Live reaction: tributes for Mikhail Gorbachev pour in after death of former Soviet leader
Gorbachev #Gorbachev
Key events
Show key events only
Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature
Summary so far
We will shortly be closing this live blog. In the meantime, here is a quick recap of the past few hours.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader who ended the cold war, died in Moscow aged 91. “Mikhail Gorbachev passed away tonight after a serious and protracted disease,” Interfax news agency cited Russia’s Central Clinical Hospital as saying in a statement. He will be buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife Raisa, who died in 1999, said Tass news agency, citing a source familiar with the family’s wishes.
The Russian president Vladimir Putin expresses his deepest condolences, a Kremlin spokesman told the Interfax news agency.
Gorbachev’s political legacy was destroyed by Putin as the era of detente and arms control between Washington and Moscow is replaced by a bloody war in Ukraine, Julian Borger writes.
The former Soviet leader was celebrated across liberal democracies but reviled and unpopular in Russia, Pjotr Sauer writes. His policy of ‘glasnost’, or openness, gave Russians previously unthinkable levels of freedom, but for many, his rule will be remembered by the dramatic plunge in living standards that followed.
Gorbachev, a champion of arms control, opposed Putin’s war in Ukraine. He issued a statement through his foundation in the days after Russia’s invasion calling for “an early cessation of hostilities and immediate start of peace negotiations”. “There is nothing more precious in the world than human lives,” he added.
A flood of tributes from across the world poured in for the man described as “one of the greatest figures of the 20th century” and universally credited with ending the cold war.
US President Joe Biden described Gorbachev as a man of “remarkable vision” who led his country on the path to reform. “These were the acts of a rare leader – one with the imagination to see that a different future was possible and the courage to risk his entire career to achieve it,” Biden said in a statement. “The result was a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people.”
António Guterres, general secretary of the United Nations, said Gorbachev was a “one-of-a kind statesman who changed the course of history”. “The world has lost a towering global leader, committed multilateralist, and tireless advocate for peace. I’m deeply saddened by his passing,” he tweeted.
French President Emmanuel Macron described Gorbachev as “a man of peace whose choices opened a path to freedom for Russians”. “His commitment to peace in Europe changed our common history,” he added.
Boris Johnson, the outgoing British prime minister, said he “always admired the courage and integrity he showed in bringing the cold war to a peaceful conclusion”.
Gorbachev was the most important world figure of the last quarter of the 20th century. Almost singlehandedly he brought an end to 40 years of east-west confrontation in Europe and liberated the world from the danger of nuclear conflagration. Read his full obituary here.
In a 2011 interview with the Guardian, Gorbachev said he should have resigned in April 1991 and formed a democratic party of reform, adding he regretted “the fact that I went on too long in trying to reform the Communist party”.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev “changed the world for the better”, in a tribute message posted on Wednesday afternoon following the death of the last leader of the Soviet Union.
He freed the nations of Eastern Europe from the prison of Soviet rule, and helped bring an end to the Cold War,” Albanese wrote in a message posted to Facebook, calling Gorbachev “a man of warmth, hope, resolve and enormous courage”.
With his death we have lost one of the true giants of the 20th century.”
Obituary
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was the most important world figure of the last quarter of the 20th century. Almost singlehandedly he brought an end to 40 years of east-west confrontation in Europe and liberated the world from the danger of nuclear conflagration. It was not the objective he set himself when he was elected general secretary of the Soviet Communist party in March 1985, nor did he predict or plan the way the cold war would end, the haemorrhaging of the Communist party, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany or the break-up of the Soviet Union itself.
Like other great reformers in history, he ended up in isolation, condemned by some for doing too much and by others for doing too little. For the world beyond Russia, his great service lay in allowing the cold war to come to an end. It did not end as he had hoped – in a grand reconciliation between east and west. Indeed, in retirement he criticised western leaders for expanding Nato to take in several of the former Soviet republics, which he thought was unnecessary and provocative. Inside Russia, his economic reforms failed, though not as catastrophically as those that followed under Yeltsin.
Yeltsin’s circle blamed Gorbachev for the miserable legacy they inherited. Gorbachev, for his part, blamed the legacy of Stalinism for the situation he took over. He will be remembered as the man who consigned the one-party system to oblivion and gave Russians room to breathe. Yeltsin’s successor Vladimir Putin treated Gorbachev with respect despite Gorbachev’s occasional criticisms of the slide back towards authoritarianism.
Read the full obituary below.
Mikhail Gorbachev – a life in pictures.
Mikhail Gorbachev on a visit to Aberdeen in December 1993. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian Former Soviet lader Mikhail Gorbachev stands with his daughter Irina and grand-daughter Krenia as they grieve at the coffin of Raisa Gorbachev at Russia’s Culture Fund in Moscow. Photograph: Misha Japaridze/AP POOL/AFP/Getty Images Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev during a news conference following bilateral talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Germany, 2004. Photograph: Christian Charisius/Reuters Gorbachev, left, and East Germany’s state and Communist party leader Erich Honecker exchange kisses at East Berlin’s Schoenefeld airport on May 27, 1987. Photograph: AP Gorbachev greeted by Queen Elizabeth II at the entrance to Windsor Castle in 1989. Photograph: PA
Mikhail Gorbachev has been described as “one of the greatest figures of the 20th century” in a flood of tributes from across the world to the man universally credited with ending the cold war.
There was gushing praise for the former Soviet president from past and present western leaders, political commentators, academics, historians and celebrities after his death in Russia on Tuesday night aged 91.
