Vladimir Putin is not here, a bummer the Kremlin said was a result of his busy work schedule. But thousands of Russians have come to pay their respects, lining downtown theaters and trendy cafes, each a reminder that Mikhail Gorbachev is still a hero to some. “He did a lot, but people now in our country hate him,” Vladimir Gubarev, a retired journalist who lined up Saturday morning with some carnations, told the Observer. “People want to be happy quickly. Right now. Gorbachev’s road was the slow road to freedom, to real freedom. And he didn’t have enough time.” For many, coming to the hall was both an act of appreciation and an act of defiance to honor the memory of a leader who brought new freedoms and hastened his country’s downfall. “He was a great man, so immediately after his death, people say good things about him,” Gubarev said. “But only after he’s gone. Because while he was alive he was dangerous. He was the enemy.” A die-hard communist who saw the failures of the Soviet system, Gorbachev lost control of his reforms and watched the USSR try to save itself from collapse. The next 30 years saw a battle over his legacy, one that saw his relationship with Putin, who has charted a course to reverse many of the reforms Gorbachev began in the late 1980s. It was a famous divisive figure among Russians: Pizza Hut even filmed an ad in 1997 featuring a family fighting over its inheritance. The memorial service for Gorbachev at Pillar Hall Photo: Evgenia Novozhenina/AFP/Getty Images “He liked to say that history was a fickle lady and you never knew which way it would turn,” said Pavel Palachenko, a former interpreter who worked with Gorbachev for decades and now heads his press office. “He understood that there were quite a few people who blamed him in Russia for the breakup of the Soviet Union. he didn’t think the criticism was unfair,” Palazchenko said. “It’s the blame game, the slanderous, ignorant accusations, that he rejected. Draw a line.” While Putin was absent on Saturday, the Russian state was not. A uniformed military guard stood by a portrait of Gorbachev as mourners entered the House of Unions and national guardsmen patrolled the halls of the 18th-century mansion. A hush fell as the crowd filed into the wood and marble Pillar Hall, where light operatic music played and the lights were dimmed except for a spotlight on Gorbachev’s casket. Mourners shuffled past, some leaving flowers or bowing reverently, others stopping to take a photo. Family members and a number of dignitaries, including Nobel Prize-winning journalist Dmitri Muratov, sat nearby. Mourners walked past a group of soldiers in parade uniform, bayonets fixed to their rifles, and re-emerged into the world. The whole process took about two minutes. There was an undercurrent of tension: this was perhaps the largest gathering of liberal Russians in the capital since the anti-war protests that erupted after the invasion in late February. Many protested, although public dissent has virtually disappeared from the country. “It’s been six months since so many decent people are together in one place,” said Alexei, an amateur photographer who attended the ceremony. He asked that his last name not be used for security reasons. Those close to Gorbachev said he was in personal anguish over events in Ukraine in the final months of his life, but was prevented from taking a more public role because of his declining health. He had already done the main thing that was required in his life: perestroika Sergey Traub, lament “He felt acute pain when these things were mentioned. I can tell you that for sure,” Palazchenko said. Gorbachev had personally endorsed a statement from his foundation calling for “an early cessation of hostilities and the immediate start of peace negotiations,” Palachenko added. However, Gorbachev’s own legacy complicates matters. The former Soviet leader told an interviewer in 2016 that he supported Putin’s actions in Crimea and, with his health in decline, his own voice was conspicuously absent as the scale and brutality of the war in Ukraine became clear. Palazchenko defended his former boss. “I think the people who wrote on their Facebook pages and in the media that Gorbachev is silent… I think that’s unfair. “They didn’t understand very simple things. And we couldn’t say things about his health that have become quite clear now.” Outside, war seemed to hang over the funeral. A banner on the new stage of the Bolshoi Theater read: “We will fulfill the mission!” It carried pro-war symbols, including the patriotic orange-and-black St. George ribbon as well as the Vs and Zs that became symbols of the invasion. When asked how Gorbachev should have responded to the war, Sergei Truba, a pensioner at the ceremony, said: “He had already done the main thing required of his life.” When asked what he meant, he replied: “Perestroika.” As for the war, he added, “his voice would make no difference. He couldn’t change that.” “I used to dislike Gorbachev,” said Trouba, who said he had condemned Gorbachev and Yeltsin as the main culprits in hastening the collapse of the Soviet Union. “But once Putin arrived, everything changed for me… I realized what a great man we had before.”
