The reality of the times was that he was both. His death brings closer the end of the Gorbachev generation of reform communists, those who – like Shevardnadze and the late Boris Yeltsin – presented a stark contrast in the late 1980s to the dour Brezhnev-era hard-liners, spurring (mostly inadvertently) the collapse of the Soviet empire and the long transition to democracy.
谢瓦尔德纳泽有没有诚实的时候？他究竟是民主人士还是独裁者？事实上他两者皆有。他的去世将戈尔巴乔夫那代共产改革份子推向了终点，这些人像谢瓦尔德纳泽和已故的叶利钦一样，与20世纪80年代勃列日涅夫时代的强硬派形成了鲜明的对照。是他们在无意间推动了苏联帝国的解体，启动了向民主政体的长期过渡。