Mikhail Gorbachev, former USSR president dies
Mikhail Gorbachev, former Soviet president who took down the Iron Curtain, dies
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Russian and Soviet politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union. As the country’s head of state from 1988 to 1991, he served as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1988 to 1989, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet from 1989 to 1990, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991, and President of the Soviet Union from 1990 until the country’s dissolution in 1991. Ideologically, Gorbachev initially adhered to Marxism–Leninism but moved towards social democracy by the early 1990s.
Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday aged 91, would also not receive an official state funeral, a Kremlin spokesperson indicated, making him the first leader since Nikita Khrushchev not to be given that honour.
The spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said schedule constraints meant Putin would not attend a public farewell ceremony at Moscow’s House of Unions, or the funeral at Novodevichy cemetery on Saturday. “Unfortunately, the president’s work schedule will not allow him,” Peskov said.
Putin did pay his respects to the Soviet leader on Thursday morning, leaving flowers by Gorbachev’s coffin at the mourning hall of Moscow’s Central Clinical hospital.
Putin will send a message on Wednesday to Gorbachev’s family and friends, RIA Novosti added.
Other world leaders also paid tribute to Gorbachev on Tuesday, with US President Joe Biden calling him “a man of remarkable vision” in a statement.
“As leader of the USSR, he worked with President Reagan to reduce our two countries’ nuclear arsenals, to the relief of people worldwide praying for an end to the nuclear arms race,” Biden said, adding that Gorbachev’s reforms led to “a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people.”
the Soviet era.
Meanwhile the city of Berlin ordered official flags to be lowered to half-mast during Gorbachev’s weekend funeral as calls grew for a fitting tribute to the last Soviet leader in Germany.
“We want to appropriately honour the accomplishments of our honorary citizen Mikhail Gorbachev in bringing about the political transformation of (communist) East Germany,” Berlin’s interior minister, Iris Spranger, said in a statement.
Spranger said Germany also owed an enduring debt to Gorbachev for allowing its reunification after the cold war.
Officials from across the political spectrum expressed their gratitude to Gorbachev, with some calling for a street or square in Berlin to be renamed to honour a man credited with allowing a peaceful end to the cold war and paving the way for democracy to sweep through central and eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall’s fall.
“Germany has a lot to thank him for, he is one of the fathers of reunification and gave millions of people their freedom,” Markus Söder, the conservative premier of southern Bavaria state, told the daily Münchner Merkur.
