Kommersant, Russia
Jan 11 2005

Yeltsin Looked Right at Me and Lied

Last year saw the first anniversary of Georgia’s velvet revolution.
Former president Eduard Shevardnadze did not want to talk about it
with Vlast correspondent Valery Kadzhaya, but he did tell him about
it happened in the early 1990s.

Eduard Shevardnadze still lives in Krtsanisi, the dacha community
that Lavrenty Beria had built in the 1930s for himself and top
Georgian officials. Shevardnadze has moved out of Beria’s dacha,
however, into a more modest one. The last time I met him, three years
ago last October, he looked much worse than he does now. But the
reason for that is clear: there was a serious political crisis then
and the youth of the country were marching on Rustaveli Prospekt
demanding his resignation. He held on then, but dismissed the
government. He wasn’t able to repeat that feat. On November 24, 2003,
at the height of the rose revolution, Shevardnadze resigned his
office. Now he is writing a book. He recounted several incidents from
his life, which will probably appear in that book, to Vlast.

I Knew that Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Shushkevich Were Planning to
Resolve Something

People are talking about the danger of dictatorship in Russia now.
But so far not one minister has dared to do what you did on December
20, 1990, when you resigned at the Congress of the People’s Deputies
of the USSR, saying that it was your protest against the emergence of
dictatorship.

Yes. That’s what I said and, to my amazement, almost everybody in the
hall, except the military, stood up and applauded. The Academic
Likhachev spoke. A great man. I knew him well and respected him. And
he respected me. We understood each other. He asked me in the name of
all the deputies to remain. Stay. And that will make us relax our
foreign policy… That was the sort of thing he said. But I had already
made up my mind. I finished speaking, stood up and went home. The
time following amazed me most of all, because Gorbachev, who knew
that a minister of foreign affairs could not make such a decision
without the necessary grounds, did not show any reaction at all.

Did you try to discuss the issue with him?

No. I did not discuss it with him because I knew for sure that he
would refuse.

He didn’t ask you to come to see him?

No. He appeared at the same congress and cursed me. He said that he
had always thought well of me. It true, he really did think well of
me. The problem was that he denied everything, and said that he had
no data. I had the data. You know what he said then? He said that he
never gave me any reason to make such an announcement. That he didn’t
know anything about any dictatorship, he had no data, and how did I
have any data?

I really did have them though. Two months later, if I am not
mistaken, he was at a Party function in Belarus and said himself,
Yes, dictatorship really is coming. That was him talking, not me! So
everything that happened later, in August, seemed doubtful to me.
Even the fact that almost all the members of the Politburo flew to
him made me doubt the propriety of the matter. But he announced
himself that dictatorship was in the offing, that vigilance was
needed, and so on and so forth, and then went on vacation. I didn’t
see the logic in that.

In November 1991, after the putsch had failed, you agreed to be
minister a second time. Why?

Yeltsin had gathered everything in his own hands. Not just Yeltsin.
Kravchuk and Shushkevich had united too. They were acting in concord.
Who can forget that, if Ukraine goes, Belarus goes, and what would be
left then? The rest would go too. Then there remained what remained.

Then Gorbachev started calling me. Can you come over? he asked. Why?
I asked. There’s something. A serious matter. Please, I ask you to
come over. If I am not mistaken, Yakovlev, Aleksandr Yakovlev, a
good, decent person, was with him. Gorbachev was still president
then, but not really in charge. He said, I want to set up a
presidential council. I am offering you the post of minister of the
combined ministry of foreign affairs and economic relations. Two
ministries combined, and I will be a minister and member of the
presidential council. I asked him, What is this for? Do you see
what’s happening? It’s not going to end just like that. It’s not that
I’m afraid, but…

We had a long discussion. Then what concerned me? I saw that Yeltsin
was gathering my foreign affairs guys around him, the talented ones.
When I entered it, after Gromyko, I left everyone alone. Gromyko was
a professional. He had different views on international relations,
but he was a diplomat of the highest class. There were 5000 people in
the central apparatus alone. Smart, competent people! I saw that they
were beginning to move them around into other agencies. My friends
came and told me that I had to return, even if temporarily, they
would give anything so that I could save the team. We didn’t betray
you ever in all those years. Now you have to think about us. If there
is no strong hand, no boss, they will tear us apart, literally. That
was one of the arguments for my return. But I was sure that it would
be temporary, because I saw that things were going badly for
Gorbachev. I knew that Yeltsin, [Ukrainian leader] Kravchuk and
[Belarusian leader] Shushkevich were planning on resolving something.
I got all the information. Incidentally, I got a lot of the
information from the ministries of foreign affairs of those
republics. I had good relations with the ministers.

