Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union and 1990 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, died Tuesday at the age of 91, after a “serious and protracted disease,” according to Reuters.

Western leaders have issued statements reflecting on the complicated legacy of the leader who played a major role in uniting Germany, though as of a 2017 poll only 7% of Russians see him in a positive light. His partnerships with the West thawed Cold War tensions, yet he failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, per Reuters.

Gorbachev’s legacy in the West

William Taubman, Gorbachev biographer and a professor at Amherst College, said “He was a good man — he was a decent man. I think his tragedy is in a sense that he was too decent for the country he was leading.”

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said “He played a crucial role to end the Cold War and bring down the Iron Curtain. It opened the way for a free Europe. This legacy is one we will not forget.”

President Joe Biden said “After decades of brutal political repression, he embraced democratic reforms. He believed in glasnost and perestroika — openness and restructuring — not as mere slogans, but as the path forward for the people of the Soviet Union after so many years of isolation and deprivation.”

French President Emmanuel Macron called Gorbachev “a man of peace whose choices opened a path to freedom for Russians. His commitment to peace in Europe changed our common history.”

His legacy at home

Yaroslav Trofimov, chief foreign-affairs correspondent of The Wall Street Journal, said “Gorbachev is dead, cursed as a traitor in Russia and admired by hundreds of millions from Central and Eastern Europe — including me — who owe their freedom today to his decision not to shed blood to preserve the empire.”

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Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s minister of foreign affairs, said “Lithuanians will not glorify Gorbachev. We will never forget the simple fact that his army murdered civilians to prolong his regime’s occupation of our country. His soldiers fired on our unarmed protesters and crushed them under his tanks.”

Sergej Sumlenny, a Russian-born journalist and former director of the Berlin-based think tank Heinrich Böll, said “Mikhail Gorbachev died. He was a criminal who ordered to violently suppress peaceful protest in Riga, Vilnius, Tbilisi, Alma-Ata, and other cities.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Gorbachev “sincerely wanted to believe that the Cold War would end, and that it would usher in a period of eternal romance between a new Soviet Union and the world, the West. This romanticism turned out to be wrong,” per the BBC.

In Russia, the reaction to Gorbachev’s death is hesitant. According to The Associated Press, the former leader will not be given the honor of a state funeral but will be buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery next to his wife.

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