Gorbachev awarded Russia’s highest honour

RUSSIAN President Dmitry Medvedev decorated Mikhail Gorbachev with the highest state honour yesterday in a rare recognition for the last Soviet leader, who is often ignored at home.

Medvedev opened his suburban Moscow residence to Gorbachev on his 80th birthday, exchanging jokes with the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize winner and awarding him a tsarist-era medal that now serves as Russia’s top state honour.

Many Russians refuse to forgive Gorbachev for overseeing the demise of the Soviet empire and Medvedev conceded his role in history “can be assessed in different ways”.

But Medvedev said the Andrei Pervozvanny order, which was restored in 1998, was “the proper recognition of your enormous work as head of state”.

“You headed our country in a very difficult, dramatic period,” he said, adding the decoration was a “symbol of the state’s respect” for his work.

Gorbachev also received rare words of praise from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who once famously called the Soviet Union’s collapse one of the greatest misfortunes of history.

Putin sent Gorbachev a personal telegram calling him “one of the eminent statesmen of modernity who made a telling impact on the course of world history and did much to strengthen the authority of Russia”.

Gorbachev is known internationally as the man whose perestroika and glasnost reforms altered the course of history by burying the USSR and liberating Eastern Europe.

But at home, he is largely despised for letting go of an empire and reducing Russia to a secondary role on the world stage.

Gorbachev has admitted being hurt by the criticism and has used the attention accompanying his birthday to criticise the more recent course Russia has taken.

He used one interview to urge Putin against running for another term as president and warned of the dangers of Arab-style social revolt. “How many times have they promised people that they will loosen the screws?”