Vladimir Putin has sent official condolences to the family of Mikhail Gorbachev as the Kremlin broke its silence over the death of the last leader of the Soviet Union. But it has not said whether Gorbachev will receive a state funeral or be dealt a final snub by the successor who tore down his legacy.
The tussle over Gorbachev’s memory will play out in public and private in the coming days in Russia, indicating whether his policies of reform and openness can still find a place in the country’s official ideology, or if they have been consigned to the ash heap of Russian history.
“Mikhail Gorbachev was a politician and statesman who had a huge impact on the course of global history,” the Russian president said in the telegram, which was published on the Kremlin website.
The carefully worded message dwelled on Gorbachev’s legacy while eliding past criticisms Putin has made about the decisions that led to the fall of the Soviet Union.
It is unclear whether Putin will attend Gorbachev’s funeral at the Novodevichy cemetery or his farewell ceremony on Saturday at Moscow’s House of Unions, a short walk away from the Kremlin.
“He led our country over the period of complex, dramatic transformations and extensive foreign political, economic, and social challenges. He had a profound understanding of the need for reforms and sought to propose his solutions to the pressing problems.”
Putin had a strained relationship with Gorbachev, who initiated policies that ultimately led to the fall of the Soviet Union. Putin has called the collapse of the USSR the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. Tatiana Stanovaya, a political analyst and head of the analytical firm R.Politik, called the language of the message “tortured”.
Gorbachev had also criticised Putin, carefully at times, for rolling back democratic reforms and reintroducing elements of repression that at times recalled the Soviet era. Yet the two were never openly at war: like his successor Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev stepped back from politics after Putin’s rise, focusing more on charitable efforts than on criticism.
“Neither of them [Gorbachev and Yeltsin] lived to see the country as they dreamed of it,” said the Yeltsin Centre, which was founded in honour of Gorbachev’s arch-rival. One day, what Gorbachev “did and was not able to do would be properly appreciated”, it added.
Much could depend on the coming days. The Kremlin said no decision had been made yet as to whether Gorbachev would receive a state funeral. Gorbachev’s daughter, Irina Virganskaya-Gorbacheva, was also unable to say whether any state events were being planned, the Interfax news service reported.
It would be a pointed statement for a former Kremlin leader, even one as controversial in Russia as Gorbachev, not to receive one. The last to be snubbed was Nikita Khrushchev, who died in disfavour and was buried in the Novodevichy cemetery rather than interred in the Kremlin walls.
“No decisions have been made at this point,” said Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson, adding that the question would be addressed on Wednesday.
At a telethon for an educational event, Peskov portrayed Gorbachev as a misguided romantic, saying that the “bloodlust” of Russia’s enemies showed the detente the former Soviet leader sought could never be realised.
“Gorbachev gave an impetus for the end of the cold war and sincerely wanted to believe that it would be over and an eternal romantic period would begin between the new Soviet Union and the world, the collective west, as we call it,” Peskov said in unofficial, televised remarks.
“That romanticism did not materialise. No romantic period and ‘century of honey’ took place. The bloodlust of our opponents has shown itself. It’s good that we realised and understood it in time.”
If the official Kremlin critiques were measured, then those on state television were more blunt. On 60 Minutes, a popular Russian talkshow, a host denounced the obituaries to Gorbachev on the front pages of western newspapers. “All of our enemies are calling Gorbachev a reformer and a real man of the world,” said Olga Skabeeva, adding that Russians had a fundamentally different view of him. “But it would likely be indecent to talk about that on the day of his death.”
Online, RIA Novosti, the state news agency that first reported the death, ran a column saying Gorbachev was an illustration of how the good intentions of a national leader could “summon hell on Earth for an entire country”.
That is not how all Russians recalled Gorbachev on Wednesday, and prominent liberal voices sought to remind Russia that he had averted war and given older generations the promise of a freer future.
Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, which has largely ceased publishing because of restrictions after the invasion of Ukraine, wrote that Gorbachev had “given the country and the world an unbelievable gift – he gave us 30 years of peace. Without fear of a global and nuclear war. Who else could have done that?”
But, he added: “The gift has ended. The gift is gone. And there will be no more gifts.”
Pavel Kanygin, a Russian journalist who has left the country, also wrote about the lost chance Gorbachev had given his parents’ generation. And like many younger Russians dismayed by what has been taking place, he asked another question: “Will our generation ever have a similar chance?”
