Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR, has died aged 91
Vladimir Putin delivered a final indignity to Mikhail Gorbachev, after paying his respects to the former Soviet leader.
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Vladimir Putin will not attend the funeral of Mikhail Gorbachev in a stunning snub to the last leader of the Soviet Union.
After being denied a state funeral, a spokesman for the Russian president said he was too busy to attend the event.
“The farewell ceremony and funeral will take place on September 3 but unfortunately the president’s work schedule will not allow him (to attend),” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Mr Peskov added that Mr Putin had paid his last respects to Mr Gorbachev at the hospital where he died on Tuesday, aged 91.
Mr Putin was shown on Russian state TV placing a bouquet of red roses near Mr Gorbachev’s open casket in a big empty hall before pausing for a moment of silence.
Mr Putin bowed his head, briefly laid his hand on the casket then made the sign of the cross.
Mr Gorbachev’s final resting place will be at the prestigious Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow next to his wife Raisa, who died in 1999.
While a hero to the West for allowing eastern Europe to escape Soviet communist control, Mr Gorbachev is held in lower esteem in Russia for the chaos unleashed by his “perestroika”.
Mr Putin has called the Soviet collapse the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, and has spent his 20-year rule reversing that legacy; leading to invasions of Georgia and Ukraine.
Mr Gorbachev will be buried on Saturday local time after a public ceremony in Moscow’s Hall of Columns. the same venue as the funeral of Joseph Stalin in 1953.
Mr Peskov said that there will be “elements of a state funeral” for Mr Gorbachev, including a guard of honour, and that the ceremony will be organised with the help of the state.
Mr Gorbachev changed the course of history by triggering the demise of the Soviet Union and was one of the great figures of the 20th century.
His reforms as Soviet leader transformed his country and allowed Eastern Europe to free itself from Soviet rule.
While the changes he set in motion saw him lionised in the West, they earned him the scorn of many Russians after the country was plunged into economic chaos and saw its international influence decline.
By cracking down on independent media and political opposition, critics say, Mr Putin has worked to undo Mr Gorbachev’s efforts to bring “glasnost”, or openness, to the Soviet system.
And with the launch earlier this year of a military campaign in Ukraine, he has sought to reassert Russian influence in one of the countries that won its independence when the Soviet Union fell apart.
Mr Gorbachev’s death triggered an outpouring of tributes from the West but reaction was muted in Russia, where many blamed him for the loss of the country’s status as a global superpower.
In a letter of condolences published by the Kremlin, Mr Putin said Mr Gorbachev “was a politician and statesman who had a huge impact on the course of world history”.
“He led our country during a period of complex, dramatic changes, large-scale foreign policy, economic and social challenges,” Mr Putin added.
PUTIN’S SURPRISING MESSAGE TO GORBACHEV’S FAMILY
Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed his “deep condolences” to the family of former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev one day after tributes poured in from other world leaders.
Mr Putin sent the message to Mr Gorbachev’s family via Telegram on Wednesday, acknowledging his status as “a politician and statesman who had a huge impact on the course of world history.”
“He led our country during a period of complex, dramatic changes, large-scale foreign policy, and economic and social challenges,” he said of Mr Gorbachev, who is widely credited with ending the Cold War and, subsequently, the Soviet Union.
“He realised that reforms were necessary and tried to offer his solutions to the acute problems.”
Mr Gorbachev had been undergoing treatment at the Central clinical hospital in Moscow and died aged 91 after a long illness on Tuesday.
“Mikhail Gorbachev passed away tonight after a serious and protracted disease,” Interfax news agency cited Russia’s Central Clinical Hospital as saying in a statement.
Mr Gorbachev was critical of some of Mr Putin’s policies in his later years and lamented the “militarisation of world politics.”
In 2017, Mr Gorbachev, who had opened up Soviet society after decades of repression, wrote explicitly of “costs” associated with Mr Putin’s “authoritarian” actions for Time.
Mr Putin, meanwhile, has called the implosion of the Soviet Union, for which many in Russia hold Mr Gorbachev responsible, “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
The Russian tyrant, who was serving in the KGB in East Germany during Mr Gorbachev’s time as leader, made it clear over the years that he saw the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Eastern bloc in Europe as humiliating to Russia.
Mr Gorbachev will be buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife Raisa, who died in 1999, said Tass news agency.
Officials were yet to announce whether Mr Gorbachev would have a state funeral or if Mr Putin would be in attendance.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Mr Gorbachev “changed the world for the better” and was “a man of warmth, hope, resolve and enormous courage”.
“He freed the nations of Eastern Europe from the prison of Soviet rule, and helped bring an end to the Cold War,” Mr Albanese posted.
“With his death we have lost one of the true giants of the 20th century.”
