Sunday, September 04, 2022

Russia bids farewell to Gorbachev in low-key funeral snubbed by Putin

Issued on: 03/09/2022

05:56 Honour guards stand by the coffin of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, during a memorial service at the Column Hall of the House of Unions in Moscow on September 3, 2022. 
 Alexander Nemenov/Pool, Reuters

Text by: NEWS WIRES

Muscovites lined up near the Kremlin on Saturday to pay their respects to Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader who was widely admired in the West for his reforms and who lived long enough to see Russia's leadership roll back much of that change.

Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday aged 91, was set to be buried without state honours or President Vladimir Putin in attendance.

He was however granted a public send-off, with authorities allowing Russians to view his coffin in the imposing Hall of Columns, within sight of the Kremlin, where previous Soviet leaders have been mourned.

Pallbearers hoisted Gorbachev's wooden coffin, covered in a tricolour Russian flag, and placed it in the centre of the hall, where a soft recording of melancholic music from the film "Schindler's List" played in the background.

It was little surprise that Putin, a long-time KGB intelligence officer who has called the Soviet Union's collapse a "geopolitical catastrophe", denied Gorbachev full state honours and said his schedule did not allow him to attend the funeral.

Putin, however, paid his respects to Gorbachev alone on Thursday and the Kremlin said its guard of honour would provide an "element" of a state occasion at the funeral for Gorbachev, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his role in ending the Cold War.

01:46

Gorbachev became a hero to many in the West for allowing eastern Europe to shake off more than four decades of Soviet communist control, letting East and West Germany reunite, and forging arms control treaties with the United States.

But when the 15 Soviet republics seized on the same freedoms to demand their independence, Gorbachev was powerless to prevent the collapse of the Union in 1991, six years after he had become its leader.

For that, and the economic chaos that his "perestroika" liberalisation programme unleashed, many Russians could not forgive him.

Hungary's Orban to attend


The many Western heads of state and government who normally would have attended will be absent on Saturday, kept away by the chasm in relations between Moscow and the West opened up by Putin's move to send troops into Ukraine in February.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a conservative nationalist and one of the few European leaders to have good relations with Putin, will attend the funeral, spokesman Zoltan Kovacs wrote on Twitter.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told RIA news agency that Putin had no plans 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 left of his open coffin.

Gorbachev's funeral strikes a sharp contrast with the national day of mourning and state funeral in Moscow's principal cathedral that was granted in 2007 to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who was instrumental in sidelining Gorbachev as the Soviet Union fell apart and who later hand-picked Putin as his own successor.

After the ceremony Gorbachev will, however, be buried like Yeltsin in Moscow's Novodevichy cemetery, alongside his adored wife Raisa, who died 23 years ago.

On entering the Kremlin in 2000, Putin wasted little time in rolling back the political plurality that had developed from Gorbachev's policy of "glasnost", or openness, and slowly began rebuilding Moscow's influence over many of its lost republics.

Gorbachev's long-time 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 just the operation that started on Feb. 24, but the entire evolution of relations between Russia and Ukraine over the past years that was really, really a big blow to him. It really crushed him, emotionally and psychologically," Pavel Palazhchenko told Reuters in an interview.

(REUTERS)

Mikhail Gorbachev funeral draws thousands in Moscow

Scores of mourners streamed into central Moscow on Saturday to bid farewell to Mikhail Gorbachev. Though admired in the West, the late Soviet leader is far less popular in his home country.

A long line of people began forming in central Moscow on Saturday morning, past the city's famous Bolshoi theater and leading into the House of the Unions' Hall of Columns, where mourners paid their respects to the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. Ceremonial guards watched over Gorbachev's open casket as they filed past.

Though no state funeral, the ceremony certainly felt like one. And indeed, previous leaders received similarly opulent funerals in the Hall of Columns, near the Kremlin, since the end of the Soviet Union.  

No state burial

Many of those who come to pay their respects hold Gorbachev in high esteem. Viktoria, a 49-year-old Muscovite, says his tenure represented the best six years of her life. "We came to expect freedom, and the best possible outcome; unfortunately, we could not make use of all this, as they took away all those freedoms." An elderly man nearby agreed, telling DW: "Sadly, we were unable to preserve his legacy. Everything went wrong. This pains everyone who reveres Mikhail Gorbachev."

Scores of mourners wait to pay their respects to Gorbachev

Not everyone in Russia, however, feels such admiration for the late leader. It was in Gorbachev's time in office, after all, that the Soviet Union collapsed. This tension became clear when one mourner told DW that one should not speak ill of the dead, and that "not everything was bad during Gorbachev's rule."

Many Russians across the nation feel conflicted about Gorbachev. They appreciate that he granted them freedoms they could previously only dream of, opened up the Soviet Union and changed many people's lives for the better. And yet, many believe this came at too great a cost. Indeed, the vast majority of mourners DW spoke to said Gorbachev had allowed their "good old" Soviet Union fall apart.

While many Russians feel nostalgic about the Soviet Union and blame Gorbachev for its demise, people in the former Soviet satellite states accuse him of having refused them independence for too long.  

Many remember how the Soviet leader suppressed pro-independence movements in Georgia, Latvia, and above all Lithuania in the early 1990s. It was there, on January 13, 1991, that Soviet forces killed 13 people and injured hundreds in what became known as Lithuania's Bloody Sunday. Until recently, Lithuanian prosecutors were still trying to bring Gorbachev to justice, though the trial has now been shelved.

Gorbachev likened to prison warden

Lithuania's Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis drew attention to this grim chapter when he tweeted: "Lithuanians will not glorify Gorbachev. We will never forget the simple fact that his army murdered civilians to prolong his regime's occupation of our country. His soldiers fired on our unarmed protestors and crushed them under his tanks. That is how we will remember him."

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda compared the late Soviet leader to a prison warden who wanted to implemented minor reforms instead of overseeing a major overhaul.

Gorbachev is fondly remembered in Germany

He said these small reforms were not enough, as "prisoners wanted to break free. They did that but against the will of Mikhail Gorbachev."

In Latvia, Gorbachev's death sparked similarly critical reactions. Several people were killed in January 1991 in the capital Riga, when Soviet police prevented protesters from storming the government building.

On Twitter, Latvian President Egils Levits said his country had gained independence from the Soviet Union against Gorbachev's will. This was echoed by Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics, who tweeted that the "collapse of the USSR was the best moment of the 20th century. The end of the Cold War was great but the killing of people in Tbilisi, Vilnius, Riga is also part of his [Gorbachev's] legacy. It is up to the History to judge him."

Gorbachev evidently continues to divide opinions, with some seeing him as a visionary, others as the destroyer of the Soviet Union - and still others as a tragic hero.

This article was translated from German.

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