Leadership Quote by Eduard Shevardnadze

A sentence this small can carry an entire post-imperial biography. "As for myself" is the tell: Shevardnadze isn’t praising Russia so much as carving out a personal alibi in a region where loyalties get retroactively rewritten. The phrasing narrows the frame from geopolitics to individual intent, as if history were a courtroom and he’s calmly requesting the record show he was never the caricature.

The subtext is defensive because the accusation is implied. In Georgia, especially after the Soviet collapse and the violent 1990s, being labeled "anti-Russian" could mean you were reckless, nationalist, or responsible for provoking a stronger neighbor. Being labeled "pro-Russian" could mean you were a collaborator. Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister turned Georgian head of state, lived in the seam between those narratives. He helped loosen the USSR from within, then tried to keep an independent Georgia afloat beside an embittered Russia that still viewed the Caucasus as a near-abroad possession.

"Never against Russia" is also a careful distinction between a state and a regime, a people and a policy. It signals pragmatism: opposition to domination isn’t the same as hostility to a country. That tightrope mattered for someone whose legitimacy depended on Western support while his survival depended on not triggering Moscow’s full wrath. The line works because it sounds mild, even humane, while quietly asserting a hard truth of small states: you don’t get to choose your neighbors, only your posture toward them.