Strongman, The

residence and declared a state of emergency. And then he called Putin.
    Back in the 1970s, when he was Georgia’s Communist Party leader, Shevardnadze had notoriously affirmed his republic’s subservient position to Russia in the USSR by saying: ‘For us in Georgia the sun rises in the north.’ Now, as he desperately tried to cling to power in the independent state of Georgia, he effectively confirmed that little had changed, by turning to Putin for help. To the group seated around the table in Genatsvale it was obvious which of them should be dispatched to Tbilisi. Igor Ivanov, the foreign minister, had a Georgian mother and even knew a smattering of the language. He also knew Shevardnadze from the 1980s, when he had worked as his adviser in the foreign ministry. Putin sent him straight to the airport, with a posse of security guards and clear instructions to do whatever he could to avoid bloodshed in the streets of Tbilisi and ensure things were done in accordance with the Georgian constitution (which effectively meant: don’t let a mob overthrow the president).
    ‘You know,’ Ivanov said in an interview, ‘we didn’t always have very easy relations with Shevardnadze, but Putin was nonetheless quite clear – he was the legal, legitimately elected president, and we must help him.’ 1
    Ivanov flew into Tbilisi after midnight and had a meeting scheduled with Shevardnadze in the morning. But before then he wanted to test the mood, so he took two bodyguards and set off to where the protesters were camped out in the city centre. He picked his way among the tents and campfires trying to gauge how explosive the atmosphere was. ‘I don’t really understand Georgian,’ he told us, ‘but you could get a sense of the place.’
    Suddenly somebody recognised him, and a buzz spread through the square: ‘Ivanov is here, Ivanov is here!’ The word quickly reached the ears of Zurab Zhvania, a popular politician and former speaker of parliament, who, together with Saakashvili and Burjanadze, was one of the leaders of the Rose Revolution. By now the crowd was becoming restless, and Zhvania urged Ivanov to get up on to the podium and address them. Ivanov recalled: ‘I asked him how to say in Georgian, “Long live friendship between Russia and Georgia.” I repeated that a few times into the microphone, and it seemed to go down well! I got the feeling that the people felt Russia could help somehow in resolving this conflict.’
    Nino Burjanadze, the speaker of parliament and since the previous afternoon self-proclaimed acting president, was in her office. ‘Zhvania and Saakashvili and I had been working till about four in the morning,’ she recalled later, ‘and now I was dozing in my armchair, when my secretary came in and said: “Ivanov is addressing the crowd.” I thought I was dreaming! But I went downstairs, and sure enough there he was, even saying something to them in Georgian!’ 2
    Ivanov now ended up in the role of mediator, shuttling between the opposition and President Shevardnadze. In the small hours of the morning he held talks with Saakashvili, Zhvania and Burjanadze to find out exactly what their demands were. Retelling these events, Ivanov insisted that at no stage did anyone insist on Shevardnadze’s resignation; rather it was a question of re-running the parliamentary election that the opposition knew had been stolen from them. Ivanov spent the rest of the night consulting Georgian friends and diplomats, and came to the conclusion that ‘the pendulum was swinging in the direction of the opposition’.
    That was the message he took to President Shevardnadze in the morning. ‘I had known him since 1985, and felt I could say to him quite openly that I had met all these people, in the opposition and in his own entourage, and sensed that he had lost almost all support.’ Ivanov felt that he failed to convince Shevardnadze that he was so isolated, but he did persuade him to meet the opposition leaders.
    Ivanov finally brought Zhvania and Saakashvili to Shevardnadze’s residence for talks in the afternoon of the 23rd. At this point he felt he had done all that was required of him. ‘I sat down at the table. Shevardnadze and his assistant were on one side; Zhvania and Saakashvili were on the other. I said: “I think I have done what I came to do. President Putin asked me to help you find a political solution. That’s up to you now – to hold talks and avoid bloodshed. So I will leave you