MOSCOW: In a ceremony held in Moscow on Saturday with little hoopla and President Vladimir Putin conspicuously absent, Russians paid their final respects to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union.
In the revered Hall of Columns, thousands of mourners formed a line to pass Gorbachev’s open casket as it was guarded by Russian honor guards.
The building has traditionally been used for state funerals in Russia, and it served as Joseph Stalin’s first resting place during the four days of national mourning that followed his death in 1953.
After a while, the casket was removed from the room in a procession headed by Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which Gorbachev assisted in founding and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
A military band performing the Russian national anthem and a cannon salute played as the casket was lowered into the grave at Moscow’s famed Novodevichy Cemetery. Gorbachev was interred next to his wife Raisa, who passed away in 1999 from cancer.
Many of those present in the hall emphasized Gorbachev’s opening of the nation to the rest of the world as a response to Russia’s growing international isolation due to its military intervention in Ukraine.
Ksenia Zhupanova, a 41-year-old translator, remarked at the entry to the hall, “It was a breath of freedom that had been missing for a long time, an absence of fear.
She referred to Mikhail Sergeyevich by his patronymic, saying, “This is what he showed the world.
All ages of people attended the funeral, some of whom were old enough to recall the years of Soviet stagnation before Gorbachev took office and others who were young enough to have only known Russia under Putin. Putin would not attend the funeral on Saturday, according to the Kremlin, because of his “work schedule”.
