Years of life: 1932 - 1999
The life of this woman has always been in the spotlight. Her appearance in public as the first lady in the country was condemned by many. However, in the West, Raisa Gorbacheva made a real revolution, showing the whole world what a Soviet woman could look like...

The wife of the future president of the USSR Raisa Titarenko was born on January 5, 1932 in the city of Rubtsovsk, Altai Territory, in the family of a railway engineer.

In 1949, Raisa, having graduated from high school with a gold medal, came to Moscow and entered the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University. Here, in the hostel, her first meeting with the future Komsomol leader Misha Gorbachev took place.

Mikhail Gorbachev recalled years later with a peculiarity characteristic of his speech: “Then it was a craze to learn ballroom dancing. In the foyer of the club, once or twice a week they learned. The guys from the room told me: Mishka, there is such a girl! .. I went, saw and began to pursue. I'm in my second year, she's in her third. I’m twenty, she’s nineteen… She had a personal drama, her parents interfered in the relationship, she was in a quarrel, worried and was disappointed… My harassment was met coldly… We walked side by side for six months, holding hands. Then a year and a half - when they no longer only held hands. But still, they became husband and wife after the wedding.

She did not ask for parental blessings for marriage with Gorbachev, notifying her mother and father at the last moment. The wedding turned out to be a student wedding, without wedding rings. But the suit and dress on the bride and groom were completely new - Mikhail earned money for them on a combine. The future Secretary General that summer went to conquer the virgin lands.

“It is difficult to say how his fate would have developed if he had not married Raisa,” Valery Boldin, an assistant to Gorbachev during his presidency, writes in his book, published in America. “The attitude to the outside world and the character of his wife played a decisive role in his fate and, I am sure, to a significant extent affected the fate of the party and the whole country.”

After graduating from university, Raisa entered graduate school, but Gorbachev refused an offer to work in Moscow, and the couple left for Stavropol, her husband's homeland, where she was to live for twenty-three years. In his specialty, Gorbachev worked in the prosecutor's office for exactly ten days, and then went to public work and soon took the post of first secretary of the Komsomol city committee.

In 1957, after the birth of their daughter Irina, the Gorbachevs were given two rooms in a communal flat. They moved to a separate apartment shortly before, in April 1970, Mikhail Sergeevich became the first secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU. His wife then taught philosophy and sociology at the institute.

As political scientists emphasize, when, after the sudden death of another member of the Central Committee in the Kremlin, the only place that Gorbachev, with his narrow specialization, could apply for - the post of secretary of the Central Committee for agriculture - Mikhail Sergeyevich found himself in Moscow, jumping over several career steps at once. So in November 1978, the family was again in the capital. At first, the Gorbachevs lived in the state dacha, where Sergo Ordzhonikidze once lived. Then they got an apartment, and two years later - a new cottage.

With Andropov

When her husband became the head of state, Raisa was terribly worried and asked Mikhail Sergeyevich how she should behave now. “Nothing has changed for us,” he replied. "Behave like before." But "as before" did not work anymore ...

“Her activity, luxurious toilets - all this was too defiant,” says historian Roy Medvedev. “Gorbachev’s behavior harmed her husband as well - the irritation of the people spread to him.”

With Ronald and Nancy Reagan

And indeed: barely appearing on television, Raisa Maksimovna aroused persistent curiosity among men and sharp hostility among most women of the entire Soviet Union. People actually felt that she changed outfits too often, too aggressively “climbs into the frame” and talks too much (and slowly!) She was also not forgiven for her mentor teaching manner of proclaiming long-known common truths.

“There are a lot of myths and conjectures about some of my extraordinary predilection for villas, summer cottages, luxurious outfits, jewelry,” Raisa Maksimovna was surprised. “I didn’t sew either with Zaitsev, as he hinted in his interviews, or with Yves Saint Laurent, as the journalists claimed ... I was dressed by female craftsmen from the atelier on Kuznetsky Most ... "

However, claims to clothing are not the only ones presented to Raisa Maksimovna. V. Boldin writes in his book that the KGB, at the request of the wife of the first leader of the country, selected a staff of servants for her, which was supposed to consist of silent, hard-working women no younger and no more attractive than Raisa Maksimovna herself.

