Farewell to Gorbachev: mourning and criticism of the system

In Moscow on Saturday it seemed as if Mikhail Gorbachev had brought back a small piece of the freedom that he once gave people in death for a few moments. A crowd has gathered, not at the behest of the authorities, but of their own accord, unafraid of being dispersed by the security forces. This is possible because, for once, the gathering is not illegal, but a collective queue at security checks as part of Gorbachev’s farewell ceremony. If you ask people, they willingly provide information about how they see the last Soviet leader, what he means to them. So often they have to be silent, now they can talk, under a blue, clear, sunny sky.

The deceased, it had been decided, should not receive a state funeral, the funeral containing only “elements” of it, as President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman put it. This includes laying out the body in the columned hall of the House of Trade Unions in the center of the Russian capital, next to the seat of the Duma, the lower house, and very close to the Kremlin. In the former aristocratic palace, built at the end of the 18th century in the classical style, crowds were already streaming past Stalin’s corpse; Most recently, in April, it was possible to say goodbye to the riot nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

There was also Putin, unlike Gorbachev now: the president was allegedly busy with work appointments and had his own half-minute farewell ceremony on Thursday in the Moscow hospital where Gorbachev died on Tuesday. The appointments that Putin’s spokesman named, such as an “international telephone call” and the preparation for an economic forum, seemed ordinary; obviously they came in handy. The fact that Putin held the first and last president of the Soviet Union responsible for its collapse, that he presented himself as an alternative to the allegedly weak, hesitant Gorbachev, who was even portrayed by many as a traitor, was also reflected in dry words of condolence.

Accordingly, few representatives of Putin’s political personnel attend the ceremony in the House of Trade Unions. The highest-ranking exception is Dmitry Medvedev, who allows himself to be photographed at the dead man’s coffin in the morning. Once president and prime minister, and since 2020 Putin’s deputy chairing the National Security Council, Medvedev has been attracting attention for months with particularly sharp war slogans. Shortly after his visit to the coffin, Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel that the leadership at the time of reunification had “enough sense” not to allow the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal to be distributed among its successor states; today this is “the best guarantee of preserving the Great (sic) Russia”.

It seems as if Medvedev thinks it advisable to justify the visit. In reality, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan had surrendered remaining Soviet nuclear weapons on their territories to the latter in exchange for security guarantees from the United States, Britain and Russia; but Moscow does not like to remember the Budapest Memoranda of 1994.

At least one guest reminds us of Hungary’s capital itself: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is the only head of government from an EU and NATO country to attend the farewell ceremony. Other countries, including Germany and the United States, are represented by their ambassadors.

The state news agencies Ria and Tass are silent on the number of participants. Observers estimate their number at thousands. Many in the crowd carry red roses, carnations, chrysanthemums in their hands. They wait a long time in front of bars and metal detectors to be allowed into the union building. When asked why they came, many are keen to share their opinion of the deceased, their memories of Gorbachev, and often to voice criticism of the status quo, sometimes more, sometimes less cautiously.