Eduard Shevardnadze, Soviet Foreign Minister Under Gorbachev, Is Dead at 86

Eduard A. Shevardnadze, who as Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s foreign minister helped hone the “new thinking,” foreign and domestic, that transformed and ultimately rent the Soviet Union, then led his native Georgia through its turbulent start as an independent state, died on Monday. He was 86.

His spokeswoman, Marina Davitashvili, confirmed the death.

Mr. Shevardnadze was forced from office in 2003 by the Rose Revolution, in which Georgians vented their frustration with the corrupt post-Soviet system that he had presided over. His ouster set in motion a period of government reform that saw Georgia become a darling of the West under his successor, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Mr. Shevardnadze had spent his working life as a Communist official when Mr. Gorbachev called him on June 30, 1985, with a proposition that startled him: Would he manage the foreign policy of one of the two most powerful countries in the world?

As he recounted the call in his memoirs, “The Future Belongs to Freedom” (1991), Mr. Shevardnadze stammered that he had no experience in diplomacy, other than hosting foreign delegations as the top Communist official in the Soviet republic of Georgia. He had visited just nine countries and spoke no foreign languages. And, he asked Mr. Gorbachev, shouldn’t the foreign minister be Russian?