Thousands of Muscovites lined up near the Kremlin on Saturday to pay tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev, a former Soviet leader who died on Tuesday at the age of 91. Many said they wanted to honor his memory as “a peacemaker” who dismantled totalitarianism and gave them their freedom.
Gorbachev is to be buried without state honors and without the presence of President Vladimir Putin, who claimed a scheduling conflict for missing the ceremony.
However, Gorbachev received a public farewell, with the authorities allowing the Russians to view his coffin in the imposing Hall of Columns, within sight of the Kremlin, where former Soviet leaders had been veiled.
The wooden coffin, covered with a Russian flag, was placed in the center of the hall, where melancholy music from the movie “Schindler’s List” played in the background. Russians of all ages left flowers on a pedestal at the foot of the coffin, under a giant black-and-white portrait of Gorbachev on the wall.
Gorbachev was much admired in the West for his political and economic reforms in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, which paved the way for the end of communism in Eastern Europe and also for the reunification of Germany. The leader also made important disarmament agreements with the United States.
It was no surprise, therefore, that Putin – for whom the collapse of the Soviet Union was a “geopolitical catastrophe” – denied an official funeral.
The many Western heads of state and government who would normally attend will be absent, pushed aside by the gulf in relations between Moscow and the West opened up by the invasion of Ukraine.
One exception is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a conservative nationalist and one of the few European leaders on good terms with Putin — he will be at the funeral, according to his spokesman, Zoltan Kovacs.
Russian officials and cultural figures, including lawmaker Konstantin Kosachyov and singer Alla Pugachyova, also paid tribute to Gorbachev’s family, who were seated to the left of his coffin, which was held open, in keeping with the country’s tradition.
Gorbachev’s funeral is in stark contrast to the national day of mourning and the state funeral at Moscow’s main cathedral, given in 2007 to former Russian president Boris Yetsin.
After the ceremony, Gorbachchev, however, will be buried like Yeltsin at Moscow’s Novo Devichy cemetery, alongside his beloved wife Raisa, who died 23 years ago.
Gorbachev’s longtime interpreter and aide said this week that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine left the former leader “shocked and perplexed” in the final months of his life.
“It’s not just the operation that started on February 24, but the whole evolution of Russian-Ukrainian relations in recent years was really a big blow for him. It really crushed him emotionally and psychologically,” said Pavel Palazhchenko, to the Reuters agency.
