Eduard Shevardnadze was born in 1928, and spent most of his life in Russia's political realm. In later years he served as the President of Georgia from 1995-2003 when he resigned during the Rose Revolution. Before he was President of Georgia, he served under Mikhail Gorbachev. From 1985 to 1990 Shevardnadze was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union.

Shevardnadze's political career began at an early age when he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the tender age of twenty. After only eleven years he was a member of the Georgian Supreme Soviet in 1959, and he was later appointed Georgian Minister for the maintenance of public order in 1965. From 1968 to 1972 he also served as Georgian Minister for Internal Affairs. It was during this time that he took a strong stance against corruption. Thus, it was a perfectly natural assumption that he would replace Vasily Mzhavanadze when he was forced to resign the post of the First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party because of a corruption scandal in 1972.

However, Shevardnadze is most well known for his service under Gorbachev as the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was during this time that he played an important part in the end of the cold war. When democracy began to take hold in the eastern regions of the Soviet Union he refused to participate in a Soviet intervention, instead choosing to hang back and allow for a more peaceful democratic turnover. It was because of his choice to be a voice of moderation he was seen by some as betraying the communist party.

The strain between Shevardnadze's policies and Gorbachev's determination to preserve Russia's socialist structure led to Shevardnadze resigning in protest in 1990. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Georgia elected its first President, Zviad Gamsakhurdia; however, his rule ended when he was forced to flee after being deposed. The presidency was later restored in 1995 and Shevardnadze was elected with seventy percent of the vote. In 2003 a controversy surrounding an "unfair" election Shevardnadze stepped down in order to avoid any further conflict, stating that his actions were done "so all this can end peacefully and there is no bloodshed and no casualties."

Shevardnadze's career was full of ups and downs that ranged from his fight against political corruption while being accused of rigging his own elections and committing power plays to his central role in helping dismantle the Soviet system that he had grown up in. In 2006, Shevardnadze published his memoirs, Thoughts about the Past and the Future.