TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/051589/05158900.042

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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diplomatic labors, Soviet tanks and troops have been withdrawn from
Afghanistan and are being partially withdrawn from Eastern Europe.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.