Exclusive: Inside the Kremlin as the Berlin Wall Fell

TBILISI, Georgia Nov. 6, 2009— -- A small piece of rainbow-colored stone, engraved with the words "Eduard, Danke" ("Eduard, Thank you!" in German) has a place of pride on a shelf in Eduard Shevardnadze's study in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

This fragment of the Berlin Wall is one of the most treasured possessions of a man whom many credit with helping bring down the Berlin Wall and eventually end the Cold War.

Shevardnadze was the last foreign minister of the Soviet Union under President Mikhail Gorbachev, and had an insider's view of the wall's collapse and the repercussions it had throughout the Soviet empire and the West.

"The fall of the Berlin Wall was an historic event, the essential step toward the reunification of Germany, essential in the program of reforms that Gorbachev and I had in mind. Without it, the Cold War would not have ended," Shevardnadze said in an interview with ABC News at his home.

On Nov. 9, 1989, the East German government issued a statement waiving "preconditions" for East Germans to travel to the West. Within hours thousands of East Germans were streaming through the gates. The barriers that had been thrown up in 1961 to split the city into heavily armed camps were being dismantled, and the wall would soon come down.

"Sheva," as he was nicknamed in the West, is now an 81-year-old Georgian with a dry wit and feeble smile. He was in Moscow in 1989, receiving updates from USSR representatives in Berlin, when they got the news about the opening.

"Gorbachev and I flew to Berlin immediately," he said, where they met with East German leaders, including the country's iron fisted dictator Erich Honecker. But their first priority was the fear of a violent reaction from the Soviet army that was stationed in East Germany. They wanted to send a clear signal of support for the new freedom, he said.