I told Gorbachev, All right, let’s say I return. But we are not the
Union any more. Yeltsin is leading Russia. Ukraine is separate,
Belarus is separate, Kazakhstan is separate. He said he had talked it
over with everyone. You can call and confirm that I talked to
everyone about it, if you want, he said. You can go to Yeltsin. Call
him if you want. He’ll tell you that we have agreed on it.

I went to Yeltsin. We had good relations. You know what it was like
at the time of the putsch. I was with Yeltsin at the White House
twice. The first time I went into Yeltsin’s office, they said that he
had a very important paper, and they told me what was written on it.
It was an order transferring [control of] all the armed forces of
Russia to the president, that is, to Yeltsin. But he couldn’t decide
what to do. I told him, I know you have a document. That’s why the
tanks are rolling. You are not commander-in-chief right now. You have
to sign that paper so that all the armed forces come under your
control. He answered, Yes, I have that text ready. It’s a good thing
you agree with it. It’s a good thing you are insisting too. I’ll sign
it. He signed it and that saved the country.

No One outside of Georgia Wanted Anything to Do with Them. That’s
When They Remembered Me

In 1992, Tengiz Sigua, Dzhaba Ioseliani and Tengiz Kitovani, who were
said to have criminal ties, called you to Tbilisi. How did you decide
to accept their offer?

On March 31, 1991, there was a referendum in Georgia and the
Georgians decided to become independent. The first presidential
elections were on May 26. Zviad Gamsakhurdia won. Do you know how
many votes he got? It was 87 percent! And it wasn’t falsified than.
The people really voted that way.

Five or six months later, people were beginning to turn against
Gamsakhurdia. He managed not just to spoil relations with Russia, but
with America and all the countries of Europe as well. Complete chaos
reigned inside Georgia. I was working in my association [The
International Relations Association, founded by Shevardnadze after he
resigned as minister of foreign affairs of the USSR] and people were
flocking to me from Georgia. Not just those three, but the leading
members of the intelligentsia, business leaders and so on. They said
outright, Georgia is dying. It doesn’t even exist as a state now. No
one can pull Georgia out of the crisis, no one can bring order, but
you.

I remember something else. After Zviad was overthrown, a so-called
Military Council was ruling in Georgia. It was headed by Kitovani,
who had been convicted murdering and had never had anything to do
with the government or the army before, but he founded the National
Guard units that were really in control of the situation, and Dzhaba
Ioseliani, a good man in and of himself, but he was a former thief.
He had been sentenced to 25 years in Leningrad in 1956 for the group
murder and robbery. Now he had founded the Mkhedrioni armed unit.
Sigua didn’t have enough experience. That was their milieu. No one
outside of Georgia wanted to have anything to do with them. That was
when they remembered me. Kitovani came twice. He asked me to come
there. For what kind of work? He didn’t offer anything. You should
just be in Georgia, he said.

Then Sigua came. And Ioseliani called every day. If anyone really
sincerely wanted me to come back, it was Dzhaba. A thief is a thief,
you can’t erase that from your life, but he was a fairly educated,
thoughtful person. He told me, Our homeland is just dying. I’ll call
you when it is time to come back. Don’t rush. Kitovani insisted that
it had to be today. I wouldn’t do it. Dzhaba called ten days later.
You have to come now. It will be too late if you wait. Before you
didn’t have to, he said. And then I came. I just came, I didn’t know
what I was going to do. They appointed me chairman of the state
council. What kind of job is that? It is not commander-in-chief. The
army was not subordinate to it. It made some decisions, but all of
them secondary. It couldn’t go on for long.

