Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to miss the funeral of the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, denying the man who failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union the full state honors accorded former President Boris Yeltsin. Gorbachev, idolized in the West for enabling Eastern Europe to escape Soviet communist control but unloved at home for the chaos unleashed by his “perestroika” reforms, will be buried on Saturday after a public ceremony in the Hall of Columns of Moscow. The great hall, within sight of the Kremlin, hosted the funerals of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev. Gorbachev will receive a military guard of honor – but his funeral will not be a state one. State television on Thursday showed Putin solemnly placing red roses next to Gorbachev’s coffin – which was left open as is customary in Russia – at Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital, where he died on Tuesday at the age of 91. He stood in silence for a few moments, bowed his head, touched the coffin, crossed himself and walked away. “Unfortunately, the president’s work schedule will not allow him to do this on September 3, so he decided to do it today,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Putin pays his last respects near Gorbachev’s coffin at Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital [Russian pool via AP] Gorbachev will be buried at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife, Raisa, after a farewell ceremony in the Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions, an iconic mansion near the Kremlin that has served as a venue for state funerals since the Soviet era . The Kremlin stopped short of announcing a state funeral, with Peskov saying the ceremony would have “elements” of one, such as honor guards, and the government would help organize it. He would not elaborate, however, on how the ceremony would differ from a full state funeral. But it will be a stark contrast to the funeral of Yeltsin, who was instrumental in ousting Gorbachev as the Soviet Union collapsed and chose Putin, a KGB intelligence officer, as the best-suited to succeed him. When Yeltsin died in 2007, Putin declared national mourning and, along with world leaders, attended a grand state funeral at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral. Russia’s intervention in Ukraine appears to be aimed at at least partially reversing the collapse of the Soviet Union that Gorbachev failed to prevent in 1991. Gorbachev’s decision to let the countries of the post-war Soviet communist bloc go their own way and East and West Germany to reunite helped spark nationalist movements within the 15 Soviet republics that he was unable to quell. Five years after taking power in 2000, Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the biggest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century.” It took Putin more than 15 hours after Gorbachev’s death to release a low-key condolence message that said Gorbachev had “a huge impact on the course of world history” and “deeply understood that reforms were necessary” to address the Soviet Union’s problems. Union in the 1980s. Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, observed that Putin’s decision to pay tribute to Gorbachev reflected both “security concerns and the sheer unpopularity of Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies.” At the same time, Putin wanted to show his respect to the former head of state, Markov said. The Kremlin’s ambivalent view of Gorbachev was reflected in state television broadcasts, which paid tribute to Gorbachev as a historical figure but described his reforms as ill-conceived and held him responsible for failing to secure the country’s interests in dialogue with the West .