Before the era of Gorbachev, Valentina Tereshkova, as a rule, met with the wives of presidents, prime ministers, kings and other high-ranking persons who came on visits to the USSR. She knew how to find a common language with any person. They say that Raisa Maksimovna did not like the position of the leader and the authority of Tereshkova. Only she began to perform these functions - the first lady should, of course, be in the spotlight.

Be that as it may, but the first lady of the USSR broke the tradition, by virtue of which the wives of the highest Soviet leaders remained behind the scenes of public life. She stood at the origins of the Soviet Cultural Fund, created in the late 1980s. It was with her support and direct participation that his numerous cultural programs were carried out. She managed to convince everyone that the Museum of Marina Tsvetaeva is simply necessary. She was also engaged in charitable activities, was the honorary chairman of the international association "Hematologists of the World for Children", personally patronized the Central Children's Clinical Hospital in Moscow. In 1997 she created the Club, which became her last hobby and social cause. The main goal of the Club was to discuss social problems: the role of women in modern Russia, the situation of vulnerable sections of society, especially children.

Undoubtedly, Gorbacheva's personality aroused great interest abroad as well. At the moment of her appearance on the political horizon, foreign newspapers were full of headlines: “The only one of the Kremlin wives who weighs less than her husband!”; "Communist lady with Parisian chic!" Subsequent events showed that interest in the first lady of the USSR did not weaken over the years. In 1988, Raisa Gorbacheva was awarded the "Women of the World" award, in 1991 - the "Lady of the Year" award. It was noted that the wife of the President of the USSR acted in the eyes of the world community as a "messenger of peace", and her strong support for Gorbachev's plans was also emphasized.

Since his retirement, Gorbachev has written six books. In the West, many of them became bestsellers, while in Russia they were almost never published. The books required painstaking work: every figure, every fact was verified and confirmed by archival documents. A large share of the rough work was done, again, by Raisa Maksimovna.

... After the Belovezhskaya collusion and Gorbachev's voluntary resignation, she disappeared from the field of view of the general public. The Gorbachevs lived in a dacha that the Russian government granted the President of the USSR for life use. In his book Life and Reforms, Mikhail Sergeevich wrote that his wife had been ill for two months: the consequences of Foros and the post-Foros events in the country had an effect. According to some information, it is known that Raisa Maksimovna suffered a stroke in Foros, which caused paralysis of her arm and half of her face. And shortly before her death, she told her husband: “Yes, I probably had to get such a serious illness and die so that people would understand us.”

Gorbachev died of leukemia, a blood cancer, when she was 67 years old. Perhaps, scientists believe, this is the indirect fault of those who conducted tests at the Semipalatinsk test site in 1949. Then a radioactive cloud covered the hometown of Raisa Maksimovna - Rubtsovsk. Since then, leukemia has been the most common disease in the Altai Territory.

Doctors know that it is, alas, easy to “oversee” this disease: the patient begins to feel weakness, loss of strength, the temperature rises slightly, which is usually perceived in the home circle as symptoms of overwork or a cold. And only a sufficiently detailed analysis reveals the so-called "shift" in the blood formula: individually, all indicators are more or less within the normal range, and the overall picture requires immediate hospitalization of the patient and the start of a course of treatment.

The decision to treat Raisa Maksimovna in Munster was taken jointly by Russian and German doctors, with full mutual consent. And so it turned out that she spent the last months of her life in Germany, at the clinic of the University of Westphalia under the supervision of Professor Thomas Buchner, one of the leading hematologists and oncologists in Europe.

With Estee Lauder

“To be completely honest, the likelihood of a successful outcome was low,” he admitted. - At first, she was prescribed chemotherapy, after which we hoped to do a bone marrow transplant. The donor was supposed to be Lyudmila Titarenko, her own sister. But during chemotherapy, immunity is sharply reduced and the risk of infection increases. Raisa Maksimovna had just such a case. At one time she began to recover sharply, and we hoped that a life-saving operation could be carried out soon. But suddenly she felt worse - she fell into a coma. She died without ever regaining consciousness.

