Thousands of Russians filed past the open casket of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, on Saturday, with many saying they wanted to honor his memory as “a peacemaker” who dismantled totalitarianism and gave them the your freedom
Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union between 1985 and 1991, died on Tuesday at the age of 91. His body lay in state in the great Hall of Columns in central Moscow, in the tradition of previous Soviet leaders, including Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin.
The man affectionately known as “Gorby” in the West and who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his role in ending the Cold War was buried in Moscow’s famous Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife Raisa , who died in 1999.
LOOK | Gorbachev leaves behind a complex legacy:
Gorbachev 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 a leader who ended the Cold War, but his legacy is quite different in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper and himself a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, headed a mourning column with a portrait of his friend.
A priest read a brief prayer before a military band played the Russian national anthem, which has the same tune as the Soviet anthem, as Gorbachev’s coffin was lowered into the ground. An honor guard fired three shots into the air.
Earlier, flanked by two elite members of the Kremlin Regiment with rifles and with the room’s 54 chandeliers emitting only a dim light, the former president’s body lay in an open coffin with his face and part upper body visible.
Her daughter Irina and her two daughters sat nearby.
Honor guards stand by a man holding a photograph of the late Gorbachev as the coffin of the last leader of the Soviet Union is taken out Saturday after a memorial service in the Hall of Columns at the House of Moscow trade unions. (Alexander Nemanov/AFP/Getty Images)
Russians of all ages filed through the lobby and placed flowers on a plinth at the foot of the casket and stole a brief, final look as somber music played and a giant black-and-white portrait of Gorbachev looked down from the wall .
Best known in the West for helping to end the Cold War, reducing his country’s nuclear stockpile and inadvertently presiding over the demise of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev’s legacy still divides opinion inside and outside Russia.
“He wanted to give us democracy”
But those queuing to say goodbye remembered with gratitude the late politician, who died in Moscow after an unspecified illness.
“He was a peacemaker. He was one of God’s children,” said Tatiana, 80, who said she had come despite ill health.
A woman with flowers looks on as she lines up to pay her respects near Gorbachev’s casket during the farewell ceremony on Saturday. (Associated Press)
“He wanted to give us democracy and freedom and it turned out we weren’t quite ready yet,” said Alexander Lebedev, a tycoon and close friend.
“This is very unfortunate, but we will remain a European country. This part of history will end one day.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin paid tribute to Gorbachev on Thursday but stayed away from Saturday’s memorial event with the Kremlin citing his busy schedule.
There is no state funeral
Gorbachev was also not given a state funeral unlike his nemesis Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first post-Soviet president and the man Putin named as his successor, who died in 2007.
Some saw Putin’s no-show as a repudiation of a former KGB officer who has rolled back many of Gorbachev’s reforms and said he views the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 as the world’s greatest geopolitical catastrophe. 20th century that he would reverse if given a chance.
People walk past Gorbachev’s coffin in the Hall of Columns. Gorbachev was later buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife, Raisa. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/The Associated Press)
“I think it’s kind of a statement,” Vladimir Pozner, a veteran journalist, told Reuters.
“And I don’t think Mr. Putin is a particular fan of Mr. Gorbachev. I think they saw the world very differently.”
Gorbachev was, like Putin, crushed by the demise of the Soviet Union, but many Russians have blamed him for starting a reform process that got out of hand and encouraged the 15 republics of the USSR to break up.
This marked a period of new freedoms in Russia, but also of economic suffering and a sometimes bloody redistribution of state property that left many Russians angry and humiliated.
Russian Security Council Vice President Dmitry Medvedev pays his respects to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, during a memorial service in the Hall of Columns at the House of Trade Unions in Moscow on Saturday. (Sputnik/Ekaterina Shtukina/Reuters)
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev paid his respects to Gorbachev on Saturday, as did some, but not all, other pro-Kremlin politicians.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has flown in to pay his respects. But with Russia sanctioned by the West for what Putin calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, other European and Western leaders were absent.
Old and young have respect
Among the mourners were many young Russians who weren’t even born when the Soviet Union collapsed.
“Yes, he made serious socio-economic mistakes, but all that pales in comparison to what he did for freedom of the press and for international relations. Things like the fall of the Berlin Wall,” said Oleg, 22, a old antecedent student
Andrey Zubov, a historian who knew Gorbachev, said the youth attendance was a silent protest against the current political system.
But he said he was disappointed by the turnout given Gorbachev’s role in Russian history, suggesting it showed how few Russians valued freedom over tyranny.
“When Stalin was here in state [in 1953]hundreds of thousands came and some people died in the crush,” Zubov said.
“But when Gorbachev died, thousands of people came to honor a person who gave us our freedom. It’s not much.”