130 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
transition by showering the veteran with flattery: ‘We’re not going to
find a second A. A. Gromyko.’^6
Gorbachëv met with an initial refusal when asking Shevardnadze
to become the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The whole proposal was too
startling for Shevardnadze, who felt himself lacking in the necessary
experience and worried that Russians might object to a Georgian
taking decisions for the entire USSR.^7 He also spoke no foreign
language unless Russian was included.^8 Gorbachëv refused to accept
his demurral. Shevardnadze gave way, and Gorbachëv pressed his
nom ination at the Politburo. As he acknowledged, he was passing
over distinguished diplomats such as Georgi Kornienko, Stepan
Chervonenko and Anatoli Dobrynin.^9 Gromyko showed a degree of
annoyance by mentioning Yuli Vorontsov as another potential candi-
date for promotion and expressing pride in the ‘whole cohort of
diplomats’ that he had led. Gorbachëv ignored him.^10 At the Central
Committee plenum on 1 July 1985, Shevardnadze was recommended
as Foreign Affairs Minister and made up to full Politburo membership.
As Gorbachëv knew, he was picking a man who shared his passion
for deep reform. Shevardnadze lived for years frustrated about the
drift of communist conservatism. He aspired to play his part in trans-
forming the USSR. Aged fifty-seven, he was of the same generation as
Gorbachëv and they had been friends during their years in the Kom-
somol.^11 They kept in contact when Shevardnadze became Georgian
Party First Secretary in 1972. After Gorbachëv moved to Moscow to
head the Agricultural Department of the Central Committee, they
talked about how to ensure economic improvement – and Shevard-
nadze arranged a tour of collective farms where he had introduced a
wage system to reward farmers according to the size of the grain
harvest.^12 His innovations had impressed Andropov.^13 Shevardnadze
and Gorbachëv were holidaying together in Georgia when they read
the news about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December
1979.^14 In Shevardnadze’s view, Brezhnev no longer functioned as
someone who could make up his own mind but yielded to the opin-
ions of others rather as Emperor Nicholas II had submitted to Grigori
Rasputin’s influence.^15 Shevardnadze and Gorbachëv agreed on the
need to pull Soviet forces out as soon as possible. In the minds of both
of them, the war had been a terrible mistake from the very start.^16
Shevardnadze was committed to the Soviet multinational state
despite the pain it had brought to both sides of his family. Shevard-
nadze’s father had been arrested in 1937 and was lucky to obtain