US President Joe Biden said Mr Gorbachev was “a man of remarkable vision” who created “a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people”.
Statement from US President @JoeBiden following the death of Mikheil Gorbachev pic.twitter.com/g8iFxWilsn
— Mark Stone (@Stone_SkyNews) August 31, 2022
French President Emmanuel Macron described Mr Gorbachev as “a man of peace whose choices opened a path to freedom for Russians”.
“His commitment to peace in Europe changed our common history,” he said.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was “saddened” to hear that Mr Gorbachev has died, in a “time of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine”.
“I always admired the courage and integrity he showed in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion,” he said.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, paid tribute on Twitter.
“Mikhail Gorbachev was a trusted and respected leader,” she wrote. “He played a crucial role to end the Cold War and bring down the Iron Curtain. It opened the way for a free Europe. This legacy is one we will not forget.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Hollywood actor and former governor of California, tweeted a lengthy tribute to Mr Gorbachev’s “fantastic life”, describing him as a “hero.”
There’s an old saying, “Never meet your heroes.†I think that’s some of the worst advice I’ve ever heard. Mikhail Gorbachev was one of my heroes, and it was an honor and a joy to meet him. I was unbelievably lucky to call him a friend. All of us can learn from his fantastic life. pic.twitter.com/All5suSke1
— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) August 30, 2022
“He will be remembered for all time as a hero who dismantled the communist system despite what it meant for his own power,” Schwarzenegger wrote.
“He belongs to history now, and I know he’s overjoyed to be reunited with his dear Raisa, once again living one of the greatest love stories of all time.”
Antonio Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, described Mr Gorbachev as a “towering leader” and “a one-of-a-kind statesman”.
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said Mr Gorbachev “performed great services” but was “not able to implement all of his visions”.
“The people of eastern Europe and the German people, and in the end the Russian people, owe him a great debt of gratitude for the inspiration, for the courage in coming forward with these ideas of freedom,” Dr Kissinger told the BBC.
Remembered as one of the men who brought the Cold War to an end, Mr Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union in 1985 and instituted sweeping political and economic reforms.
The two policies for which he is most well-known – “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (rebuilding) – jump-started a period of restructuring that would ultimately redraw the map of eastern Europe. He is credited with allowing the Berlin Wall to fall and limiting the arms race with the United States.
In 1991, his reforms gave the Moscow-controlled republics enough strength to declare independence, and for Russia together with Belarus and Ukraine to sign an agreement on the Soviet Union’s dissolution.
At home, Mr Gorbachev will likely be remembered as a politician who was “outsmarted by the west,” ANU Russian studies expert Dr Filip Slaveski said.
“Many of the things [Gorbachev] fought for had gradually been wound down under Vladimir Putin,” he said.
Mr Gorbachev’s rejection of the “Brezhnev doctrine” – the official Soviet policy that military force could and should be used to maintain power – stands in stark contrast to Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Mikhail Gorbachev’s legendary @pizzahut commercial after the fall of the Soviet Union is still one of the most epic.
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) August 30, 2022
But 32 years later, Pizza Hut closed all of its stores after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/qFFWh6nQMA
While the Russian President would offer “a degree of formal respect” upon Mr Gorbachev’s death, Dr Slaveski said there remained a “widespread negativity” towards a leader many still blamed for the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and the economic hardships of the 1990s.
But that blame was not entirely fair, he added.
“There was a sense Gorbachev trusted the west too much. But no one saw the collapse of the Soviet Union coming; it happened so unexpectedly,” Dr Slaveski said.
As tributes flowed, Mr Gorbachev’s iconic Pizza Hut advertisement resurfaced on social media.
In 1997, while economic transition was underway in Russia following the fall of the Soviet Union, Mr Gorbachev filmed the quirky commercial, which showed diners arguing over his legacy while he had a meal with his family.
Looking back, it ushered in a period of comparative peace that was to last until September 11, 2001.
Former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans was to write that the thaw of east/west relations under Mr Gorbachev engendered a “universal sense of optimism” and the sense of “a new world order … opening up”.
Mr Gorbachev’s outlook was shaped by many factors; his position within the party allowed him to travel to Western Europe and Canada in the early 1980s, and his roots were primarily agricultural rather than military.
Despite his broad global recognition, in recent years Mr Gorbachev played only a marginal role in Russian politics.
He had at times criticised Mr Putin and called for him to give up power, and on other occasions defended him, telling reporters that he was “absolutely convinced that Putin protects Russia’s interests better than anyone else”.
While Mr Gorbachev never visited Australia during his time as leader, he toured a couple of times after politics, once in 1999 and again in 2006.
During that visit he ruffled feathers by encouraging the then Howard government to sign the Kyoto Protocol.
– with AFP
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