Mikhail Gorbachev, the beloved Soviet leader who lived long enough to see all the changes he championed in his nation undone, will be buried without state honours or the presence of the current Kremlin incumbent on Saturday.
Gorbachev became a Western hero for helping eastern Europe to shake off more than four decades of Soviet communist oppression, allowing East and West Germany to reunite, and negotiating arms control treaties with the US.
However, when the 15 Soviet republics used the same freedoms to demand independence, Gorbachev was helpless to prevent the Union’s demise in 1991, six years after becoming its leader.
Many Russians could not forgive him for this, as well as the economic upheaval caused by his ‘perestroika’ liberalisation programme.
Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday at the age of 91, was given a public send-off, with Muscovites permitted to visit his casket in the magnificent Hall of Columns, just outside the Kremlin, where past Soviet leaders were mourned.
But it was unsurprising that Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB intelligence officer who labelled the Soviet Union’s demise a ‘geopolitical calamity,’ denied Gorbachev full state honours and stated he was too busy to attend the funeral.
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