1. Eduard Ambrosis dze Shevardnadze was a Soviet and Georgian politician and diplomat who governed Georgia for several non-consecutive periods from 1972 until his resignation in 2003 and served as the final Soviet minister of foreign affairs from 1985 to 1991.
Eduard Shevardnadze was later appointed its Second Secretary, then its First Secretary.
Eduard Shevardnadze's rise in the Georgian Soviet hierarchy continued until 1961 when he was demoted after he insulted a senior official.
Eduard Shevardnadze served as First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party from 1972 to 1985, which made him the de facto leader of Georgia.
Eduard Shevardnadze served in this position, except for a brief interruption between 1990 and 1991, until the fall of the Soviet Union.
Eduard Shevardnadze was responsible for many key decisions in Soviet foreign policy during the Gorbachev era, and was seen by the outside world as the face of Soviet reforms such as Perestroika.
In 1992 Eduard Shevardnadze became the leader of Georgia.
Eduard Shevardnadze headed the government in the civil war in 1993 against pro-Gamsakhurdia forces, which did not recognize Eduard Shevardnadze as a legitimate leader and tried to regain power.
Eduard Shevardnadze signed Georgia up to the Commonwealth of Independent States, in return receiving help from Russia to end the conflict, although Georgia deepened its ties with the European Union and the United States.
Eduard Shevardnadze oversaw large-scale privatization and other political and economic changes.
Eduard Shevardnadze's rule was marked by rampant corruption and accusations of nepotism.
Eduard Shevardnadze later published his memoirs and lived in relative obscurity until he died in 2014.
Eduard Shevardnadze was born on 25 January 1928, in Mamati in the Transcaucasian SFSR, which was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union.
Eduard Shevardnadze's father Ambrose was a teacher and a devoted communist and party official.
Eduard Shevardnadze's mother had little respect for the communist government and opposed both Shevardnadze's and his father's party careers.
In 1948 at the age of twenty, Eduard Shevardnadze joined the Georgian Communist Party and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Eduard Shevardnadze rose steadily through the ranks of the Georgian Komsomol and after serving a term as Second Secretary, he became its First Secretary.
Eduard Shevardnadze said he grew disillusioned with the Soviet political system following Nikita Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" to the 20th CPSU Congress.
Eduard Shevardnadze was demoted in 1961 by the Politburo of the Georgian Communist Party after offending a senior official.
Eduard Shevardnadze challenged Tbilisi First Secretary Otari Lolashvili, and later charged him with corruption.
Eduard Shevardnadze left party work after his appointment as First Deputy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR in 1964.
In 1965, Eduard Shevardnadze was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR.
In 1951, Eduard Shevardnadze married Nanuli Eduard Shevardnadze, whose father was killed by the authorities at the height of the purge.
Between 25 July 1972 and 29 September 1972, Eduard Shevardnadze served as the first secretary of the Tbilisi City Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia.
Eduard Shevardnadze was appointed to the First Secretaryship of the Georgian Communist Party by the Soviet government; he was tasked with suppressing the grey and black-market capitalism that had grown under his predecessor Vasil Mzhavanadze's rule.
Eduard Shevardnadze's rapid rise in Soviet Georgia's political hierarchy was the result of his campaign against corruption.
Eduard Shevardnadze rallied support for his anti-corruption campaigns by establishing the Study of Public Opinion.
In 1973, Eduard Shevardnadze launched an agricultural reform in Abasha, popularly referred to as the "Abasha experiment".
Eduard Shevardnadze merged all Abasha agricultural institutions into a single entity and established a new remuneration system.
Eduard Shevardnadze took much of the credit for Georgia's economic performance under his rule.
Seven months before his promotion to the Soviet Foreign Affairs Ministership, Eduard Shevardnadze said there were thirty or more economic experiments operating in Georgia, which he said would further democratise the economic management.
Eduard Shevardnadze was a strong supporter of political reform in the Georgian SSR.
Eduard Shevardnadze created agencies attached to the Central Committee of the Georgian Communist Party whose main task was studying, analysing and moulding public opinion.
