TBILISI, Georgia — Eduard Shevardnadze, a groundbreaking Soviet foreign minister and later the president of an independent Georgia, died today at the age of 86.

Shevardnadze swept heroically across the international stage in the final years of the Soviet empire, helping topple the Berlin Wall and end the Cold War, but as the leader of post-Soviet Georgia his career in the public eye ended when he was chased out of his parliament and forced into retirement.

As Soviet foreign minister, the white-haired man with a gravelly voice was the diplomatic face of Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalizing policies of glasnost and perestroika.

Following the wooden Andrei Gromyko, Shevardnadze impressed Western leaders with his charisma, his quick wit and his commitment to Gorbachev’s reform course.