I want to tell you a little-known fact. When I was leaving for
Georgia, I went to Yeltsin and consulted with him. Should I go or
not? Yeltsin said that he didn’t see any choice. Then I called
Genscher [Hans Dietrich Genscher, German foreign minister in 1992].
We are friends. He insisted that I go to Georgia. He said, I really
respect you and love you. You played a decisive role in the
unification of Germany. Now I can come to you. But no cooperation
between the states is possible until you become legitimate. Baker
[James Baker, U.S. secretary of state in 1992] said the same thing
when I consulted with him. They were giving me the opinions of their
heads of state. That was when I began to make decisions. There was no
other choice. Either elections and legitimacy or we return to
isolation, with or without Shevardnadze in Georgia. In the fall of
1992, elections were held – the most just election I have ver held.
There was war. There was shooting. And the people came out to vote!

Putin Told Me, “We Are Continuing to Build Railroads. You Take Care
of Ochamchir and Sukhumi.”

That was a very difficult time for Russia and Georgia both. A lot
might be different today if your relationship with Yeltsin had been
different.

I never had reason to deceive Yeltsin. But Yeltsin looked right at me
and fooled me! It is still hard for me to think about. In 1992, he
called me and said that the war in Abkhazia had to stop. It can be
stopped very easily if Russia wants to do it, Yeltsin said. I suggest
that you go. I’ll call Ardzinba and we will gather all the leaders of
the Caucasus republics. They were all involved in the war too.

Yeltsin opened the meeting by saying, The war in Abkhazia has to
stop! Then everybody spoke. Everyone was in favor. I thanked them for
their concern. Only Ardzinba was against it. He said so. Yeltsin took
him by the arm, led him aside and said something to him. All right, I
agree, he said then. Yeltsin called me over and we shook hands.
Yeltsin placed his hand over ours and announced, The war in Abkhazia
is over!

And what happened? We had no troops. They were all militias. As soon
as they found out that they were saying in Moscow that the war was
over, they began leaving their posts. And a week later the offensive
on Gagra began with Russian volunteers taking part. They were people
who had military training, who had uniforms, weapons and everything
else. And there were several hundred Chechens, a battalion from
Basaev. Do you know what they did? They cut a man’s head off and
played soccer with it.

Do you think Abkhazia will be returned to Georgia whole, or will it
be divided?

Everything depends on Russia. As Grachev said when he was minister of
defense, We cannot leave Abkhazia, because then we would lose the
Black Sea. And what happened, as a matter of fact? They lost all the
ports on the Baltic, they lost the Crimea, Odessa, Sevastopol. Only
Novorossiisk remains. And it is not a fully functional port – for two
months you can’t sail there. So Grachev thought that Russia should
occupy Abkhazia and build a port there. From the point of view of
Russian interests, he was right.

So Russia will stall for time, not returning Abkhazia to Georgia and
talking about territorial integrity.

So far that’s what’s been going on. Some things changed after my
meeting with Putin in Sochi [in March 2003]. We agreed then that
Russia, Armenia and Georgia have an interest in the rail line. We,
Georgia, are interested in returning people who had been driven from
their homes. There were 300,000 of them then. Putin said to me, Let’s
do it gradually. We will start building a railroad to Sukhumi. We
won’t disturb you, we’ll withdraw the peacekeepers, and you return
100,000 residents to the Gal District, it’s one of the biggest. Then
we’ll continue the railroad and you take car eof Ochamchir, then
Sukhumi. That was what we agreed on. There are papers, documents,
there’s everything.

The first half has been fulfilled, the return of the refugees to Gal
and the building of the railroad. About 60 percent of the refugees
have returned to Gal. That’s not bad.

Why did Bagapsh win? His wife is Georgian. I once brought him to
Tbilisi to be on the Central Committee of the Komsomol. Then he
worked in Moscow. In Abkhazia, they see him as someone who can come
to an agreement with Georgia and with Russia. The Abkhazian have
reached that conclusion. Not all of them, of course. But they elected
him, that means a lot. Naturally he is a nationalist. Naturally, I
will ask him to acknowledge that Abkhazia lies with in the borders of
Georgia.

Do you regret resigning?

You know, Bush sent me a telegram after my resignation. He wrote,
Your greatest feat is that you resigned. Otherwise blood would have
been shed. A civil war would have started. My wife (and she was not
just my wife, we were friends, great friends) said, Don’t do that.
Resign. You’ll write, we won’t disappear. My son works in UNESCO. He
called me and said, Don’t make a mistake. And he insisted I resign
too. On the second day, I called the opposition in and said that if
they were able to run the country, I would leave. And I don’t regret
it.

by Valery Kadzhaya