TOPLINE
The final leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, was buried in Moscow on Saturday after a funeral that was snubbed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and not accorded the status of a formal state service, despite Gorbachev’s standing as one of the most important political figures of the past half-century.
KEY FACTS
Gorbachev's funeral was held at the palatial Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions, and he was later buried at Novodevichy Cemetery alongside many other distinguished Russians.
The event was not a formal state funeral, which would have required Putin to attend and invitations to be sent out to foreign leaders—Putin’s spokesman claimed he was too busy to attend.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán appeared to be the only foreign head of state to attend the service.
Gorbachev died Tuesday at age 91 following years of deteriorating health, primary due to kidney problems.
As Soviet leader from 1985 to 1991, Gorbachev enacted drastic reforms in the country promoting increased economic and individual freedom, but the communist state collapsed just a day after his resignation on December 25, 1991, leading to the Soviet Union splitting into 15 independent countries.
Putin and many other former KGB officials considered the fall of the Soviet Union to be a catastrophe, and the two figures appeared to have a cold relationship as Gorbachev became a vocal Putin critic in his later years, with the Soviet leader's longtime interpreter saying the Russian invasion of Ukraine "really crushed him emotionally and psychologically."
I'm a New Orleans-based news reporter for Forbes covering politics, with a focus on former President Donald Trump. Previously, I wrote for The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate covering local government.
