Leaving a ‘lasting impression’ on history: Mikhail Gorbachev to be laid to rest!

Mikhail Gorbachev, the final Soviet leader to end the Cold War peacefully, will be buried in Moscow four days after his death at the age of 91. According to the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the funeral due to work obligations. However, many people see this as a slight against the man who oversaw the dissolution of the Soviet Union. When Gorbachev took power in 1985, he instituted radical reforms and opened the USSR to the outside world.

He was, however, powerless to prevent the union’s dissolution in 1991, and many Russians blame him for the years of unrest that followed. Outside of Russia, he was well-liked, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres declared that he had ‘changed the course of history’. According to the Gorbachev Foundation, the funeral service will begin at 10:00 a.m. local time (07:00 GMT), with the public paying their respects to Gorbachev.

He will lie in state in the ancient Columned Hall of the House of Unions, as did many of his Soviet forefathers, including Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Leonid Brezhnev. Gorbachev will be laid to rest later Saturday in Novodevichy, Moscow’s largest cemetery and the final resting place of many notable Russians. His wife Raisa, who died of leukaemia in 1999, will be buried beside him. ‘He deeply understood the importance of reforms, and he strove to offer his own solutions to pressing problems,’ the Russian president said.

He also placed flowers at Gorbachev’s casket on Thursday. According to the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg in Moscow, the lack of a state funeral on Saturday indicates that the current Kremlin leadership is uninterested in preserving Gorbachev’s legacy. It was well known that Gorbachev and Putin had a strained relationship. According to reports, their last meeting was in 2006, and the Russian president once called the fall of the USSR the ‘biggest geopolitical calamity of the century’.

Gorbachev reportedly disapproved of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine most recently, despite supporting the annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014. His health had deteriorated, and he had been in and out of hospitals in recent years. According to news reports from around the world, he was admitted to the hospital in June after developing kidney problems.