Atlanta Journal and Constitution October 1, 2003 AFTER THE COLD WAR: RUSSIAN OPINION: Gorbachev's stature rises but many still resentful By Rebecca Santana BYLINE: REBECCA SANTANA
Moscow --- The world remembers Mikhail Gorbachev as the man who dismantled the Soviet empire and helped end the Cold War. But in the 12 years since he stepped down as the last Soviet premier, Russians have not been as kind to the man known as Gorby.
He went from being one of the world's most powerful leaders to collecting only 1 percent of the vote in Russia's 1996 presidential election. A man who once presided over summits in the Kremlin's chandelier-laden rooms ended up hawking pizza on U.S. television.
When Gorbachev left office, he was almost universally despised at home. Now, while he is still reviled by many, he is slowly gaining a reputation among some as one of Russia's elder statesmen.
"There's a very interesting cultural phenomenon happening. His stature and reputation is rising and rising," said Yegor Yakovlev, former editor of the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Novostei.
Gorbachev is often seen in the Russian news media offering commentary on current events. He is invited around the world to make public appearances and when world leaders visit Russia, they often call on him. Russian President Vladimir Putin often invites Gorbachev to state functions.
Part of the reason for the revival of Gorbachev's image is that compared to those who replaced him in the Kremlin, he doesn't look so bad.
Gorbachev's successor, Boris Yeltsin, embarrassed the country with his drunken antics. Putin has been criticized by human rights groups and liberal politicians as not being a democratic leader.
Russians also disliked Gorbachev because his wife, Raisa, was seen as too glamorous and too powerful in a nation where first ladies often looked like beet farmers and stayed out of the limelight.
But when she died of leukemia in September 1999 at a hospital in Germany, many Russians rallied around Gorbachev after seeing his grief-stricken face on television.
"People sympathized with his sorrow, pitied him as a person, pitied Raisa --- though she had never been liked before," said Mikhail Tarusin of Romir-Monitoring, a Moscow-based public opinion and marketing research agency.
Gorbachev has kept busy in the years since he's been out of public office. He started a Moscow-based policy foundation in his name, became active in environmental causes, became a TV pitchman for Pizza Hut, traveled around the world and helped raise his two grandchildren.
Though he turns 73 next year, he shows no signs of slowing down.
But there are still plenty of people who detest him as much as they did the day he left office.
The biggest complaint against Gorbachev is that he destroyed the Soviet Union. Many Russians still smolder at their country's fall from its powerful status in the world and the loss of its former territory.
"He gave away Germany for nothing while we lost millions of lives to liberate Europe from Nazis and then putting in all the resources to build up East Germany's economy," said Nikolai Shishkov, a 72-year-old retired engineer here.
Critics also say he never had a vision of how he wanted to transform the Soviet state. "Like a man lost in a dense forest, he blundered in one direction, then realizing it was a dead end, tried another one," said Roy Medvedev, a prominent Russian historian.
Gorbachev stepped down in December 1991 and the man hailed by Time magazine in 1990 as its "Man of the Decade" is but a fading memory for many Russians.
As one Muscovite, Nadezhda Oportova, said, "He may be a nice person, but he belongs to the past, to history."
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