Obituary: Zurab Zhvania

The Independent – United Kingdom
Feb 04, 2005

Felix Corley

FOR THE past turbulent decade in Georgian politics, Zurab Zhvania was
a permanent and reliable central fixture, nurtured and promoted by the
veteran leader Eduard Shevardnadze.

By the time Zhvania had started to distance himself from the corrupt
Shevardnadze and his circle, his ambitions to succeed him as President
were trounced by the more charismatic and impulsive Mikheil
Saakashvili. But no government would be complete without Zhvania, who
ended up as Prime Minister. His early death – apparently from carbon
monoxide poisoning from a faulty gas heater – robs the Saakashvili
government of a stabilising influence.

Born of Georgian and Armenian ancestry into a family of physicists in
the Georgian capital Tbilisi, Zhvania grew up surrounded by
science. In 1980, after leaving school, he entered the biology faculty
of the prestigious Tbilisi State University. There he initiated a
student laboratory where all the research work was carried out by
students, something unknown in the hierarchical world of Soviet
scientific research. His lecturers regarded him as a student of great
promise and expected him to make science his lifelong career.

After graduation in 1985, he worked in the laboratory of the
university’s human and animal physiology faculty. But he was
increasingly interested in wider work in society. Supported by
well-known scientists, he joined with other gifted young people to
found the Ecological Association to work within Soviet restrictions
for greater environmental protection in Georgia.

But as ideological controls started to loosen and environmental
activists could – if they wished – show their true colours as
surrogate politicians, Zhvania left his scientific colleagues behind
and founded in 1988 a political party, the Georgian Greens. He was
unanimously elected party chairman.

His political breakthrough came in the elections of October 1992,
contested by more than 50 political parties and blocs. Zhvania
abandoned his scientific work on entering parliament in the election,
where his Green Party – seen as the party of young intellectuals – was
transformed into an influential parliamentary faction. Zhvania was
soon elected as co-secretary of the European Greens.

As Zhvania’s political career began to take off in Georgia’s volatile
immediate post-independence years, he backed the Soviet-era leader
Shevardnadze as he rebuilt a power-base in the wake of his return to
power. In 1993 Zhvania accepted Shevardnadze’s invitation to join him
as secretary-general of the newly founded party, the Citizens’ Union
of Georgia, a disparate alliance united around Shevardnadze’s only
policy: pragmatism. Zhvania hoped to push the party in a
pro-democratic direction.

In November 1995, after the party won a convincing victory in the
elections, Zhvania was elected speaker of parliament. He was now at
the heart of the regime. It was he who persuaded Saakashvili to return
from a promising legal career in the United States to commit himself
to Georgia’s future.

Despite Zhvania’s growing concern over the corruption and stagnation
of the Shevardnadze regime, which he voiced from 1998, he stuck with
the President until November 2001, when he resigned as speaker. In
2002 he founded and became chairman of the United Democrats. He was
soon joined by his successor as parliamentary speaker, Nino
Burjanadze.

Ahead of the November 1993 parliamentary elections, Zhvania
characterised the political choice facing Georgia as one between “a
European way of development” or “another form of Soviet
nostalgia”. When they teamed up with the more charismatic Saakashvili
in the wake of the rigged electoral outcome, the gang of three was
unstoppable in a country weary of lawlessness, poverty, stagnation and
corruption.

Following the ousting of Shevardnadze and his circle amid street
revolts in Tbilisi, Zhvania became State Minister, retaining the
renamed post of Prime Minister from February 2004 despite increasing
tensions with Saakashvili.

A relative moderate over Georgia’s decade-old struggles to regain
control over the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
unlike many in Georgia Zhvania was less inclined automatically to
blame Russia for the conflicts and other ills that befell the country.

He never lost his image as an urban intellectual, so different from
the ruthless, hard men who dominated Georgian politics. Amid all the
machinations of a volatile political system, he tried to hold fast to
his vision of an open, liberal and forward-looking Georgia, based on
principles of civic nationalism.

Although largely unsuccessful in ensuring that such a vision became
reality under Shevardnadze, Zhvania hoped for the transformation of
his country under Saakashvili.

Zurab Zhvania, politician: born Tbilisi, Soviet Union 9 December 1963;
State Minister of Georgia 2003-04, Prime Minister 2004-05; married
1993 Nino Kadagidze (one son, two daughters); died Tbilisi, Georgia 3
February 2005.