When Nikita Khrushchev died in 1971, he did not receive the same honors as other Soviet Union leaders. He was not buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis like Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov. We didn’t give him a state funeral.
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He was quickly buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. His funerary stele, half white and half black, represents man’s good deeds and mistakes. A very funny half tribute to the one who nevertheless lifted the veil on the crimes committed by Stalin during his brutal rule.
While Western newspapers gave much coverage of his death, the Soviet media barely mentioned his disappearance. In the end, comrade Khrushchev, dead, paid dearly for smearing his predecessor’s image and shaking the communist empire with his feet of clay. Even in the name of truth and human rights.
It’s hard not to think about the fate of this former Communist Party Secretary when he learns of the death of the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.
In the West, Gorbachev has long drawn crowds and accolades for ending the Cold War. For stopping the mad race for nuclear weapons. (Today, despite renewed nuclear threats from the Kremlin, we owe you a debt of gratitude, Mikhail Sergeyevich!)
In his own country, Russia, however, he is one of the public’s most despised leaders. In fact, in the club of disliked historical figures, only Boris Yeltsin is hated more than “Gorbi.”
According to a major 2017 Pew Institute poll, only 22% of Russians believe Mikhail Gorbachev played a “positive role” in history. And Stalin, the man responsible for the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens? The Georgian, who is considered the great winner of World War II, received an approval rating of 57 percent from the Russians at the time. Today that popularity has risen to 75%.
In the eyes of the vast majority of Russians today, the last President of the USSR is the one who not only shook the Red Empire but also witnessed its dismemberment without trying to stem its demise.
Some even see him as a traitor who signed a superpower death warrant in favor of the United States and NATO members. A naïve man at best who thought he was capable of major reforms – perestroika and glasnost – but saw them turn against him and against Russia.
Of course, there are also Russian voices who speak out against this unrelenting people’s tribunal. In particular, there is that of documentary filmmaker Vitaly Mansky. With Gorbachev. In Heaven, a film flow released in 2021, the filmmaker allowed the last Soviet leader to declare himself returning to important chapters of history, his own and that of his country. “Mikhail Gorbachev is the only Russian leader who believed that the interest of the person is more important than that of the state, or who at least articulated this principle, the filmmaker told me during an interview in Montreal last fall. I am 1000% sure that one day its historical legacy will be restored. Russia will continue to change. There will be progress. It may take time, maybe 100 years, but it will come,” he told me a few months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Gorbachev we discover in Vitaly Mansky’s documentary is anything but a smiling old man ending his life to the full, proud of his accomplishments.
We watch a politician being put aside in a golden suitcase by the current Kremlin resident. We see a sick man who is physically weak but can quote Pushkin or Dostoyevsky more easily than others count down their shopping lists. We meet a quarrelsome, angry master of evasion, but capable of the most tender feelings when he thinks of his wife Raïssa, who has been his companion for 40 years. Since the death of the latter in 1999, Mikhail Gorbachev, by his own account, has led a shortened life without taste.
That’s why Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev will now rest with the love of his life. At the Novodevichy Cemetery.
Next to his Raisa, but not far from Nikita Khrushchev.