From humble beginnings in 1928 in the Georgian village of Mamat, Eduard Shevardnadze, son of the village schoolteacher, has risen to become one of the foremost, internationally recognized statesmen of our time. Yet, it is not only because of his present role that he is being honored here today with the Democracy Award, but also for his ongoing commitment to the consolidation of democracy , his noteworthy ability to give expression to democratic ideals in practice and his unwavering devotion to the causes of human rights, economic and administrative reforms and public ethics, often in a politically hostile environment.
From the 1960’s, Shevardnadze was active in various public positions within the Communist establishment. As party leader in Georgia in the 1970s and early 1980s, he battled corruption and introduced the most liberal political and economic reforms of any Soviet regional leader. During those years, Shevardnadze called for tolerance towards ethnic minorities within Georgia, particularly the Abkhaz, the Ossetians, the Azeris and the Jews.
Between the years 1985-1990, Shevardnadze served as foreign minister of the Soviet Union. In this role, he was part of one of the most remarkable and controversial political partnerships in modern history. Together with Mikhail Gorbachev and Alexander Yakovlev, Shevardnadze led the dramatic Soviet turnaround in the 1980s that ended the Cold War and transformed the international political climate. While Gorbachev and Yakovlev focused on domestic reform, Shevardnadze directed his attention to foreign policy. His willingness to act decisively made him the "moral force" of new thinking and the point man for the policies of perestroika.
It was Shevardnadze who was instrumental in abandoning the confrontational approach of Soviet policy and in casting off the image of the United States as an enemy. He did not have the traditional Soviet views of an antagonistic international community and rejected a society built on a "paranoid preoccupation with security". Because of this, he was able to create a policy based on comprehensive dialogue with the United States. By the time of his speech to the USSR Supreme Soviet in October 1989, he stated that Soviet policy would now be guided not by Leninist norms but by "common human values."
The human dimension became one of Shevardnadze’s central rhetorical themes when speaking about international affairs. He was virtually alone among Soviet leaders in understanding that, in large part, the Soviet Union’s alienation from the Western world was due to its repression of the individual. It was his personal intervention, not that of any institutional force or social movement that brought about the radical change in Soviet policy on humanitarian issues.
During the course of negotiations with the USA, Shevardnadze and George Shultz, then US Secretary of State, developed a mutual respect which evolved into a friendship. The warm personal relations and trust which developed between the two leaders had a positive bearing on the negotiations, and served to promote important issues, especially human rights. Shevardnadze’s policies resulted in virtually free emigration from the USSR, enabling the big exodus of Soviet Jewry at the end ofthe 1980’s and beginning of the 1990’s.
In 1992 Shevardnadze returned to an independent Georgia, which was then the most corrupt of the successor states of the former Soviet Union. He cracked down on the local Mafia and criticized corruption, while bringing in his own officials to replace those connected to the organized crime. Shevardnadze’s party, the Union of Georgian Citizens, formed a close alliance with the Green Party, whose agenda included reducing corruption.
Eduard Shevardnadze’s election to the Georgian presidency in November 1995, with more than 70 percent of the vote, gave him a mandate to lead his nation and offered Georgia a period of calm after four years of civil war, ethnic conflict, and political turmoil. He did not rest on his laurels, however, but embarked on another campaign to rid Georgia of corruption, reform the economy, and restore political stability. As Chairman and President of the Georgian Republic in the 1990s, he continues to advocate minority rights.