Mikhail Gorbachev, 91, last leader of the Soviet Union, has died after a protracted illness. He will be buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow next to his wife Raisa who died in 1999. He has been described by many as “one of the greatest figures of the 20th century” and universally credited with ending the cold war. He is fondly remembered by liberal democracies in the west as a lead figure in the decommissioning of the USSR following a period of glasnost and perestroika. He was reviled by many Russians as having thrust the country into a prolonged reduction in the standard of living.

Gorbachev lamented the deconstruction of his legacy of detente and arms control with the west owing to the leadership of Vladimir Putin. He called for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Ukraine and urged peace negotiations.

There was a period in the 1990s after Gorbachev’s resignation where some think Russia could conceivably have taken on a more liberal democratic model of government, but Russia had no tradition of democratic culture or structures so there was nothing from which to build upon. Instead, privatization and wealth were scooped up by a small group of people including those later to be known as the oligarchs under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin completed the dissolution of the Soviet Union that Gorbachev began.