Georgia: Comeback Politics

In Russia he is known as the incorruptible paladin of democracy who resigned because he could not countenance dictatorship. To the rest of the world he was the public face of perestroika who played a pivotal role in ending the cold war. So it is a bit strange to see Eduard Shevardnadze staging a comeback in the one place where his reputation has been dogged by obloquy: his native Georgia.

During the republic's campaign for independence, the erstwhile friend of Mikhail Gorbachev was branded a "top Kremlin agent." But in the wake of ousting dissident turned despot Zviad Gamsakhurdia in January, Tbilisi leaders took a more benign view of the onetime Georgian Communist Party boss and last week appointed him to chair the new State Council, effectively giving Shevardnadze stewardship of his mountainous homeland. The veteran diplomat now faces pressing tasks: staving off economic collapse, healing the divisions created by months of civil strife and ending the isolation into which Georgia was pushed during Gamsakhurdia's flirtation with dictatorship.