But on second thought, after I decreed the state of emergency, I came to the conclusion that that was impossible to achieve without bloodshed because the street protesters were full of anger and nearly out of control. This is why I thought we needed to find another way out.

After his personal subterfuge the entire Georgian border police was purged. He escaped an assassination attempt in Abkhazia in 1992: Russian military carried out an attack on Shevardnadze's life. He became the country's head of state following the removal of Zviad Gamsakhurdia as President.

From then on with the exception of a brief period between 1990 and 1991 only Gorbachev would outrank Shevardnadze in importance in Soviet foreign policy. Eduard Ambrosis dze Shevardnadze (Georgian: ედუარდ ამბროსის ძე შევარდნაძე [ɛduard ʃɛvardnad͡zɛ]; born 25 January 1928) is a former Soviet minister of foreign affairs and later Georgian statesman from the height to the end of the Cold War. Mikhail Gorbachev appointed Shevardnadze to the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs.