament questions and humanitarian issues. "Shevardnadze
came in and asked, `Why are you defending this?' " says Yuli
Vorontsov, once a Soviet arms-control negotiator and now First
Deputy Foreign Minister and Ambassador to Afghanistan. "He was
always asking why."

    If Gromyko rarely consulted subordinates about policy
issues, Shevardnadze encourages open debate. Every Monday at 11
a.m. he summons his twelve deputies for a briefing on the week
ahead. Sometimes the Foreign Minister even appoints an in-house
"dissident" to challenge viewpoints and help sharpen policy.
One conspicuous sign of the new style is the number of
television sets around the ministry tuned, thanks to satellite
hookup, to CNN. As Deputy Minister Vladimir Petrovsky explains,
"You need pluralism of opinion to make the right decisions. What
I like to call `mind attacks.'"

    Three times a month, usually on a Friday afternoon or
Saturday, Shevardnadze gathers with the 29-member Foreign
Ministry collegium, an informal council composed of senior
Foreign Ministry officials and invited guests. The four- to
five-hour sessions touch on issues ranging from ambassadorial
appointments to terrorism. "You can speak your opinion now and
be certain it will be heard," says Deputy Minister Anatoli
Adamishin. "Even my subordinates can express disagreement with
my views. In fact, criticism is better received than words of
praise." Unlike James Baker, Shevardnadze does not shun career
officials in favor of a small clutch of aides; as a Soviet
diplomat puts it, he "prefers to go directly to the specialist
without regard to rank."

    Compared with Gromyko, Shevardnadze has proved flexible at
the bargaining table, willing to concede what is obvious so as
to concentrate on the key points of difference. If the "Grim
Grom" stubbornly claimed that his country was not guilty of
human rights abuses, Shevardnadze admits that such problems
exist but emphasizes what the Kremlin is doing to improve the
situation. To the surprise of American negotiators at the INF
talks, the Foreign Minister quickly accepted the principle of
verification, then negotiated hard to cut the best deal for
Moscow. Says U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock:
"Shevardnadze is firm, but if you do not agree on an issue, he
moves on. He approaches most things in a nonideological way. He
doesn't spend time preaching to the other side."

    If Matlock finds Shevardnadze a shrewd negotiator, so do
the Foreign Minister's own countrymen. According to Deputy
Minister Vorontsov, when Shevardnadze informed Soviet generals
that the INF treaty required on-site verification of nuclear
missiles, "they told us we were selling them out." In pressing
military officials for a reason why U.S. inspectors could not
visit these sites, the Foreign Ministry discovered "ridiculous
explanations, like `We don't have hotels there.' We said, `Come
on, we'll build them.'" The Soviet brass eventually gave in.

    Though Shevardnadze is smoother than Gromyko, he can be
just as tough as his predecessor. It was Shevardnadze, after
all, who forced an unhappy President Najibullah to accept the
fact that the Soviets were leaving Afghanistan. In February he
told Oliver Tambo, leader of the African National Congress, that
the Soviet Union would no longer support the A.N.C.'s "war of
national liberation" in southern Africa. And, when necessary,
Shevardnadze will blatantly lie, as British officials believe
he did when he told Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe last
month that the Soviet Union possessed only a fraction of the
chemical weapons that the West believes it actually has.

    Although Shevardnadze enjoys a good joke, he is not a
backslapper and insists on calling his aides by their formal
names. A man of meticulous appearance who has been known to cast
a flirtatious glance or two at the ladies, Shevardnadze is not
a stickler for protocol; on entering a negotiating room, he
unfailingly makes the rounds of all present, shaking hands and
engaging in small talk. "You don't feel that he is full of his
own importance," says a West German diplomat. "He's a really
pleasant fellow to do business with."

    Shevardnadze's charm will be tested this week in his first
lengthy encounter with Baker. Not that the Foreign Minister
will leave everything to the vagaries of personal chemistry.
There will be more late nights, with briefing papers to be
finished and reviewed for the Baker visit and China summit. "You
have to pay a price for everything," says Deputy Minister
Petrovsky. "But at least there is a dynamic feeling now of being
part of an exciting process." And when Petrovsky leaves for home
at 10 on any evening, chances are that the lights will still be
burning bright in his boss's office.