Moscow — Thousands of Russians on Saturday stood for several hours in snaking lines amid a heavy police presence to pay their respects to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, who died Tuesday.

Many Russians blame and revile Gorbachev for the breakup of the Soviet Union, but people of all ages, many of whom stood solemnly clutching flowers outside Moscow’s famed House of the Unions, said that they had come to thank him for something severely restricted today in Russia: freedom.