Read a more comprehensive rundown of the tributes that have poured in for the “one-of-a kind” Soviet leader in our story below.
European leaders have also paid tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev today.
French President Emmanuel Macron described Gorbachev as “a man of peace whose choices opened a path to freedom for Russians”.
“His commitment to peace in Europe changed our common history,” he added.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said the former Soviet leader “shaped the rapprochement between east and west after the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe”.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte lamented the loss of a “a courageous reformer with immense influence on history”.
Gorbachev won massive support among ordinary people in the west and hoped to fundamentally change the mindset of Russia, a country that had never experienced democracy, having gone straight from Romanov to Bolshevik dictatorships.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife Raisa shake hands with Mickey and Minnie Mouse at the entrance of Tokyo Disneyland on 12 April, 1992. Photograph: Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images
In the wake of Gorbachev’s death, many are remembering the former Soviet leaders infamous 1997 Pizza Hut commercial.
In the advertisement, a fight over Gorbachev’s legacy ensues between a group of customers.
“Because of him, we have economic confusion!” one man says. “Because of him, we have opportunity!” another adds.
“Because of him, we have many things … like Pizza Hut!” a woman concludes.
Gorbachev: a divisive figure loved abroad but loathed at home
Despite being celebrated across liberal democracies, the former Soviet leader was reviled and unpopular in Russia, Pjotr Sauer writes for us today.
Until his very last day, Mikhail Gorbachev lived in a dual reality – loved and celebrated in Washington, Paris and London, but reviled by large numbers of Russians who never forgave him for the turbulence that his reforms unleashed.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev waves from the parade review stand of the Lenin Mausoleum on 7 November, 1987 in Moscow’ s Red Square. Photograph: BY Boris Yurchenko/AP
His policy of ‘glasnost’, or openness, gave Russians previously unthinkable levels of freedom, but for many, his rule will be remembered by the dramatic plunge in living standards that followed.
Others, haunted by Soviet nostalgia, saw Gorbachev as the destroyer of their empire and blame his policies for emboldening nationalists who successfully pushed for independence in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and elsewhere across the former Soviet bloc.
Read the full story below.
Gorbachev issued a warning against Putin’s leadership in 2011 for what was to come.
It’s perhaps understandable that during the initial phase he used certain authoritarian methods in his leadership, but using authoritarian methods as a policy for the future – that I think is wrong. I think that’s a mistake,” he said at a public event in the US.
Gorbachev later spoke to the BBC in 2013 about how his relationship with Putin had “soured” since the former KGB agent took office in 2000.
“He sometimes loses his temper,” he said, referring to a comment where Putin had warned that Gorbachev should watch his tongue when making public criticism of his regime.
I get the feeling he’s very tense and worried … Not everything is going well. I think he should change his style and make changes to his regime.”
Condemning newly enacted laws cracking down on government criticism, Gorbachev said: “For goodness sake, you should not be afraid of your own people.”
He also criticised Putin’s inner circle, saying it was full of “thieves and corrupt officials”.
Updated at 20.30 EDT
A journalist who had remained close to Gorbachev said in July that the former Soviet leader was “upset” by what he saw in Ukraine.
“Gorbachev’s reforms – political, not economic – were all destroyed,” the journalist Alexei Venediktov, the editor of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, told the Russian Forbes magazine. “Nilch, zero, ashes.”
Gorbachev former interpreter, Pavel Palazhchenko, who works for the Gorbachev Centre thinktank, told Fox News two days before the invasion:
He always warned things could happen that could be very dangerous between Russia and Ukraine, but he always did what he could in order to bring those two nations closer together rather than see a continuation of this rift that we now see widening. So for him, emotionally, it is very tragic.” What did Gorbachev think of Putin’s war in Ukraine?
Gorbachev, a champion of arms control, issued a statement through his foundation in the days after Russia’s invasion calling for “an early cessation of hostilities and immediate start of peace negotiations”.
In connection with Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, begun on February 24, we affirm the need for an early cessation of hostilities and immediate start of peace negotiations.
There is nothing more precious in the world than human lives. Negotiations and dialogue on the basis of mutual respect and recognition of interests are the only possible way to resolve the most acute contradictions and problems. We support any efforts aimed at the resumption of negotiating process.”
Updated at 20.11 EDT
How Gorbachev’s political legacy was destroyed by Putin
Mikhail Gorbachev lived long enough to see everything he had tried to achieve crumble or get blown up, Julian Borger writes for us today.
The era of detente and arms control between Washington and Moscow has been replaced by a bloody war in Ukraine in which US and Nato weaponry is being pitted against Russian forces with the accompanying risk of a direct clash between the nuclear superpowers by accident or miscalculation.
By the time Gorbachev stepped down at the end of 1991, the Nato-Soviet frontier was no longer a flashpoint. Nato pulled all but a few thousand troops back from the eastern flank, and the terrors of the cold war seemed consigned to history books and museums. In the wake of the Ukraine invasion in February, Nato has rushed troops eastwards, mobilising 40,000 troops under its direct command, with plans to put 300,000 on high alert.
Gorbachev was a champion of arms control and even discussed the potential elimination of nuclear weapons with Ronald Reagan at the Reykjavik summit in 1986. Now, the last remaining agreement between US and Russia limiting nuclear weapons is being corroded by Russia’s suspension of mutual inspections. Both countries are modernising their arsenals and Putin has made a point of threatening nuclear use.
Read the full story below.