Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday aged 91, was to be buried without President Vladimir Putin in attendance. However, he was granted a public send-off, with authorities allowing Russians to view his coffin in the imposing Hall of Columns, in front of the Kremlin, where previous Soviet leaders had mourned. Pallbearers lifted Gorbachev’s wooden coffin, draped in the Russian tricolor flag, and placed it in the center of the hall, where a soft recording of melancholy music from the film Schindler’s List played in the background. People line up to enter the Hall of Columns for Gorbachev’s memorial service on Saturday. (Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters) Unsurprisingly, Putin, a longtime KGB intelligence officer who called the collapse of the Soviet Union a “geopolitical catastrophe,” denied Gorbachev full state honors and said his schedule did not allow him to attend the funeral. Putin, however, paid his respects alone to Gorbachev on Thursday and the Kremlin said his guard of honor would be an “element” of a state occasion at the funeral of Gorbachev, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his role in ending the Cold War.
A divisive figure
Gorbachev became a hero to many in the West for enabling Eastern Europe to shake off more than four decades of Soviet communist control, allowing East and West Germany to reunite and forging arms control agreements with the United States. But when the 15 Soviet republics seized the same freedoms to demand independence, Gorbachev was powerless to prevent the collapse of the union in 1991, six years after he had become its leader. For this, and the economic chaos unleashed by the “perestroika” liberalization program, many Russians could not forgive him. A woman holding flowers looks on as she queues to pay her respects near Gorbachev’s casket during the farewell ceremony on Saturday. (The Associated Press) The many Western heads of state and government who would normally attend will be absent on Saturday, keeping clear of the rift in relations between Moscow and the West opened by Putin’s move to send troops to Ukraine in February. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a conservative nationalist and one of the few European leaders on good terms with Putin, will attend the funeral, spokesman Zoltan Kovacs tweeted. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the RIA news agency that Putin does not plan to meet with Orban during his visit to Moscow. Several Russian officials and cultural figures, including senior lawmaker Konstantin Kosachyov and singer Alla Pugachyova, also paid their respects to Gorbachev’s family, who were seated to the left of his open coffin. People walk past Gorbachev’s coffin in the Hall of Columns. Gorbachev was to be buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife, Raisa. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/The Associated Press)
Putin withdrew the reforms
Gorbachev’s funeral contrasts sharply with a national day of mourning and a state funeral in Moscow’s main cathedral given in 2007 to former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who helped oust Gorbachev as the Soviet Union collapsed and who later chose Putin. as his own successor. After the ceremony, however, Gorbachev will be buried like Yeltsin at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery, next to his beloved wife Raisa, who died 23 years ago. WATCHES | Gorbachev leaves behind a complex legacy:
Gorbachev was hailed in the West, but he may have a different legacy in Putin’s Russia
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday aged 91, is remembered in the West as the leader who ended the Cold War, but his legacy is very different in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Upon entering the Kremlin in 2000, Putin wasted little time in overturning the political pluralism that had developed from Gorbachev’s policy of “glasnost,” or openness, and slowly began to rebuild Moscow’s influence in many of the its lost democracies. Gorbachev’s longtime interpreter and aide said this week that Russia’s actions in Ukraine had left the former leader “shocked and bewildered” in the final months of his life. “It’s not only the operation that started on February 24, but the whole development of relations between Russia and Ukraine in recent years was really a big blow for him. It really crushed him, emotionally and psychologically,” said Pavel Palazhchenko. he told Reuters in an interview.
