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1978. A long-standing professional acquaintance
with Mikhail
GORBACHEV
paid off in March 1985,
when he was made a full member of the Polit-
buro. His second career began in July 1985, when
he succeeded Andrei
GROMYKO
as Soviet foreign
minister. Despite the absence of diplomatic train-
ing or experience and lack of foreign languages,
Shevardnadze became a superb ambassador of
Gorbachev's “new thinking” in foreign policy.
Warning of the possibility of a right-wing coup,
he resigned his post in December 1990 and left
the party in June 1991. Loyal to Gorbachev dur-
ing the
AUGUST COUP
of 1991, he was reap-
pointed Foreign Minister in November 1991 as
part of Gorbachev's desperate attempt to forestall
the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which nev-
ertheless came one month later. With post-
Soviet Georgia in danger of collapse from civil
war and chaotic rule, Shevardnadze began his
third career in 1992 as President of independent
Georgia. Relying on controversial Russian assis-
tance his forces put down the threat of Abk-
hazian separatism and routed the Gamsakhurdia
forces. Shevardnadze survived various assassina-
tion attempts on the way to a second presiden-
tial term in 1997. In December 2003, however,
he resigned after a wave of public protests.
writing. Released from exile, he returned to St.
Petersburg, where his friends raised a fund to
buy his freedom in 1858. Shevchenko, writing
in a popular romantic style, was a seminal influ-
ence in the development of Ukrainian literature
and the Ukrainian national movement. His main
poems, many of which celebrate the Ukrainian
peasantry, are found in the collection
Kobzar
(1840). Shevchenko died on February 26, 1861,
only a week after the decree on the emancipa-
tion of the serfs was issued.
Shmidt, Otto Iulevich
(1891-1956)
scientist and polar explorer
A ubiquitous figure in the fields of administration,
education, and polar exploration in the 1920s and
1930s, Shmidt was born in Mogilev province and
graduated from Kiev University in 1913. He
joined the Bolshevik Party soon after the
OCTOBER
REVOLUTION
of 1917, playing important adminis-
trative roles in food supply and education during
the Russian civil war. He also taught at the
Moscow Forestry Institute (1920-23), the Second
Moscow University (1923-26), and Moscow State
University from 1926 until his death. As execu-
tive editor of the
Great Soviet Encyclopedia
from
1924 to 1941 and chief editor of the journal
Priroda
(Nature), he was active in the field of
popular education. In 1930 he became director
of the Arctic Institute in Leningrad (St. Peters-
burg), and from 1932 to 1938, headed the Main
Administration of the Northern Sea Route
(Glavsevmorput), the de facto ruler of the Soviet
Union's northern Asian territories above the
62nd parallel. Between 1929 and 1937 Shmidt
participated in four important polar expeditions.
The first, on the icebreaker
Sedov
(1929), estab-
lished a scientific station on Franz Josef Land.
The second, on the
Sibiriakov
(1932), was the
first to navigate the whole Northern Sea Route
in one season. The third was the ill-fated
Che-
liuskin
expedition (1933-34), which met with
disaster when the ship was crushed on the ice.
The difficult rescue of the stranded crew capti-
Shevchenko, Taras Grigorievich
(1814-1861)
(Hryhorovych)
poet
The most renowned Ukrainian poet, Shev-
chenko was also an artist and an ardent sup-
porter of Ukrainian nationalism. Though he was
born a serf, his master recognized his talents and
sent him to St. Petersburg to study art. There he
met a number of influential artists and writers
such as the poet Vasili Zhukovsky, tutor to the
future
ALEXANDER II
, and the artists Karl Briullov
and Alexei Venetsianov. A member of the secret
Pan-Slavic Society, the Brotherhood of Saints
Cyril and Methodius, in 1847 he was arrested
and banished to Orenburg for 10 years, during
which time he was prohibited from painting or
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