Farewell to Mikhail Gorbachev – Politics

You can see immediately who is on the way to the presidency. People who want to say goodbye to Mikhail Gorbachev carry flowers through the Moscow pedestrian zone. German, 85, has four red roses with him. “I remember that time,” he says when asked about Gorbachev. “Everyone hugged, everyone laughed. You thought there was freedom now, the borders are open, you can travel anywhere. That stupid curtain fell.”

The pensioner looks around. Maybe, he says softly, he’s wrong. “But in order for there to be peace in the world, Russia and the US have to be friends,” he says. “Or?” The thought that the 85-year-old is expressing does not currently correspond to popular opinion in Russia. Gorbachev is not a popular politician there either, but the one who lost the Soviet Union, who made Russia weaker. That’s how the Kremlin sees it, German has a different opinion. Gorbachev has tried everything, he now says, but has not succeeded in everything. Then he stands in line.

Thousands have come to central Moscow to pay their last respects to the first and only President of the Soviet Union. Apparently there are unexpectedly many, the ceremony has to be extended by one hour to a total of three hours. The police and national guard smuggle the mourners through barriers and controls into the house of the trade unions, right next to the Bolshoi Theater. “Columned Hall” is written above the entrance, from there it goes up the stairs, past meter-high mirrors draped in black, into the magnificent hall with its chandeliers, which are now dimmed. Usually concerts are held here, now classical music is playing softly in the background.

Putin didn’t come

The portrait of a younger Gorbachev hangs several meters above the mourners. They place roses and carnations in front of the open coffin, some stop for a moment. Family and friends, Gorbachev’s daughter Irina, and Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, are sitting on the chairs next to it. Grigory Yavlinsky, founder of the liberal Yabloko party, joins them later. They are faces of the opposition – many who would certainly have liked to say goodbye to Gorbachev in person have long since left Russia.

Gorbachev’s farewell is in any case marked by what is missing. The former President will not receive a state funeral, no special programs on state television, no mourning flags. Nobody, and this is unusual, gives a speech at the open coffin. The honor guard is standing next to the corpse in the columned hall, while the president’s security service is monitoring the ceremony. But the head of the Kremlin himself did not come. The Kremlin announced that Vladimir Putin was unable to attend and published a short video of Putin. In those 34 seconds, Putin approaches Gorbachev’s coffin alone, puts down roses, pauses, bows, crosses himself, and leaves.

The only official representative the Kremlin will send to the funeral service on Saturday is Dmitry Medvedev. The 56-year-old used to be president himself, but as deputy head of the Security Council he has long since become a hardliner. A few weeks ago, Medvedev declared on his Telegram channel that Ukraine could soon disappear as a state from the map. What would Gorbachev say to that? Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban lays flowers in front of the coffin, but not a single member of the current Russian government comes by.

Julia, 40, brought her little son to the funeral service. He walks past the coffin holding his mother’s hand, who is wearing a bright red dress but no flowers. When the Soviet Union collapsed, she later says on the street, she was still a child. “But I remember that desperation. I understood that something bad was happening. My mother became unemployed, we became poor.” She only came “to see the person who is to blame,” not out of sympathy, she says, and takes her son’s hand tighter. The son should understand that everything is better in Russia now.

Anyone who worships Gorbachev does so quietly

It has become clear in recent days that today’s Russia cannot remember Gorbachev as a bringer of peace, not as a reformer, not even as a great politician. What Gorbachev stood for contradicts the Kremlin’s aggressive line more than ever.

Those who worship Gorbachev in Russia today do so quietly. Like Ilja, 21, who came to the funeral service with his girlfriend. Both are against “what’s been going on lately,” saying it’s a “terrible situation.” They say no more, after all, there are camera teams around the house of the unions. Ilya came because he considers Gorbachev to be a “unique historical personality” and is glad that the former president lived for so long. “He took over a neglected country. With a lot of problems,” says the young man, adjusting his cloudy glasses. Gorbachev did what he could, just not everything, “perestroika without the collapse of the Soviet Union”.

What would Gorbachev say about today’s Russia, about the war in Ukraine? He must have known what was going on, Ilja whispers. In fact, Alexey Venediktov, head of the radio station Echo Moskwy, which is no longer allowed to broadcast in Russia, spoke about it in an interview in July: Gorbachev understood everything and was very sad about it.

For Olga from Moscow, the farewell is particularly sad, she came all in black. She was a student when Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party. Back then, she says, you could only talk openly in the kitchen and only with people you trusted. “Back then we understood what the Soviet Union was – and we didn’t like it at all. But if someone said something wrong, they either went to prison or to a psychiatric ward. Gorbachev gave us hope for a different life,” she says, only if we had the Russians did not use this opportunity. Her tears come. “Now that he’s gone, I understand that my hope has died too.”

When the coffin is carried out of the building, it is the journalist Muratov, a Nobel Peace Prize winner like Gorbachev, who leads the way with a portrait of the deceased. The coffin is taken from the columned hall directly to the Novodevichye cemetery, where Gorbachev is to be buried next to his wife Raisa. Just a few meters away from the Gorbachevs’ grave lies Boris Yeltsin, once President of the Russian Federation and his old rival. Yeltsin’s grave with the large stone tricolor cannot be overlooked.

A strangely intimate atmosphere

There is also enough space for the three black canopies under which the mourners sit during the ceremony. Hundreds have come, standing some distance between the graves around the mourners. The cemetery is open to everyone, the path to Gorbachev’s grave is lined with fir branches. Security guards step aside so visitors can see it better. It’s an oddly intimate atmosphere for a statesman’s funeral.

A band plays as the coffin is brought to the cemetery. Under the canopy it is opened one last time, friends and family say goodbye. The last few meters to the grave are accompanied by the band playing the Russian national anthem. The guard fires a gun salute as people crowd around the grave site. After the gravediggers have covered the coffin with earth, the Muscovites put their flowers on the grave – after a few minutes it is a whole mountain of flowers.

On the way back, people pass the large wreaths for Gorbachev that still stand in front of Yeltsin’s grave. Wreaths from the president, from the presidential administration, from the government, from the mayor of Moscow. None of their representatives showed up in person.