Rest in the West : Retreat: Wife of Shevardnadze has respite in L.A. from winter of strife in her homeland. She calls conflict in Georgia ‘the most horrible stress’ in her life.

Her husband stripped of his powerful Kremlin post and her Georgia homeland overrun by rebels, Nanuli Shevardnadze was exhausted and at wits’ end.

Her arthritic legs ached in the bitter Moscow cold. Her heart felt heavy and sick. She had to get away.

After a brief stop in New York, the wife of the former Soviet foreign minister journeyed to Los Angeles, where she is spending three weeks visiting friends, soaking up sunshine and seeing doctors.

“I came to rest up and get warm after all of the cataclysmic events that have taken place,” the 62-year-old former journalist said through an interpreter during an interview at USC University Hospital. “I really have relaxed a great deal.”

Nanuli Shevardnadze has celebrated Christmas with a family in Long Beach, met with journalism students at USC (where her husband, Eduard, will deliver the commencement address in May) and spent two nights at the hospital for an examination and tests.

Mostly, however, the onetime secondary school teacher has viewed Los Angeles from a quiet retreat in the Santa Monica Mountains--the home of friend Rusiko Kiknadze, a Georgian actress, and her husband, Matvey Shatz, a Hollywood filmmaker. In the interest of rest and relaxation, she has even forgone the region’s famous tourist haunts, including Disneyland and Rodeo Drive.

“Los Angeles is a wonderful city. The climate is especially attractive,” she said. “I am a Southerner, after all, so I sort of feel like I am at home here. But most of all it is the people that I find attractive. . . . They wear their hearts on their sleeves.”

Back home, in her absence, the Soviet Union has collapsed and the recently elected president of independent Georgia has been chased into the Caucasus Mountains by armed rebels. Eduard A. Shevardnadze, a former secretary-general of the Georgian Communist Party, has been mentioned as a possible successor to the ousted leader, perhaps the only man capable of calming both sides in the deeply divided former Soviet republic.

Shevardnadze would not answer questions about her husband’s role in a future Georgian government. But she spoke compassionately about her native republic, blaming her chest pains and other health concerns on the violence and turmoil there.

“All of my roots are there in Georgia, and our future is there as well,” she said, her forehead creased with worry and her eyes filled with fear. “The worst thing possible has happened there: The people split themselves in two. . . . I have cried quite a bit, and suffered. It is probably the most horrible stress in my life.”

Dr. Glenn Ehresmann, one of several doctors who has examined Shevardnadze in Los Angeles, said she suffers from osteoarthritis but shows no signs of heart problems. Dr. Vladimir Zelman, a professor at the USC School of Medicine and a friend of Shevardnadze, invited her to USC University Hospital, where the examination and tests were provided free of charge.

“I was very pleased to discover that my heart is OK,” Shevardnadze said. “I think the problem of my heart must have been more of a nervous kind of reaction.”

Since arriving in Los Angeles, Shevardnadze has kept in touch with her husband of 40 years, but the fast-paced events in what she calls, emphatically, the “ former Soviet Union” have not tempted her to cut short her stay. Happenings were just as feverish when she left Moscow last month, she said, and at some point it becomes necessary to make a break.

“To be honest, I think the events are shown better here than they actually are over there,” she said. “I saw my husband twice on TV. He was looking right at me.”

For many years an editor and feature writer for a Georgian women’s magazine, Shevardnadze has always preferred artists and actors to politicians and statesmen. She only reluctantly abandoned her journalism career in 1985 when her husband was recruited by Mikhail S. Gorbachev as foreign minister.

Suddenly expected to play the role of a diplomat’s wife, the proud, onetime Georgian Journalist of the Year found herself immersed in issues of protocol, entertaining wives of visiting dignitaries and traveling to the far corners of the world at her husband’s side.

“When we came to Moscow, strange as it may seem, I wasn’t terribly thrilled about all that,” she confessed. “But you have to do what is best. Basically, I think my husband needed the government to help the people more than he needed me.”

When her husband resigned as foreign minister in 1990, Nanuli Shevardnadze considered taking a teaching job in journalism at Moscow State University. Her hopes of returning to the profession were cut short, however, when her husband rejoined the Gorbachev government after last year’s unsuccessful coup.

With change in the former Soviet Union now as commonplace as bread lines, Shevardnadze said it is difficult to know what the future will hold. Her husband has set up his own foreign policy foundation in the Russian capital, but he could be called back to government service in Georgia or elsewhere.

She dreams about spending time with her two children and four grandchildren, but she also still contemplates reviving her journalism career. If new press freedoms in her homeland follow the American example, however, Shevardnadze may have some difficulty adjusting.

At the end of an hourlong interview with The Times, she asked matter-of-factly to review any article that was written to “make corrections” before it went to press. A reporter denied the request, explaining that it amounted to censorship and violated freedoms guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.

“Ahh,” Shevardnadze interjected knowingly, speaking before the reporter’s explanation had even been translated into Russian. “The Constititution!”