Leadership Quote by Eduard Shevardnadze

A politician doesn’t survive the late Soviet machine, help dismantle it, then steer a fragile post-Soviet state by being precious about principles. Shevardnadze’s line reads like a modest self-portrait, but its real function is credentialing: I’m a fixer. I adapt. I don’t freeze. In the small, careful grammar of “found ways,” he avoids claiming moral triumph or visionary purity; he claims something harder to dispute and easier to market in a crisis-ridden country: competence under pressure.

The subtext is survival - personal and political. Shevardnadze rose through Georgia’s Communist Party, became Gorbachev’s foreign minister during perestroika, and later returned to lead an independent Georgia rocked by civil conflict, separatist wars, and economic collapse. In that world, “dealing with a situation” is a euphemism with elastic meaning. It can signify pragmatic negotiation and institutional patience. It can also hint at the darker arts of governance in brittle states: cutting deals with rival power centers, accommodating security services, trading ideals for stability.

The intent, then, is to normalize flexibility as a virtue, even when it looks like opportunism from the outside. The phrase refuses drama; it’s engineered to sound reasonable, almost banal. That banality is the point. For leaders operating amid coups, assassinations, and shifting patronage, the highest compliment isn’t “pure.” It’s “still standing.”