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1000’s of Russians bid farewell to the Soviet Union’s final chief Mikhail Gorbachev on Saturday at an unofficial funeral. They had been particularly marked by the absence of President Vladimir Putin.

Mikhail Gorbachev, who died Tuesday on the age of 91, was buried within the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow, alongside his spouse Raisa, who died in 1999, whereas a navy orchestra performed the Russian nationwide anthem, AFP famous.

Earlier, the stays of this main political determine of the twentieth century had been uncovered within the Home of Commerce Unions, an emblematic place in Moscow the place the funerals of a number of leaders of the USSR had been celebrated, together with these of Joseph Stalin in 1953.

“An ideal politician is leaving, the Gorbachev period is ending in the present day,” mentioned Yevgeny Matveev, a 44-year-old miller who was amongst hundreds who got here to bid farewell to the previous chief.

In small teams, folks of all ages got here to put roses and bow silently earlier than Gorbachev’s open coffin, flanked by an honor guard and close to which sat his black-and-white portrait.

Coming to energy in 1985, Gorbachev made historical past by precipitating, despite himself, the disappearance of the Soviet empire in 1991, when he tried to put it aside with democratic and financial reforms, thus ending the Chilly Battle. .

In a present context of accelerating repression and withdrawal within the midst of Moscow’s navy intervention in Ukraine, some Russians current on the funeral remembered with nostalgia the liberal opening beneath Gorbachev.

“We had a whiff of freedom, he gave us transparency and pluralism,” mentioned Natalia Leleko, a 60-year-old trainer.

Ksenia Joupanova, a 41-year-old interpreter, remembers above all “the absence of worry” beneath Gorbachev. “I’m towards the actual fact of reducing oneself off from the remainder of the world, I’m for openness, dialogue”.

No nationwide mourning

But when he’s hailed within the West and by some Russians as a person of peace, Gorbachev can be seen by many in his nation because the individual chargeable for the geopolitical downgrading of Moscow and the years of disaster that adopted the autumn of the USSR.

An indication of uneasiness within the face of this ambivalent heritage, neither official funerals nor a day of nationwide mourning have been introduced. Above all, the funeral befell with out Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin placing ahead a busy “schedule”.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, near the Kremlin, is the one international chief to have visited Moscow, the place he bowed earlier than the stays of Gorbachev, AFP famous.

Gorbachev was one of many causes that enabled central Europe to “do away with communism peacefully, with out lack of life or bloodshed”, Orban mentioned on Fb.

A number of Russian personalities attended the funeral, reminiscent of ex-president Dmitry Medvedev and journalist Dmitry Muratov, Nobel Peace Prize 2021.

If he was absent on Saturday, Mr. Putin had discreetly gone to the Central Scientific Hospital (TSKB) in Moscow on Thursday, the place Gorbachev died, to put a bouquet of pink roses.

In a sober message of condolences, he granted Gorbachev “an amazing affect on the historical past of the world”.

East-West rapprochement

Against this, Western capitals, from Washington to Berlin, through Paris, warmly celebrated the reminiscence of Gorbachev, hailed for having labored for East-West rapprochement and a discount in nuclear arsenals, which in 1990 had earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.

Germany, whose reunification was made potential by the autumn of the Berlin Wall, introduced that the flags can be at half mast within the German capital on Saturday.

However, in Russia, Gorbachev is perceived by many because the gravedigger of the good Soviet energy which rivaled America and whose finish, thought-about humiliating, gave method to a decade of crises and violence.

Boris Yeltsin, the primary president of Russia in energy through the years of painful transition to a market economic system, and who had appointed Vladimir Putin as his successor, was entitled to sturdy honors at his loss of life in 2007.

The Kremlin had then declared a day of nationwide mourning and arranged an official funeral. Within the presence of Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Gorbachev.

This text has been printed robotically. Sources: ats / afp