With daughter and granddaughter

Having received the terrible news, Gorbachev spent the whole morning in his room, coming to his senses and deciding what to do next. Probably the most difficult thing for him in recent days was that Raisa Maksimovna was unconscious, and he could not say even a word to her.

On the anniversary of the death of the first lady of the USSR, the Vagrius publishing house published the book "Raisa", compiled from diaries, interviews, articles, a large number of letters and telegrams that flowed like a river to the Gorbachev family in the last days of Raisa Maksimovna ...

With daughter and granddaughters

“I didn’t touch, and even now I almost don’t touch the office, as it was under Rais,” Mikhail Sergeevich admits. We had a large room separated by a wall. I worked in one part, and Raisa Maksimovna in the other. When I finally came to my senses, I discovered that the table, the window sills in her office were all covered in papers. She started working on the book. I found the blueprint for this book. Thirty-three chapters. And the title is written with a red pen: "What the heart hurts about." I started looking, flipping through, and, my God, I felt that it was probably my fault that she had passed away. So load with trials an impressionable, very responsible person, vulnerable to injustice ... "

Visiting Barbara Bush

“I constantly observe how completely strangers stop and stand for a long time at the grave of Raisa Maksimovna,” says Galina Vasilyeva, head of the Novodevichy cemetery. - This woman had some kind of attractive force ... Very often the Gorbachevs come with the whole family and stand sad for a long time. Mikhail Sergeevich takes care of the grave himself. And he never asks us for anything. Probably can't trust this to a stranger."

“It has been a long time since she was gone, but the grief has not diminished,” admits the former president of the USSR. “It has only become dull, but not weakened.”

Raisa Maksimovna often comes to him in a dream: he hears a phone call, picks up the phone, and this is her! "Where are you from?" - Mikhail Sergeevich invariably asks. But no response...

The funeral

Text by E. N. Oboymina and O. V. Tatkova

Gorbacheva Raisa Maksimovna
Born: January 5, 1932
Died: September 20, 1999 (age 67)

Biography

Raisa Maksimovna Gorbacheva - Soviet and Russian public figure, wife of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, President of the USSR Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev.

Childhood and youth

Paternal grandfather Andrei Filippovich Titarenko moved from the village to Chernihiv, was a non-partisan, spent four years in prison, worked as a railway worker. Paternal grandmother - Maria Maksimovna Titarenko. Andrei Filippovich and Maria Maksimovna had three children: two daughters and a son. Andrei Filippovich was put on a heart pacemaker, but this did not prolong his life, he died during a walk, and was buried in Krasnodar.

Maternal grandfather Pyotr Stepanovich Parada (1890-1937) - was a wealthy peasant, had six children, four survived: son Alexander Parada (he worked as an economist, died at 26), son Ivan Parada and daughter Alexander. Grandfather was shot as a Trotskyist, as he opposed collectivization and the Stakhanov movement, and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1988. Maternal grandmother Anastasia Vasilievna Parada - a peasant woman, died of starvation.

Raisa Maksimovna Titarenko was born on January 5, 1932 in Rubtsovsk, West Siberian (now Altai) Territory in the family of railway engineer Maxim Andreevich Titarenko (1907-1986), who came to Altai from the Chernigov province. Mother, Alexandra Petrovna Titarenko (nee Parada; 1913-1991), is a native Siberian, a native of the village of Veseloyarsk, Rubtsovsky District, Altai Territory. Younger brother, writer - Yevgeny Titarenko (b. 1935). Sister - Lyudmila Maksimovna Ayukasova (b. 1938) graduated from the Bashkir Medical Institute, worked as an ophthalmologist in Ufa. During the illness of R. M. Gorbacheva, Lyudmila was ready to become a bone marrow donor for her sister.

The family moved frequently after her railway father, and Raisa spent her childhood in Siberia and the Urals. After graduating with a gold medal from secondary school number 3 in the city of Sterlitamak (1949), she came to Moscow and was admitted to the Faculty of Philosophy at Moscow State University without exams (1950). There, in a hostel, she met her future husband, Mikhail, who studied at the Faculty of Law.

