Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev, a life hand-in-hand

Mikhail Gorbachev made no secret of his warm and supportive relationship with his wife Raisa.

Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev with wife Raisa during a visit to Stuttgart in 1989. Picture: AFP

Uniquely among Soviet leaders, Mikhail Gorbachev made no secret of his warm and supportive relationship with his wife Raisa, an elegant woman who often appeared in public with him and whose premature death from cancer was a devastating blow.

Her confident air and sense of style made Raisa a celebrity, boosting Gorbachev’s image in the West. She defied stereotypes of dowdy, retiring Soviet leaders’ wives and clearly demonstrated that her husband represented a new generation.

But to Gorbachev she was much more, a partner and confidante, who travelled with him as he brought about momentous changes to the Soviet Union.

“We walked through our whole life holding hands,” Gorbachev said in a 2012 documentary. “She had something magnificent about her … she was like a princess.”

In a 2012 memoir titled Alone with Myself, Gorbachev said Raisa at first was not interested in a relationship when they met as students at Moscow State University in the early 1950s. .

“I felt I was losing my head. I wanted to see Raisa and be wherever she was,” he wrote, but Raisa was getting over a painful break-up and told him she did not want to date him.

“I told her that I could not fulfil her request, that for me it would just be a catastrophe. That was my confession of love,” he said.

Gorbachevhotly denied in his memoirs that Raisa influenced his political decisions. “Those constant stories that she took political decisions or put pressure on me are nonsense. She didn’t even know how the Politburo worked.”

Raisa’s varied wardrobe of fitted suits and fur coats were also controversial in a country where such stylish clothes were inaccessible to most women.

She revealed later though that she used to quietly sell her clothes after a few wearings at a second-hand store because Gorbachev’s salary as general secretary did not stretch to many outfits.

Health problems began to appear during the 1991 failed coup against Gorbachev, when the couple were held for three days in isolation. Raisa suffered a mini-stroke and was unable to speak for several days. Television images of her return to Moscow showed a shocked and diminished figure.

In 1999, after her husband had been replaced by a new generation of Russian politicians, Raisa was diagnosed with leukaemia. She was treated for several months in a German clinic but died that year, aged 67.

Gorbachev was haunted by the memories of her final days.

“I return again and again to the last days in Raisa’s life and the tortures that she had to go through,” he wrote in his memoirs. “What more could I have done, or not done, in my life to avoid this terrible fate?”

After she died, he said, “I had never felt so lonely in my life … I hope that we will meet again.”

The couple had one daughter, Irina, who worked as vice-president of the Gorbachev Foundation that raises funds to help children with leukaemia and other forms of cancer.

AFP