Mikhail Gorbachevone of the most important names in the history of Russia, the Cold War and global history, has passed away this Tuesday night at 92 years old. “Today (Tuesday) night, after a long serious illness, Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died,” the Moscow Central Clinical Hospital said, as quoted by Russian news agencies. The Soviet leader will be buried next to his wife Raísa – who He died in 1999 – in the well-known Novodevichy cemetery in the Russian capital, where he will be buried alongside other great names in Russian history such as former president Boris Yeltsin or the writers Mikhail Gogol and Anton Chekhov.
The former leader had spent years withdrawn from public life, mainly for health reasons and because of his advanced age. In recent times, among his close circle, there was a fear that he would be infected with coronavirus. For this reason, he was giving interviews to the press sparingly in recent years. One of the last to see him alive was the liberal economist Ruslan Grinberg who later asserted to the Russian outlet Zvezda about Gorbachev that “he gave us freedom, but we did not know what to do with it.”
the policies of glasnost – transparency – and perestroika – economic reform – were his two main banners when governing the country, and he was proud of them. In an interview that Gorbachev gave to the Russian outlet TASS years ago, he defended his political direction in the end of the USSR: “I am completely convinced that it was necessary and that we moved in the right direction & rdquor ;. He argued that it put an end to “a totalitarian system & rdquor; and that “the people gained freedom”.
Good image in the West
In the West he enjoyed a good image, as evidenced by his 1990 Nobel Peace Prize or the definition made of him by the British conservative leader Margaret Thatcher: “a man with whom we can do business.” This Tuesday night the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, wrote on social networks: “Mikhail Gorbachev was a trusted and respected leader. He played a crucial role in ending the Cold War and bringing down the Iron Curtain. He paved the way for a free Europe. This legacy is one we will not forget. RIP Mikhail Gorbachev.”
Maxim Katza member of the liberal opposition party Yábloko, took advantage of the moment to throw a dart at the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. He opines that “if Gorbachev were like Putin, he could have been the secretary of the USSR until today & rdquor ;.
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But at home its mere mention arouses tall kinds of opinions among his compatriots: for some, he was the leader the Soviet Union needed to modernize and open up to the West. For others, he is the traitor who sold the country to the North Americans, remembering with particular zeal an advertisement by a well-known American pizza chain That did not sit well with his detractors. However, it is well known how complex it was to renew a superpower and solve the multiple fronts – separatism, hard-line communists, a coup, the Chernobyl accident and a stagnant economy – that faced him when he assumed the leadership of the world’s largest country. biggest of the world.
Igor Girkin – also known as Igor Strelkov – is one of those who has a bad image of the recently deceased leader. This former officer of the Russian secret services has been a key figure in the annexation of Crimea and in the organization of militias in the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk. In his social networks he made a post titled “On the death of traitors & rdquor ;. In it he states that “(Gorbachev) does not need to wish for eternal shame, he already got it” and wonders if “before she died (…) she thought and valued her life & rdquor ;, among others derogatory comments.