Wealth & Money Quote by Eduard Shevardnadze

There is a cold-blooded honesty in Shevardnadze’s “absolutely impossible” that reads less like a confession than a preemptive alibi. By choosing the language of physics, not politics, he tries to move the conversation from responsibility to inevitability: not “we won’t,” but “we can’t.” It’s a classic move for a leader managing scarcity and anger at the same time. If the crisis is framed as arithmetic, then outrage can be treated as ignorance.

The subtext is sharper: the state’s moral obligations are being downgraded into optional line items. Pensioners and teachers aren’t random examples; they’re the symbolic backbone of a post-Soviet social contract. Pensioners represent the promise that a lifetime of work will be honored. Teachers represent the future the government keeps asking citizens to believe in. Naming them signals that the government understands exactly who is being abandoned - and is asking for resignation anyway.

Context matters because Shevardnadze governed Georgia through the wreckage of the early 1990s: institutional collapse, civil conflict, corruption, and a hollowed-out tax base. In that environment, “the country hasn’t got enough money” is also coded diplomacy aimed outward. It’s a message to international lenders and partners: the state is broke, order is fragile, assistance is not charity but stabilization.

What makes the line work rhetorically is its bluntness paired with its evasions. It acknowledges pain without admitting fault, turning governance into triage while quietly normalizing the idea that the most dependable citizens will be the ones left unpaid.