The death of the last leader of the Soviet Union has provoked very mixed reactions at home. Little is said about it in public.
In the office of Gorbachev’s foundation in Moscow, there is much to remind you of the historical significance of the last Soviet head of state, but today’s official Russia wants little to know about it.
There was little in Russia on Wednesday to indicate that in Mikhail Gorbachev, the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Soviet President, a politician of international stature and historic importance has left the world forever. State television was broadcasting no special program, no funeral flags were being raised, and by the time the Kremlin published Vladimir Putin’s telegram of condolences to the bereaved on the website, it was almost noon local time.
Putin praises Gorbachev in general terms
In a certain sense, official Russia made Gorbachev feel what the Russian Minister for the Arctic and the Far East, Alexei Chekunkov, had expressed in rather contemptuous words: Gorbachev, said the insignificant official, was basically a stranger among his own kind and among strangers one of these. “Gorbachev is dead. Time to collect what has been thrown apart again,” wrote the editor-in-chief of the propaganda channel RT, Margarita Simonyan, no less irreverently.
The Kremlin pulled out of the delicate affair with a general description of Gorbachev’s role. Putin had always distanced himself from the last Soviet leader, whom he held responsible for the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” as he once described the collapse of the Soviet Union, referring to the loss of homeland for millions of Soviet citizens.
«Gorbachev was a politician and statesman who had a huge influence on the course of world history. He led our country through a period of difficult, dramatic changes and extensive foreign policy, economic and social challenges. He understood that reforms are imperative and sought to propose his solutions to the problems that had arisen,” reads the short letter, which is intended to show appreciation but contains no judgment of its own.
He was never a people’s tribune like Yeltsin
Russia has always had a hard time with Gorbachev. His origins in the southern Russian peasant milieu earned him scorn and ridicule for linguistic reasons, although he had an impressive career and excellent education. At the height of perestroika and glasnost, “new thinking” and “acceleration”, hearts flew to him nonetheless: because he was so different from his aged predecessors and most other officials.
But he never wanted to be a people’s tribune, like Boris Yeltsin, who became his worst opponent and who, after the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, virtually inherited him in the Kremlin as President of the independent Russian Federation. Gorbachev was only a modest man insofar as he lived a withdrawn life and in between was almost forgotten. He did think highly of himself and his abilities and let that be seen again and again.
In contrast to other politicians, as pointed out by the opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who was sent to a prison camp by the current regime, Gorbachev did not enrich himself from power. And instead of locking up dissenters for political reasons, he released the last Soviet political prisoners and the symbol of the dissidents, the physicist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, returned to Moscow from exile.
No mercy from today’s communists
The ambivalence of his work – here the departure into a previously unknown freedom and cosmopolitanism, there the failure of the communists who unswervingly believed in the continued existence of the Union – is reflected in the many reactions to his death. “We have all become orphans,” wrote Alexei Venediktov, the former editor-in-chief of the silent radio station Echo Moskvy and friend of Gorbachev, on Telegram. For Russians like him, who only became what they were for a long time thanks to the new freedom, Gorbachev’s death is, on a symbolic level, the end of the hopes that had begun with the reform policy.
The head of today’s Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennady Zyuganov, once a mediocre functionary, did not hold back his dislike for Gorbachev even in the face of his death. Tradition actually requires saying only good things or nothing at all about the dead. In the case of public figures, however, there is an exception, he said. He does not share the judgments of Western politicians. He considers Gorbachev to be one of those rulers who brought absolute misfortune, suffering and evil to all peoples, not just in their own country but also to their allies and friends.
Active officials tended to hold back or remain vague, such as the party leader of Just Russia – for the Truth, Sergei Mironov, who primarily expressed his regret at the loss of the wonderful Soviet Union. A striking exception was Konstantin Kozachev, the vice-chairman of the Federation Council and a long-time foreign policy officer in parliament. He unabashedly praised Gorbachev’s achievement and called his passing a tragedy for the country and for all whose lives he had been able to change for the better. Gorbachev smashed the system, which was false from the start and was directed against the people. Despite all the omissions and mistakes, he deserves respect and eternal memory.
state funeral or not?
According to his foundation, Mikhail Gorbachev is to be buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery near Moscow’s Novodevichy Convent, alongside his dearly loved wife Raissa, who died twenty years ago. However, the time is not yet clear, nor is it known whether there will be a state funeral or not. Russian media wanted to know on Wednesday that it would not be such. In view of the global political situation, those who pay the greatest respect to the deceased – representatives of Western countries – will hardly be able to be present in a representation that would actually be appropriate for the event.