Leadership Quote by Eduard Shevardnadze

A line like this isn’t trying to inspire private virtue; it’s trying to harden public discipline. Shevardnadze frames citizenship as an obligation you can’t opt out of, and the phrasing does quiet but deliberate work: “No Georgian” makes the appeal total, almost juridical, while “right” reframes negligence as a kind of illegitimate privilege. Duty isn’t presented as moral advice. It’s presented as the baseline of belonging.

The subtext is national triage. In post-Soviet Georgia, “responsibility” was never just about paying taxes or obeying laws; it was code for holding together a fragile state under stress: civil conflict, economic collapse, corruption, separatist wars in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and the constant pressure of aligning with or resisting Russian influence. When a government can’t reliably deliver security or prosperity, it often reaches for rhetoric that asks citizens to supply what institutions can’t. The message doubles as a warning: if the country is failing, the blame won’t be pinned solely on leaders; it will be distributed downward, onto ordinary people accused of “evading” their share.

There’s also a self-justifying edge. Shevardnadze, a veteran of Soviet power and later a symbol of Georgia’s uneasy transition, is implicitly casting himself as the custodian of order. The sentence invites unity while narrowing dissent: disagreement can be recoded as irresponsibility. That’s why it works rhetorically. It turns patriotism into a test you either pass through compliance or fail through refusal.