A theatrical retelling of the life of the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev became a smash hit in Moscow in late 2020, as crowds flocked to attend a play that spoke of a need for freedom and democracy in Russia and an end to authoritarianism.
Gorbachev, by then in his late eighties, watched from the audience as two of the country’s best-known actors played him and his beloved wife Raisa.
Now, following his death this week at the age of 91, the production seems like part of a bygone era. Not just to the heady days of perestroika in the 1980s, when Gorbachev rolled back decades of Soviet repression, but to even recent times before President Vladimir Putin stopped tolerating even the mildest forms of criticism.
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