On September 25, 1953, she married Mikhail Gorbachev. The wedding was played in the dietary canteen of the student hostel on Stromynka.

As Mikhail Gorbachev told in September 2014 in an interview for the press, Raisa Maksimovna's first pregnancy in 1954, back in Moscow, due to heart complications after suffering rheumatism, doctors, with his consent, were forced to interrupt artificially; the student spouses lost the boy whom his father wanted to name Sergey. In 1955, the Gorbachevs, having completed their studies, moved to the Stavropol Territory, where Raisa felt better with a change in climate, and soon their only daughter, Irina, was born to the couple.

Life in the Stavropol Territory

After graduating from the university, she entered graduate school, but soon after her husband, who was assigned to the Stavropol prosecutor's office, she moved to the Stavropol Territory. For the first 4 years, R. M. Gorbacheva could not find a job in her specialty, and the family lived on the wages of her husband, a Komsomol worker. The Gorbachev family lived in a small rented room in Stavropol, where in 1957 Raisa Maksimovna and Mikhail Sergeevich had a daughter, Irina. In the same year, the family moved into a communal apartment, where they occupied two large rooms.

Living in Stavropol, R. M. Gorbacheva was a lecturer at the Stavropol branch of the All-Russian Society "Knowledge", taught at the Department of Philosophy of the Stavropol Medical Institute, the Stavropol Agricultural Institute, prepared scientific qualification work in the field of sociology.

In 1967, she defended her thesis at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute on the topic “Formation of new features of the life of the collective farm peasantry (based on sociological research in the Stavropol Territory)” and received a PhD in Philosophy.

On December 6, 1978, the Gorbachevs moved to Moscow. There, before the election of Mikhail Gorbachev as Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Raisa Maksimovna lectured at Moscow State University, continued to participate in the activities of the All-Russian Society "Knowledge".

first person's wife

After 1985, when her husband was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Raisa Maksimovna took up social activities. Together with academician D.S. Likhachev, G.V. Myasnikov and other figures of Russian culture, she created the Soviet Cultural Fund, became a member of the presidium of the Fund.

Largely thanks to R. M. Gorbacheva, the Central Museum of Ancient Russian Culture and Art, the All-Russian Museum of Decorative, Applied and Folk Art, the Marina Tsvetaeva Museum, the Museum of Private Collections of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the Benois Family Museum in Peterhof, the Roerich Museum received support from the Foundation . He also contributed to the restoration of churches and monuments of civil architecture, the return to the USSR of previously exported cultural property, libraries and archives. In the period from 1986 to 1991, the Fund attracted and directed funds equivalent to one hundred million US dollars for cultural activities.

As the wife of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, and later the President of the USSR, she accompanied Gorbachev on his trips, participated in the receptions of foreign delegations who came to the Soviet Union, regularly appeared on television, often causing hostility of Soviet women, many of whom thought that she was too often changes clothes and talks a lot. Before her, as a rule, Valentina Tereshkova met with the wives of high-ranking officials who came to the USSR.

“There are a lot of myths and conjectures about my extraordinary passion for villas, dachas, luxurious outfits, jewelry,” Raisa Maksimovna was surprised. “I didn’t sew with Zaitsev, as he hinted in his interviews, or with Yves Saint Laurent, as the journalists claimed ... I was dressed by women masters from the atelier on Kuznetsky Most ... ”.

Claims for outfits were not the only ones that slipped in the press then. The former head of the General Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU and assistant to M. S. Gorbachev, V. I. Boldin, writes in his book “The collapse of the pedestal” about how the KGB was instructed to select a staff of servants for the first lady from silent, hard-working women, no younger and no more attractive than the hostess .

Abroad, Gorbacheva's personality aroused great interest and high marks. So, the British magazine "Woman's Own" named her Woman of the Year (1987), the International Together for Peace Foundation awarded Gorbachev with the "Women for Peace" award, in 1991 - with the "Lady of the Year" award. It was emphasized that the wife of the President of the USSR acted in the eyes of the public as a "messenger of peace", and her active support for the progressive ideas of Gorbachev was noted.

