His anti-corruption work quickly garnered the interest of the Soviet government and Shevardnadze was appointed as First Deputy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR.

He would later become the head of the internal affairs ministry and was able to charge First Secretary (leader of Soviet Georgia) Vasil Mzhavanadze with corruption.

Under his rule, the peace treaty was signed in Sochi, which ended military hostilities in South Ossetia, although Georgia lost effective control over a large part of the territory.

Allegations of electoral fraud during the 2003 legislative election led to a series of public protests and demonstrations colloquially known as the Rose Revolution.

Eduard Shevardnadze was born on 25 January 1928, in Mamati in the Transcaucasian SFSR, which was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union.

[6] Shevardnadze said he grew disillusioned with the Soviet political system following Nikita Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" to the 20th CPSU Congress.

After initiating a successful anti-corruption campaign supported by the Soviet government, Shevardnadze was voted as Second Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party.

[13] 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.

The rule of Vasil Mzhavanadze had been characterised by weak leadership, nepotism, despotism, and bribery pervading the upper echelons of power.

[15] To combat corruption, he engaged in subterfuge; after halting all exports he dressed himself as a peasant and drove a car filled with tomatoes through the border.

While never proven, it is said that after taking office, Shevardnadze asked all leading officials to show their left hands and ordered those who used Western-produced watches to replace them with Soviet ones.

The policy had a positive effect on the Georgian economy and because of the large increase of agricultural output in Abasha, the reform was introduced elsewhere in the republic.

He created agencies attached to the Central Committee of the Georgian Communist Party whose main task was studying, analysing and moulding public opinion.

These agencies worked closely with Georgia's communications networks and media; government ministers and Shevardnadze were regularly interviewed live on television.

[27] At the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1976, Shevardnadze gave a speech in which he called general secretary Leonid Brezhnev "vozhd" (leader), a term previously reserved for Joseph Stalin.

[28] During Brezhnev's last days, Shevardnadze publicly endorsed Konstantin Chernenko's candidature for the General Secretaryship and called him a "great theoretician".

[34] He helped end the war in Afghanistan,[33][34] allowed the reunification of Germany,[33] and withdrew Soviet forces from Eastern Europe and from the Chinese border.

In protest over the growing influence of hardliners under Gorbachev, Shevardnadze suddenly resigned in December 1990, saying, "Dictatorship is coming".

[35] A few months later, his fears were partially realised when an unsuccessful coup by Communist hardliners precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union.

[36] The newly independent Republic of Georgia elected as its first president a leader of the national liberation movement, Zviad Gamsakhurdia—an academic and writer who had been imprisoned by Shevardnadze's government in the late 1970s.

[34] At the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Istanbul Summit of November 1999, agreement was reached that the Russian military bases in Georgia would all be evacuated by Russia before 1 July 2001.

[35] More friction was caused by Shevardnadze's close relationship with the United States, which saw him as a counterbalance to Russian influence in the strategic Transcaucasus region.

[42] At the same time, Georgia suffered badly from the effects of crime and rampant corruption, which were often perpetrated by well-connected officials and politicians.

[44] Since April 2006, Khachidze or Lasha Shushanashvili also imparted influence on Georgia as well as Tariel Oniani from Kutaisi near South Abkhazia.

[35] On 23 November, Shevardnadze met with the opposition leaders Mikheil Saakashvili and Zurab Zhvania to discuss the situation in a meeting arranged by Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

[35] After this meeting, Shevardnadze announced his resignation, declaring that he wished to avert a bloody power struggle "so all this can end peacefully and there is no bloodshed and no casualties".

[47][48] Georgia's former president Giorgi Margvelashvili and Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili extended condolences to his family members.

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 Shevardnadze, despite calls by some politicians and parts of society, out of "respect to the President's institution".

Kerry credited Shevardnadze with playing "an instrumental role" in bringing about the end of the Cold War, a reduction of "the risk of nuclear confrontation" as the Soviet Union's Foreign Minister, ensuring "the sovereignty and territorial integrity of [Georgia] during the 1990s" as President of Georgia and putting the country "on its irreversible trajectory toward Euro-Atlantic integration".