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Russians on Saturday paid their final respects to the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, in a ceremony held in Moscow without much fanfare and with President Vladimir Putin notably absent.
Several thousand mourners queued up to quietly file past Gorbachev’s open casket as it was flanked by honour guards under the Russian flag in the historic Hall of Columns.
The hall has long been used for the funerals of high officials in Russia and it was where the body of Joseph Stalin first lay in state during four days of national mourning after his death in 1953.
With Russia facing increasing international isolation over its military action in Ukraine, many of those in attendance pointed to Gorbachev’s opening of the country to the rest of the world.
“It was a breath of freedom, which was lacking for a long time, an absence of fear,” 41-year-old translator Ksenia Zhupanova said at the entrance to the hall.
“I am against shutting us out from the outside world, I am for openness, for dialogue. This is what Mikhail Sergeyevich showed the world,” she said, using Gorbachev’s patronymic.
The mourners were of all ages, some old enough to remember the years of Soviet stagnation before Gorbachev came to power, others young enough to have only lived in Russia under Putin.
Gorbachev died on Tuesday at the age of 91 following a “serious and long illness,” the hospital where he was treated said.
In power between 1985 and 1991, he sought to transform the Soviet Union with democratic reforms, but eventually triggered its demise.
One of the great political figures of the 20th century, he was lionised in the West for helping to end the Cold War and trying to change the USSR, but despised by many in Russia for the economic chaos and loss of global influence that followed the Soviet collapse.
