The Boss of Smolensky Square

By JOHN KOHAN MOSCOW

Eduard Amvroseyevich Shevardnadze begins his work day the moment he climbs into his black ZIL limousine for the 15-minute ride from his suburban dacha to downtown Moscow. Speeding along the boulevards of the Soviet capital, he telephones the Foreign Ministry for a summary of international news. By the time he arrives at the pinnacled Stalinist skyscraper in Smolensky Square just before 9 a.m., he has been briefed on events and can plunge immediately into the pile of diplomatic cables and documents awaiting him in his seventh-floor office.

Every minute counts these days for Shevardnadze, 61, who combines the duties of Foreign Minister with full voting membership on the Communist Party's ruling Politburo. This week Shevardnadze confers with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker in Moscow, then flies to Bonn to meet with Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Early next week he heads to Beijing for the long-awaited summit between Gorbachev and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. The swift pace of change during Shevardnadze's almost four-year tenure at Smolensky Square has left foreign diplomats, to say nothing of his weary staff in Moscow, a bit breathless.

If Gorbachev is the architect of "new thinking" in international affairs, Shevardnadze is his master builder. Like the General Secretary, the amiable, white-haired diplomat has a smile that can melt ice. And like Gorbachev, Shevardnadze sometimes shows a glint of iron teeth. Thanks, in part, to Shevardnadze's diplomatic labors, Soviet tanks and troops have been withdrawn from Afghanistan and are being partially withdrawn from Eastern Europe. A whole class of nuclear weapons has been marked for destruction under the INF treaty signed in 1987. As the Soviets and their allies disentangle themselves from conflicts in Namibia and Cambodia, they are making diplomatic inroads in the Middle East and China. "Shevardnadze has mastered the foreign policy agenda," says Robert Legvold, director of Columbia University's W. Averell Harriman Institute of Soviet Affairs. "He is of a similar creative mind as Gorbachev, not simply his tool."

Shevardnadze has proved to be an equally trusted Gorbachev lieutenant on the domestic front. He confers with the Soviet leader at least twice a day, discussing topics that might range from the country's ethnic unrest to land leasing and family farms. Foreign Ministry staffers, with their boss's encouragement, have lobbied other branches of the bureaucracy to improve the country's human rights image. Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov, 59, has smoothly refined the notion of glasnost in government at daily press briefings, packaging information with slivers of barbed wit. When clashes between troops and nationalist demonstrators in Shevardnadze's native republic of Georgia claimed the lives of 20 people last month, the Foreign Minister canceled a visit to East and West Germany and flew to Tbilisi. He has called the peacekeeping mission "my toughest challenge" so far. The result: a purge of the party and government leadership.

When Shevardnadze replaced veteran diplomat Andrei Gromyko as Foreign Minister in 1985, capitals around the world greeted the news with the question Eduard who? Even in the Foreign Ministry, the Georgian Communist Party First Secretary had not figured on anyone's short list of candidates. But Gorbachev knew what sort of man he wanted for shaking up the ossified Moscow foreign policy establishment. He had met Shevardnadze when both were active in regional Communist Youth League organizations in the late 1950s. Though Shevardnadze says little about those early contacts ("We met, we talked, we discussed things"), a senior Soviet diplomat speculates that Gorbachev's first impressions of Shevardnadze may have led the Soviet leader to pick him for the Foreign Ministry job a quarter-century later. "Georgians are a sophisticated people," says the diplomat. "Well educated, natural bargainers, with a fine sense for the art of the possible."

Although Shevardnadze speaks Russian fluently (unlike Gromyko, he does not speak English) and writes out his notes in Cyrillic script, he has a noticeable Georgian accent and makes no effort to hide his national heritage. During his years as local party leader, Shevardnadze (whose name is derived from the Georgian word for falcon) showed a deep interest in his region's cultural life, contributing at least two literary essays under a pseudonym to local newspapers.

Shevardnadze's wife Nanuli shares her husband's literary interests, and worked as a journalist for a woman's magazine before moving to Moscow in 1985. The couple has a daughter, Manana, 36, an editor for Georgian television, a son, Paata, 31, who studies philosophy, and four grandchildren (three girls, one boy). Like most Georgians, the Shevardnadzes are a close-knit clan. "My family thinks as I do," Shevardnadze told a Soviet newspaper. "They are my support in life."

The son of a history teacher, Shevardnadze was born in the village of Mamati in southwestern Georgia, an area famed for its crusading politicians and sharp-tongued wits. He displayed a bit of both qualities in his climb up the ranks of the regional Communist Youth League and party bureaucracy. And a steely side too. From 1965 to 1972 Shevardnadze headed Georgia's interior ministry, serving, in effect, as the republic's top policeman. His ruthless campaigns against corruption brought him into conflict with Party First Secretary Vasili Mzhavanadze, who tried to fire him in 1972. But Shevardnadze packed a suitcase with documents proving that Mzhavanadze was neck-deep in black marketeering; within 24 hours Soviet officials had fired Mzhavanadze and given Shevardnadze the job.

According to an anecdote that stubbornly clings to Shevardnadze, he ended one of his first meetings as the new Georgian party chief by asking officials to vote by raising their left hands. "Keep them up a minute," he said. Then he walked around the room checking out the expensive foreign watches on display. Shevardnadze, who wore a Russian-made Slava, ordered the officials to "donate" their prized Western goods to the state. Over the course of the following year, Shevardnadze's relentless drive against corruption reportedly made him the target of at least two assassination attempts. He was equally unorthodox in promoting family farming, independent decision making at factories and pay incentives to workers long before they became principles of perestroika.

