Irish Examiner view: Western leaders could not have attended a state funeral for Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev's passing is a marker of a different era but it could have presented a tricky diplomatic challenge in 2022

Then Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and then taoiseach Charles Haughey at Shannon Airport in April 1989. File picture: PA

The passing of Mikhail Gorbachev at the age of 91 is another marker of a different era — an era, in this case, in which the leader of Russia could not only receive the freedom of the city of Dublin but also appear in a Pizza Hut television advert.

Gorbachev was both the last secretary of the Supreme Soviet and the first president of Russia, and the journey from one title to the next encompasses vast historical changes. Under his leadership, satellite states in eastern Europe achieved real independence, while Russia itself abandoned communism for market forces red in tooth and claw.

It’s interesting to contrast the general view of Gorbachev in the West as a visionary reformer with the cooler appraisal in his native land. He collected the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize but in Russia he was also widely blamed for the economic chaos which followed the rigidly ordered communist system.

A Kremlin statement on his passing this week leavened the boilerplate praise for his achievements with pointed criticism of his admiration for the West while president Vladimir Putin was far from effusive in his own tributes.

However, the former president’s passing also had the potential to present a tricky diplomatic challenge to western democracies.

On Wednesday, Russian officials were swift to pour cold water on the prospect of a state funeral for Gorbachev, with all the attendant diplomatic and protocol challenges, and Western leaders will be privately grateful for that news.

With Russia widely viewed as a pariah state due to its invasion of Ukraine, those leaders would have faced a Hobson’s choice regarding any state-sponsored ceremony.

The opportunities for potent symbolism weren’t limited to seating arrangements for dignitaries: Western leaders simply could not have attended a spectacle choreographed by Putin.

If they did, they would have run the risk of being positioned in that spectacle as supporting Putin’s regime. If they turned down a formal invitation, which they would have done, they could be accused of insulting Gorbachev’s memory — and, by extension, Russia itself.

One less complication at a very difficult time.