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Georgia The First Shevardnadze Period
As party first secretary, Shevardnadze used purges to attack
the corruption and chauvinism for which Georgia's elite had
become infamous even among the corrupt and chauvinistic republics
of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, a small group of dissident
nationalists coalesced around academician Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who
stressed the threat that Russification presented to the Georgian
national identity. This theme would remain at the center of
Georgian-Russian relations into the new era of Georgian
independence in the 1990s. Soviet power and Georgian nationalism
clashed in 1978 when Moscow ordered revision of the
constitutional status of the Georgian language as Georgia's
official state language. Bowing to pressure from street
demonstrations, Moscow approved Shevardnadze's reinstatement of
the constitutional guarantee the same year.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Shevardnadze successfully
walked a narrow line between the demands of Moscow and the
Georgians' growing desire for national autonomy. He maintained
political and economic control while listening carefully to
popular demands and making strategic concessions. Shevardnadze
dealt with nationalism and dissent by explaining his policies to
hostile audiences and seeking compromise solutions. The most
serious ethnic dispute of Shevardnadze's tenure arose in 1978,
when leaders of the Abkhazian Autonomous Republic threatened to
secede from Georgia, alleging unfair cultural, linguistic,
political, and economic restrictions imposed by Tbilisi.
Shevardnadze took a series of steps to diffuse the crisis,
including an affirmative action program that increased the role
of Abkhazian elites in running "their" region, despite the
minority status of their group in Abkhazia.
Shevardnadze initiated experiments that foreshadowed the
economic and political reforms that Gorbachev later introduced
into the central Soviet system. The Abasha economic experiment in
agriculture created new incentives for farmers similar to those
used in the Hungarian agricultural reform of the time. A
reorganization in the seaport of Poti expanded the role of local
authorities at the expense of republic and all-union ministries.
By 1980 Shevardnadze had raised Georgia's industrial and
agricultural production significantly and dismissed about 300
members of the party's corrupt hierarchy. When Shevardnadze left
office in 1985, considerable government corruption remained,
however, and Georgia's official economy was still weakened by an
extensive illegal "second economy." But his reputation for
honesty and political courage earned Shevardnadze great
popularity among Georgians, the awarding of the Order of Lenin by
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1978, and appointment
as minister of foreign affairs of the Soviet Union in 1985.
Data as of March 1994
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