Sitting in his spartan, third-floor office suite last week, Eduard Shevardnadze pauses for a moment to look out through a newly replaced windowpane into the courtyard of the fortress-like parliament building in downtown Tbilisi, capital of the republic of Georgia. He has just been talking about the landslide victory--72.9% of the popular vote--that has won him a five-year term as the elected President of his troubled Caucasus Mountains homeland. But his thoughts have wandered back to a terrorist attack last August, when he narrowly escaped death after a bomb went off in a car parked in the courtyard below.

"I had serious doubts whether to run for the presidency," Shevardnadze recalls. "But that assassination attempt finally made up my mind. I realized I had no right to desert the battlefield."

No one would ever accuse Shevardnadze of shirking his duty. As Soviet Foreign Minister under Mikhail Gorbachev, he helped bring an end to the cold war. Then he returned in 1992 to the former Soviet republic of Georgia, where he had ruled for 13 years as Communist Party chief, to try and pick up the pieces after the country's first democratically elected President, the despotic Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was overthrown in a coup. Since coming home, Shevardnadze has had to contend with a civil war waged by supporters of the deposed President, a bloody conflict to restore control over the breakaway region of Abkhazia and the complete collapse of the economy and civil order in Georgia--all while surviving three brushes with death.

Shevardnadze, 67, knows that his most difficult mission still lies ahead--bringing stability and prosperity to this nation of 5.5 million people. Fortunately, a few signs of progress have appeared. Adroitly using the assassination attempt to impose more draconian law-and-order measures, Shevardnadze ordered Georgia police to round up criminal bands. The sweep netted more than 300 people who had terrorized Tbilisi in a rampage of murders, robberies and armed assaults. Now Georgians have begun venturing out onto the streets again, even at night. After long periods of blackout, newly stable electricity supplies have given Tbilisi's central, tree-lined boulevards a warm, almost inviting glow--although some wonder if the lights will stay on so consistently now that Shevardnadze no longer has to woo voters.

Georgia's long-term economic prospects look a bit brighter too. Last month the republic introduced its own national currency, the lari, backed by a $160 million stabilization loan from the International Monetary Fund. As a result, officials say, inflation has plummeted to a 2% annual rate from a level that had gone so high they were no longer measuring it (peak recorded rate: 7,500% for 1994). Shevardnadze also scored a major diplomatic victory in negotiations with Russia and its other neighbors over the thorny question of where to build a pipeline to transport Caspian Sea oil through the Caucasus region. An international consortium last month made the Solomonic decision to use two systems--an existing pipeline through Russia and a new link with the Black Sea through Georgia that should earn the country more than $3 million a year in transshipment fees plus a share of the fuel. Says Shevardnadze: "It is vital for us that we have been recognized as a serious transit country, not only for oil but for land, sea and air routes."

Despite such encouraging developments, it will still be a long, hard winter for the vast majority of Georgians. They have had to live for three years without enough fuel to heat their homes or food to fill their bellies. Chronic unemployment has forced some 1.5 million workers--the bulk of the country's labor force--to seek employment in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union. At home, the average monthly salary--equivalent to $4.16--is just half the price of a kilo of meat. Tamara, a retired 65-year-old medical orderly with a pension of only $2.50 a month, says she could not survive without a daily meal from a Georgian Orthodox Church soup kitchen in Tbilisi's old town. It feeds about 3,500 people a day, including impoverished intellectuals and former Soviet army colonels. As a worried Shevardnadze aide glumly put it: "If we don't deliver on our economic promises in a year, there will be an explosion."

That is not much time for the newly elected Shevardnadze, who has many prominent enemies waiting for his downfall. Among the most fearsome is Igor Giorgadze, former head of Georgia's security service, who is reportedly lying low in Moscow in the face of government accusations that he was involved in the August assassination attempt. Most Georgians realize there is no one to take Shevardnadze's place and are willing to give him a chance.

"It's not that we really trust Shevardnadze," says Givi Gabruashvili, who makes a living by buying and reselling whatever goods he can find. "We're simply tired of hunger, cold and banditry, and we have a grudging hope that he'll deliver us from this mess. He has the prestige and standing in the world to do it." The new President has prestige and standing indeed, but will it be enough for the task ahead?

--Reported by Yuri Zarakhovich/Tbilisi