Ex-President of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze has died
July 7, 2014
Eduard Shevardnadze, a groundbreaking Soviet foreign minister and later the president of an independent Georgia, has died at the age of 86. His spokeswoman Marina Davitashvili said Shevardnadze died Monday after a long illness.
Shevardnadze swept heroically across the international stage in the final years of the Soviet empire, helping topple the Berlin Wall and end the Cold War, but as the leader of post-Soviet Georgia his career in the public eye ended in humiliation and he was chased out of his parliament and forced into retirement.