Eduard Shevardnadze

In his three months in office, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze has charmed the diplomatic world with his openness and self-effacing wit. His kindly eyes and unruly silver mane project an image that is radically different from that of his fastidious, poker-faced predecessor, Andrei Gromyko. But like his boss, Mikhail Gorbachev, Shevardnadze is a shrewd, tough-minded politician with steel beneath his smile. Some Sovietologists last summer assumed that Shevardnadze, with his minimal foreign policy experience, would serve simply as a stand-in while Gorbachev acted as his own chief diplomat. Yet Shevardnadze has shown a readiness to take charge of the Foreign...