During the years of Gorbachev's presidency, she participated in the work of the board of the Help to the Children of Chernobyl Foundation, patronized the International Charitable Association World Hematologists for Children, and patronized the Central Children's Hospital in Moscow. Gorbachev was promoted to the ranks of active European figures, became the laureate of a number of public awards, an honorary professor at universities in Europe, America, and Asia.

However, the hostility of compatriots and compatriots to Gorbacheva’s lifestyle pursued her until the August putsch of the State Emergency Committee of 1991, when, during the days of the imprisonment of the President of the USSR in Foros, people for the first time saw in her a woman who supported her husband in difficult times. As a result of these events, she suffered a microstroke, her vision deteriorated.

last years of life

Public activity and charity

After Gorbachev's voluntary resignation from the post of President of the USSR, she disappeared from the field of view of the press. The Gorbachev couple lived in a dacha given to the former President for life use.

In 1996, Mikhail Gorbachev ran as a candidate for the President of the Russian Federation. Raisa Maksimovna was against it, but she helped her husband as much as she could.

“I was against the entry of Mikhail Sergeyevich into the new presidential campaign. Because I did not learn from books what the life of a reformer is. I had to share this life with him. I've been through a lot since 1985. And that's the only reason I didn't want Mikhail Sergeevich to return again and become president. But Gorbachev is a politician to the last cell of his being. He made a decision, and I am his wife and I help him.”

After the collapse of the USSR, Mikhail Sergeevich wrote six books. Raisa Maksimovna did a great job of checking facts and figures for him.

R. M. Gorbacheva was also the honorary chairman of the association "Hematologists of the World for Children", which was involved in helping patients with leukemia, personally patronized the Central Children's Clinical Hospital in Moscow.

In 1997, she created and headed the Raisa Maksimovna Club, which provided assistance to children's hospitals, provincial teachers and teachers working with "difficult children". Within the framework of the Club, social problems of Russia were discussed: the role of women in society, the situation of unprotected layers of society, children. In the modern activities of the club, an important place is occupied by the study of gender inequality and restrictions on the participation of women in public politics. Currently, the President of the Club is the daughter of Raisa and Mikhail Gorbachev - Irina Virganskaya.

Illness and death

On July 22, 1999, doctors at the Institute of Hematology of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, headed by the attending physician and friend of the Gorbachev family A. I. Vorobyov, discovered Raisa Gorbacheva had a serious blood disease - leukemia. Among the possible causes of the disease were the transferred medication, stress, complications after other diseases. It is also possible that the disease was the result of nuclear tests in Semipalatinsk in 1949, when a radioactive cloud covered her hometown. One of the causes of Gorbachev's illness was also called the consequences of radioactive exposure received by her during a visit to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant shortly after the 1986 disaster.

Already on July 26, 1999, R. M. Gorbachev, accompanied by her husband and daughter, arrived in Münster at the medical clinic of the University of Westphalia. Wilhelm, which is known for its success in the field of cancer treatment. For about two months, her treatment continued here under the supervision of Professor Thomas Buchner, one of the leading hematologists and oncologists in Europe. Bulletins about the state of health of R. M. Gorbacheva were broadcast in 1999 by all the media, which made her say shortly before her death: “Probably, I had to get such a serious illness and die so that people would understand me.”

“To be completely honest, the probability of a successful outcome was low,” admitted Gorbacheva's attending physician, Professor T. Buechner. - At first, she was prescribed chemotherapy, after which we hoped to do a bone marrow transplant. The donor was supposed to be Lyudmila Titarenko, her own sister. But during chemotherapy, immunity is sharply reduced and the risk of infection increases. Raisa Maksimovna had just such a case. At one time she began to recover sharply, and we hoped that a life-saving operation could be carried out soon. But suddenly she felt worse - she fell into a coma. She died without ever regaining consciousness.

