Word: gorbachev
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Things moved very fast after that. If Gorbachev was the final policymaker, Shevardnadze was the executor of his wishes as Eastern Europe freed itself and lingering regional disputes were defused in southern Africa, Central America and Southeast Asia. Negotiations that had been stalled for years or decades , suddenly bore fruit: intermediate-range missiles had already been abolished in 1987, but a treaty mandating major reductions in conventional forces in Europe was signed last month; and the START pact cutting strategic nuclear forces is to be signed in February...
...shoulder last August in Moscow and declared that Iraq must pull out of Kuwait unconditionally. Shevardnadze was always the Kremlin's strongest advocate of closer relations with Washington, so his departure creates doubts about the role the U.S. will now play in Moscow's "new thinking" in foreign affairs. Gorbachev has issued assurances that Soviet foreign policy will not change, but without Shevardnadze it will have to -- if only in pace and vigor -- as a new minister learns the ropes...
Moreover, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze calculatedly made their country's foreign policy a function of domestic affairs. If Shevardnadze's chilling prediction of an approaching dictatorship comes to pass, it cannot fail to produce profound and ugly changes in the face the U.S.S.R. presents to the outside world...
...words were even more shocking than his manner. Shocking to the nearly 2,000 members of the Congress of People's Deputies, meeting in a Kremlin auditorium; to his longtime close friend, President Mikhail Gorbachev, watching on the tribune behind Shevardnadze; and to a world that had been wondering with increasing apprehension which way the U.S.S.R. was going. Shevardnadze thought he knew: back toward the terrible past. "Reactionaries" were gaining power, he said, and nobody would speak out against them. "Comrade democrats!" Shevardnadze shouted, "You have scattered. Reformers have slunk into the bushes. A dictatorship is coming...
...shock waves quickly spread from the Palace of Congresses through the Soviet Union and the world. For Gorbachev, who shook his head in disbelief as his Foreign Minister spoke, it was the darkest hour of his leadership. Not only had he lost one of his closest allies in the Kremlin, but it seemed obvious that he could no longer continue walking a tightrope over the heads of reformist democrats, national separatists and proponents of a law-and-order crackdown; the splits had become too deep and envenomed for that. And Shevardnadze tossed in a warning of what might happen...