When students massed in a Tbilisi square in 1978 to protest a new constitution that no longer acknowledged Georgian as the republic's official language, Shevardnadze courageously went out to speak with them, promised to consider their demands and led them from the square with bullhorn in hand. On another occasion, after referees made an unpopular call in favor of a visiting Russian team during a Tbilisi soccer match, he ran out onto the field to keep the furious Georgian crowds in line.

Whatever Shevardnadze's gifts as a politician, Gorbachev took a calculated risk in thrusting him unprepared into the diplomatic spotlight. When Shevardnadze made his international debut, four weeks after his appointment at the tenth-anniversary conference of the Helsinki accords, he relied heavily on his aides and 5-in. by 7-in. note cards. On the eve of a meeting with then Secretary of State George Shultz at the U.N. General Assembly session that year, he summoned an adviser at midnight to do more preparatory work. Realizing how late it was, Shevardnadze suggested they both get some sleep -- and meet again at 4 a.m.

Whatever early-morning cribbing went on, the Georgian has proved a quick study in mastering details about everything from sea-launched missiles to human rights. "It was quite amazing," says a senior British diplomat. "He was essentially a shrewd but provincial figure when he took over. Within just a few months, he became a sophisticated world statesman."

By the end of 1986 Shevardnadze had replaced nine out of twelve deputy ministers. Under his stewardship, three-quarters of the ambassadors and two- thirds of the consuls general have been reshuffled. New departments were created to handle disarmament questions and humanitarian issues. "Shevardnadze came in and asked, 'Why are you defending this?' " says Yuli Vorontsov, once a Soviet arms-control negotiator and now First Deputy Foreign Minister and Ambassador to Afghanistan. "He was always asking why."

If Gromyko rarely consulted subordinates about policy issues, Shevardnadze encourages open debate. Every Monday at 11 a.m. he summons his twelve deputies for a briefing on the week ahead. Sometimes the Foreign Minister even appoints an in-house "dissident" to challenge viewpoints and help sharpen policy. One conspicuous sign of the new style is the number of television sets around the ministry tuned, thanks to satellite hookup, to CNN. As Deputy Minister Vladimir Petrovsky explains, "You need pluralism of opinion to make the right decisions. What I like to call 'mind attacks.' "

Three times a month, usually on a Friday afternoon or Saturday, Shevardnadze gathers with the 29-member Foreign Ministry collegium, an informal council composed of senior Foreign Ministry officials and invited guests. The four- to five-hour sessions touch on issues ranging from ambassadorial appointments to terrorism. "You can speak your opinion now and be certain it will be heard," says Deputy Minister Anatoli Adamishin. "Even my subordinates can express disagreement with my views. In fact, criticism is better received than words of praise." Unlike James Baker, Shevardnadze does not shun career officials in favor of a small clutch of aides; as a Soviet diplomat puts it, he "prefers to go directly to the specialist without regard to rank."

Compared with Gromyko, Shevardnadze has proved flexible at the bargaining table, willing to concede what is obvious so as to concentrate on the key points of difference. If the "Grim Grom" stubbornly claimed that his country was not guilty of human rights abuses, Shevardnadze admits that such problems exist but emphasizes what the Kremlin is doing to improve the situation. To the surprise of American negotiators at the INF talks, the Foreign Minister quickly accepted the principle of verification, then negotiated hard to cut the best deal for Moscow. Says U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock: "Shevardnadze is firm, but if you do not agree on an issue, he moves on. He approaches most things in a nonideological way. He doesn't spend time preaching to the other side."

If Matlock finds Shevardnadze a shrewd negotiator, so do the Foreign Minister's own countrymen. According to Deputy Minister Vorontsov, when Shevardnadze informed Soviet generals that the INF treaty required on-site verification of nuclear missiles, "they told us we were selling them out." In pressing military officials for a reason why U.S. inspectors could not visit these sites, the Foreign Ministry discovered "ridiculous explanations, like 'We don't have hotels there.' We said, 'Come on, we'll build them.' " The Soviet brass eventually gave in.

Though Shevardnadze is smoother than Gromyko, he can be just as tough as his predecessor. It was Shevardnadze, after all, who forced an unhappy President Najibullah to accept the fact that the Soviets were leaving Afghanistan. In February he told Oliver Tambo, leader of the African National Congress, that the Soviet Union would no longer support the A.N.C.'s "war of national liberation" in southern Africa. And, when necessary, Shevardnadze will blatantly lie, as British officials believe he did when he told Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe last month that the Soviet Union possessed only a fraction of the chemical weapons that the West believes it actually has.

Although Shevardnadze enjoys a good joke, he is not a backslapper and insists on calling his aides by their formal names. A man of meticulous appearance who has been known to cast a flirtatious glance or two at the ladies, Shevardnadze is not a stickler for protocol; on entering a negotiating room, he unfailingly makes the rounds of all present, shaking hands and engaging in small talk. "You don't feel that he is full of his own importance," says a West German diplomat. "He's a really pleasant fellow to do business with."

Shevardnadze's charm will be tested this week in his first lengthy encounter with Baker. Not that the Foreign Minister will leave everything to the vagaries of personal chemistry. There will be more late nights, with briefing papers to be finished and reviewed for the Baker visit and China summit. "You have to pay a price for everything," says Deputy Minister Petrovsky. "But at least there is a dynamic feeling now of being part of an exciting process." And when Petrovsky leaves for home at 10 on any evening, chances are that the lights will still be burning bright in his boss's office.

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Moscow and William Mader/London