ABSTRACT
Eduard Shevardnadze had had experience as head of police; he had been Georgian Interior Minister before being appointed First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party in 1972. In January 1995, Shevardnadze appointed Nugzar Sajaia as the person within the Head of State Staff responsible for supervising the defence, security and law enforcement agencies. The most avidly pro-Shevardnadze bloc to stand in the 1992 elections was the Peace Bloc. Shevardnadze's act of brinkmanship in the autumn of 1993 gave him much greater freedom to manoeuvre as regards his appointment of personnel. By mid-1995, Shevardnadze was by far the most powerful player on the Georgian political arena. The early stage of the Georgian transition was marked by an explosion of social forces onto the political arena. These social forces were neither political parties in the classic sense nor were they 'civil society'.
