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Born 57 years ago in the southern Soviet republic of Georgia, Shevardnadze entered the Communist Party at the unusually young age of 20 and began a quick ascent of the local party apparatus. In 1965 he was named Georgian minister for maintenance of public order--head of the republic's police force. In this role he launched a crackdown on the freelance corruption that had plagued the region, although some in the Soviet Union say that he personally benefited from the well-organized kickback schemes, which remained intact. When he became Georgia's Communist Party first secretary...
...Sochi is the marketplace of dreams for millions of Soviet vacationers trying to exercise their "right to rest." The guarantee is contained in Article 41 of the constitution, and is printed on banners and billboards on the shoreline of the country's holiday heartland along the Russian and Georgian coasts of the Black Sea. As with many aspects of Soviet life, the utopian ideal is often more attractive than socialist reality...
...chief rival, was unceremoniously dumped from the Politburo and Secretariat; officially he resigned for reasons of health. Gromyko, 76, was artfully nudged upstairs to the prestigious but largely % ceremonial post of President and head of state, and replaced as Foreign Minister by Eduard Shevardnadze, 67, a white-haired Georgian with an engaging personality but no experience in foreign policy. The general interpretation placed on that move is that Gorbachev intends to have a major say in foreign policy details...
...through the ranks of Komsomol, the Young Communist League. He almost certainly forged close personal ties with Gorbachev, who also served as a Komsomol leader in Stavropol, a district adjoining Georgia. Shevardnadze studied history, but his true specialty has long been law-and-order. In 1965 he was named Georgian minister for maintenance of public order, a euphemism for head of the local police. That has always been a challenging job in Georgia, the transcaucasian republic where residents cling stubbornly to their local language and customs and where corruption and black-marketeering have been endemic. Shevardnadze quickly established a reputation...
Soviet officials are letting it be known that Shevardnadze has long cultivated an unpretentious life-style of the kind that Gorbachev seems to favor. At a time when the families of other Georgian officials lived in splendid villas and drove around in limousines, Shevardnadze's wife Nanuli, a journalist, was said to take the bus to work. Although he is both admired and disliked in Georgia for his crackdown on corruption, early this year he felt confident enough of his position to authorize a newspaper poll of public reaction to his policies, a rare and unorthodox action for a Soviet...