- He changed history, but was wrong about ties with West – Russia
The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday at 91, will be buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery, the resting place of many prominent Russians.
Reportedly, the Moscow hospital where the late leader died said he had been suffering from a long and serious illness.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his message: “He deeply understood that reforms were necessary, he strove to offer his own solutions to urgent problems.”
Described by Putin as having had a “huge impact on the course of history,” and hailed by the UN SecretaryGeneral, António Guterres, as a “tireless advocate for peace,” Gorbachev was widely acclaimed in the West, but reviled by many at home.
Though Putin said the late leader had understood reforms were necessary, Russian president’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov however, said that Gorbachev had been wrong to believe in “eternal romance” with the West.
According to Peskov, Gorbachev had “sincerely wanted to believe that the Cold War would end, and that it would usher in a period of eternal romance between a new Soviet Union and the world, the West. This romanticism turned out to be wrong.”
He berated Western countries that have opposed the invasion of Ukraine, imposed crippling sanctions on Russia, and provided weapons to Kyiv.
Mr Gorbachev took power in 1985, before the Soviet Union collapsed by 1991.
He introduced reforms, but was unable to prevent the slow collapse of the union – and many Russians blamed him for the years of turmoil that ensued.
Putin and Gorbachev reportedly had a strained relationship and their last meeting in 2006.
Reportedly, most recently, the deceased was said to have been unhappy with Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, though he had supported the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, in his tribute, said he admired Gorbachev’s courage and integrity, adding: “In a time of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, his tireless commitment to opening up Soviet society remains an example to us all.”
In his own, US President Joe Biden called him a “rare leader,” while UN Secretary General António Guterres said: “The world has lost a towering global leader, committed multilateralist, and tireless advocate for peace.”
Henry Kissinger, who served as US Secretary of State in the administration of President Richard Nixon, told the BBC’s Newsnight programme that Gorbachev would be “remembered in history as a man who started historic transformations that were to the benefit of mankind and to the Russian people”.
Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official in occupied Ukraine, said Mr Gorbachev had “deliberately led the [Soviet] Union to its demise” and called him a traitor.
What ordinary Russians thought of him was perhaps encapsulated in a Pizza Hut advertisement – designed for the US market – that he took part in 1997.
According to BBC News, in recent years, his health had been in decline and he had been in and out of hospital. In June, international media reported that he was suffering from a kidney ailment, though his cause of death has not been announced.
Gorbachev became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, and de facto leader of the country, in 1985.
At the time, he was 54 – the youngest member of the ruling council known as the Politburo, and was seen as a breath of fresh air after several ageing leaders. His predecessor, Konstantin Chernenko, had died aged 73 after just over a year in office.
Few leaders have had such a profound effect on the global order, but Gorbachev did not come to power seeking to end the Soviet grip over eastern Europe. Rather, he hoped to revitalise its society.
The Soviet economy had been struggling for years to keep up with the US and his policy of perestroika sought to introduce some market-like reforms to the state run system.
Internationally he reached arms control deals with the US, refused to intervene when eastern European nations rose up against their Communist rulers, and ended the bloody Soviet war in Afghanistan that had raged since 1979.
Meanwhile, his policy of glasnost, or openness, allowed people to criticise the government in a way which had been previously unthinkable.
But it also unleashed nationalist sentiments in many parts of the Soviet Union which eventually undermined its stability and hastened its collapse.
In 1991, after a shambolically organised coup by communist hardliners failed, Gorbachev agreed to dissolve the Soviet Union and left office.
He is seen in the West as an architect of reform who created the conditions for the end of the Cold War in 1991 – a time of deep tensions between the Soviet Union and Western nations.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 “for the leading role he played in the radical changes in East-West relations”.
But in the new Russia that emerged after 1991, he was on the fringes of politics, focusing on educational and humanitarian projects.
Gorbachev made one ill-fated attempt to return to political life in 1996, receiving just 0.5% of the vote in presidential elections.
