Gorbachev-- Bereaved and Alone in a Foreign Land
September 22, 1999 - 0:0
MUENSTER, Germany When Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who did more than any other leader to end the Cold War peacefully, learned on Monday of his wife Raisa's death he was reduced to suffering a lonely bereavement in a foreign land. "What else could his reaction be? It is very bad," Russia's Ambassador to Germany, Sergei Krylov, said after visiting the former Soviet president in his hotel room hours after Raisa's death.
"How else could it be when someone loses a loved one?" For nearly two months, the man who broke the communist mold by launching his twin-track Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) reforms has lived in a sterile hotel on the edge of this German town, across the road from a cemetery. Gorbachev's routine consisted of shuttling between a nearby hospital where Raisa was undergoing treatment for leukemia and his hotel room.
Occasionally, he would stop for breakfast in the hotel restaurant, to the surprise of other diners. In recent weeks the talkative Gorbachev often stopped in the lobby to chat with reporters about his wife's condition, much as a worried neighbor might share the latest news about a loved one. He often said he was an optimist, hoping for the best. He was at Raisa's side as she finally passed away in the early morning hours of Monday, returning to his room only at dawn.
Their daughter Irina was also in Muenster, but apart from a few aides and bodyguards, they were alone. Gorbachev later left the hotel once, looking ashen-faced and declining to speak to reporters. "He has been very busy. This happened so fast," Karen Kargesian, an aide said later. "There are a lot of things to organize, such as the funeral." Organizing from abroad in a way symbolizes Gorbachev's isolation in today's Russia, where many blame him for the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic and social disarray which followed.
In Germany, by contrast, he is regarded as a hero for his role in helping bring about the country's reunification in 1990, a status that brought Sunday's private visit from German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Former chancellor Helmut Kohl, Gorbachev's opposite number during his turbulent six-year rule, was also in close contact in the final days. "I experienced again in my recent conversations with Mikhail Gorbachev how much Raisa influenced her husband and his life, and how they both belonged together," Kohl wrote in a newspaper article to appear on Tuesday. "They were really a pair which -- as he himself said -- took a path together for life." After Raisa died, Gorbachev did receive a rare gesture of sympathy from his long-time rival, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who planned to send a Russian government jet to bring the last Soviet leader and his wife's remains home.
(Reuter)
"How else could it be when someone loses a loved one?" For nearly two months, the man who broke the communist mold by launching his twin-track Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) reforms has lived in a sterile hotel on the edge of this German town, across the road from a cemetery. Gorbachev's routine consisted of shuttling between a nearby hospital where Raisa was undergoing treatment for leukemia and his hotel room.
Occasionally, he would stop for breakfast in the hotel restaurant, to the surprise of other diners. In recent weeks the talkative Gorbachev often stopped in the lobby to chat with reporters about his wife's condition, much as a worried neighbor might share the latest news about a loved one. He often said he was an optimist, hoping for the best. He was at Raisa's side as she finally passed away in the early morning hours of Monday, returning to his room only at dawn.
Their daughter Irina was also in Muenster, but apart from a few aides and bodyguards, they were alone. Gorbachev later left the hotel once, looking ashen-faced and declining to speak to reporters. "He has been very busy. This happened so fast," Karen Kargesian, an aide said later. "There are a lot of things to organize, such as the funeral." Organizing from abroad in a way symbolizes Gorbachev's isolation in today's Russia, where many blame him for the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic and social disarray which followed.
In Germany, by contrast, he is regarded as a hero for his role in helping bring about the country's reunification in 1990, a status that brought Sunday's private visit from German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Former chancellor Helmut Kohl, Gorbachev's opposite number during his turbulent six-year rule, was also in close contact in the final days. "I experienced again in my recent conversations with Mikhail Gorbachev how much Raisa influenced her husband and his life, and how they both belonged together," Kohl wrote in a newspaper article to appear on Tuesday. "They were really a pair which -- as he himself said -- took a path together for life." After Raisa died, Gorbachev did receive a rare gesture of sympathy from his long-time rival, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who planned to send a Russian government jet to bring the last Soviet leader and his wife's remains home.
(Reuter)