Eduard Shevardnadze criticised flattery in Georgia and said he and his government's activities needed to be criticised more often, especially during party congresses.
Previous Soviet Georgian rulers had given in to nationalist favouritism to the Georgians; Eduard Shevardnadze was against this policy of favouritism.
Eduard Shevardnadze saw "extreme nationalism", coupled with corruption and inefficiencies within the system, as one of the main obstacles to economic growth.
Eduard Shevardnadze proved to be an active supporter of defending minority interests.
At the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1976, Eduard Shevardnadze gave a speech in which he called general secretary Leonid Brezhnev "vozhd", a term previously reserved for Joseph Stalin.
Eduard Shevardnadze's adulation was only surpassed by that of Andrei Kirilenko and Heydar Aliyev.
However, when it became clear that the secretaryship would not go to Chernenko but to Yuri Andropov, Eduard Shevardnadze swiftly revised his position and gave his support to Andropov.
Eduard Shevardnadze became the first Soviet republican head to offer his gratitude to the newly elected leader; in turn, Andropov quickly signalled his appreciation and his support for some of the reforms pioneered by Eduard Shevardnadze.
When Chernenko died, Eduard Shevardnadze became a strong supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev's leadership candidature.
Eduard Shevardnadze became a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1976, and in 1978 was promoted to the rank of non-voting candidate member of the Soviet Political Bureau.
Eduard Shevardnadze's chance came in 1985, when the veteran Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko left that post for the largely ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.
The de facto leader, Communist Party general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, appointed Eduard Shevardnadze to replace Gromyko as Minister of Foreign Affairs, thus consolidating Gorbachev's circle of relatively young reformers.
Eduard Shevardnadze was a close ally of Gorbachev and was a strong advocate of the reform policies of glasnost and perestroika.
Eduard Shevardnadze subsequently played a key role in the detente that marked the end of the Cold War.
Eduard Shevardnadze negotiated nuclear arms treaties with the United States.
Eduard Shevardnadze helped end the war in Afghanistan, allowed the reunification of Germany, and withdrew Soviet forces from Eastern Europe and from the Chinese border.
Eduard Shevardnadze criticised a campaign by Soviet troops to put down an uprising in his native Georgia in 1989.
In protest over the growing influence of hardliners under Gorbachev, Eduard Shevardnadze suddenly resigned in December 1990, saying, "Dictatorship is coming".
Eduard 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, Eduard Shevardnadze was baptized into the Georgian Orthodox Church.
Eduard Shevardnadze was appointed Speaker of the Georgian parliament in March 1992 and as speaker of parliament in November; both of these posts were equivalent to that of president.
Eduard Shevardnadze secured a second term in April 2000 in an election that was marred by widespread claims of vote-rigging.
Eduard Shevardnadze faced many enemies, some dating back to his campaigns against corruption and nationalism during Soviet times.
Eduard Shevardnadze survived three assassination attempts in 1992,1995, and 1998.
Eduard Shevardnadze escaped a car bomb in Abkhazia in 1992.
In July 1993, Eduard Shevardnadze narrowly escaped a shelling by Abkhaz separatists in Sukhumi.
Eduard Shevardnadze spent his last years living quietly at his mansion house in the outskirts of Tbilisi.
Eduard Shevardnadze added, "Eduard Shevardnadze was playing a serious role in creation of new Georgia and in development of our western course".
Eduard Shevardnadze was a politician of international significance, who made a great contribution to end the Cold War and to establish new world order.
Saakashvili said his government did not start a criminal prosecution against Eduard Shevardnadze, despite calls by some politicians and parts of society, out of "respect to the President's institution".
Eduard Shevardnadze was accorded a state funeral on 13 July 2014, which was attended by the Georgian political leaders and foreign dignitaries, including the former US Secretary of State James Baker and former German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher.
Eduard Shevardnadze has been a friend of the United States and a friend of ours.
Eduard Shevardnadze has been through ethnic difficulties in his own country.
Eduard Shevardnadze has been through pressures from the outside and problems from the inside.
Eduard Shevardnadze has watched the economy go down and things come apart and come back together again.