She died on September 20, 1999 at about 3 am local time, and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Memory

In 2006, with the support of the Gorbachev Foundation, the Gorbachev family and a deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Reserve Corporation A.E. Lebedev, the Raisa Gorbacheva International Fund was established in London, designed to finance projects aimed at combating childhood leukemia and cancer. In 2006, A.E. Lebedev transferred to the Raisa Gorbacheva Foundation his stake in a Russian aircraft rental company worth about one hundred million pounds sterling (approximately $190 million).

The Institute of Pediatric Hematology and Transplantology in St. Petersburg was named after R. M. Gorbachev, the creation of which in 2007 became possible thanks to the activities of the Gorbachev Foundation. At the opening of the institute, the chief hematologist of the Russian Federation Alexander Rumyantsev emphasized that “through the efforts of Gorbacheva in 1994, the first department of pediatric hematology and transplantology was opened in Russia, and today there are already 84 such departments.”

On June 16, 2009, Mikhail Gorbachev released the CD "Songs for Raisa", dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the death of Raisa Maksimovna. As Gorbachev said, the disk contains seven favorite romances by Raisa Maksimovna, performed by him accompanied by Andrei Makarevich. The disc was put up for a charity auction in London, but was not widely distributed.

In December 2014, the British National Archives published 30-year-old archival government documents relating to the first visit in December 1984 of M. S. Gorbachev and his wife to London. As it turned out, after the visit, Raisa Maksimovna maintained a correspondence with the British Minister of Agriculture Michael Jopling, whom she met during negotiations at the residence of the Prime Minister Margret Thatcher Checkers, and sent him recipes for potato dishes, and along with them a cookbook. This story was told by the British newspaper The Telegraph.

Raisa Maksimovna Gorbacheva was remembered not only as the first lady of the country and the wife of the only president of the Soviet Union. This woman found the strength to engage in serious charitable activities, and her own career, and family life, which, due to the high position of her husband, was completely on her shoulders.

Throughout the entire presidency and even later, the actions of Raisa Gorbacheva were discussed and condemned, but it can be said with confidence that this woman with a difficult biography was distinguished by an enviable strength of character and endurance.

Childhood and youth

The future wife of the president was born on January 5, 1932 in the city of Rubtsovsk (Altai Territory). Raisa Maksimovna's father was Ukrainian by nationality, originally from the Chernihiv province, and her mother was a native Siberian. Three children grew up in the family: little Raisa had a younger sister and brother. Sister Lyudmila, who in marriage took the surname Ayukasova, worked as an ophthalmologist. Brother Yevgeny Titarenko became a writer.

Because of the profession of his father (he worked as an engineer on the railway), the Titarenko family - such is the maiden name of Raisa Gorbacheva - often moved. They did not live well, so Raisa understood from early childhood that it was necessary to study well and get a profession in order to help her family. These thoughts in the daughter were supported by the mother, who in her youth did not have the opportunity to receive an education.

In 1949, the girl graduated from high school with honors and went to Moscow. In the capital, Raisa Maksimovna easily entered the Moscow State University, choosing the Faculty of Philosophy. And in 1955, already being Gorbachev's wife, Raisa Maksimovna, following her husband, moved to Stavropol for distribution.

Career

In Stavropol, Raisa Maksimovna got a job as a lecturer in the department of the Knowledge society, and also taught philosophy at the medical and agricultural institutes. In parallel, the woman was engaged in science - she studied sociology and organized her own research in this area.

Such painstaking work was not in vain: in 1967, Gorbacheva defended her dissertation in sociology, which was based on the research that Raisa Maksimovna worked on in the Stavropol Territory.

In 1978, Gorbachev and her husband returned to the capital. There, Raisa Maksimovna again got a job as a teacher at Moscow State University and continued to lecture at the Moscow branch of the Knowledge Society. And a few years later, in 1985, Raisa Maksimovna began to accompany her husband (at that time already the General Secretary of the Central Committee) on all business trips and business trips.

It is worth noting that for that time, such behavior of the wife of a party leader was unheard of: the wives of top officials and politicians were always kept in the background, often no one even knew their names, and photos of these women never got into the press of that time. But Raisa Maksimovna turned out to be not like that, who considered it her duty to support her husband in everything and constantly be with him.

