Farewell to Mikhail Gorbachev the father of perestroika

MEETING GINEVRA: MIKHAIL GORBACIOV - Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev speaks during a meeting on the 20th anniversary of Geneva Summit, at the building United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Monday 30 May 2005. The United Nations Office in Geneva hosts a meeting between Mikhail Gorbachev, the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, and representatives of the Permanent Missions to the United Nations and the international organizations in Geneva. The occasion of the meeting is the 20th anniversary of the 1985 Geneva Summit which triggered the end of the Cold War era. ANSA/LAURENT GILLIERON /KLD

On the evening of Tuesday, August 30, the news of the disappearance of the former Soviet premier arrived. Perestroika, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from Afghanistan: the name of Mikhail Gorbachev, who died in hospital at the age of 91 after a long illness, evokes an entire era of historical changes which ended in ’91 with the collapse of the USSR.