Surprisingly, the figure of Raisa Maksimovna was met with much more sympathy and interest abroad than in her native country. One of the British magazines even called Gorbachev the woman of 1987. But in the Soviet Union, Raisa Gorbachev was often condemned at first.

In addition to helping her husband, Raisa Maksimovna was constantly involved in charity work, considering this the direct duty of the first lady. Under the leadership of Gorbacheva, the fund for helping the children of Chernobyl worked, in addition, Raisa Maksimovna was directly involved in the activities of the international fund for supporting children with leukemia.

Gorbachev did not forget about culture either. Raisa Maksimovna stood at the origins of the creation of the Soviet cultural fund, entering the presidium of this organization. With the support of the Foundation, the Museum, the Roerich Museum, the Petrodvoretsk Museum of the Benois family worked. In addition, Raisa Maksimovna achieved the restoration of many architectural monuments and church buildings.

When Mikhail Gorbachev left the presidency, Raisa Maksimovna helped her husband in writing books, checking background information and necessary facts. Also, together with her husband Gorbachev, she opened the Gorbachev Foundation, which was engaged in sociology and political science. In 1991, a woman wrote an autobiography called "I hope ...".

In 1997, Gorbacheva founded the Raisa Maksimovna Club, which included representatives of the country's scientific and cultural elite. This club helped socially unprotected people - single mothers, provincial doctors and teachers, orphans.

Personal life

Raisa (then Titarenko) met her future husband at the university - he studied at the Faculty of Law. Since then, Mikhail Sergeevich and Raisa Maksimovna have not parted. The wedding of lovers was modest - the students simply did not have money for a magnificent celebration.

In 1957, the Gorbachevs had a daughter, Irina (married, Virganskaya). Irina received a medical education and subsequently became vice president of the Gorbachev Foundation, founded by her parents.

Death

In 1999, Raisa Maksimovna's health began to fail. Doctors discovered a serious disease in a woman - blood leukemia. The best doctors in Russia and Germany joined the treatment of the former first lady, but, unfortunately, the efforts were in vain.

Raisa Maksimovna's sister was even going to become a bone marrow donor, but Gorbacheva's condition suddenly deteriorated sharply, and the operation had to be abandoned. And already on September 20, 1999, Raisa Maksimovna was gone. Doctors called the cause of death an oncological disease, which could not be cured. Gorbacheva was 67 years old.

The funeral of Raisa Gorbacheva, which took place on September 23, gathered thousands of people who came to say goodbye to this strong woman. The grave of Raisa Maksimovna is located at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow. Until now, people bring flowers to the gravestone of Raisa Gorbacheva.

Memory

• In 2006, the Raisa Gorbacheva International Foundation was established in London to finance projects aimed at combating childhood leukemia and cancer.
• The Institute of Pediatric Hematology and Transplantology in St. Petersburg was named after R. M. Gorbacheva.
• On June 16, 2009, Mikhail Gorbachev released the CD "Songs for Raisa", dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the death of Raisa Maksimovna.

Mr and Mrs Gorbachev

In 1985, the Soviet country, tired of a series of funerals, breathed a sigh of relief. An energetic 54-year-old came to the post of General Secretary of the CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev that gave people hope for a better future.

The new leader made speeches without a piece of paper and willingly communicated with people on the streets. However, the Soviet citizens, who managed to fall in love with Gorbachev, were surprised to find that there was always a woman next to him, who surpassed the General Secretary with her energy and determination.

The woman's name was Raisa Gorbacheva, and she was destined to go down in history as the first and last "first lady" of the USSR.

Historically, for most of the Soviet era, the country was ruled by leaders without mates. Nadezhda Krupskaya was not so much a wife as a comrade in the struggle, Nadezhda Alliluyeva committed suicide, wife Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev were housewives who eschewed public events. The main woman of the Soviet Union was cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, which successfully performed duties related to participation in various international events.

World in rapture, Union in confusion

Before Raisa Gorbacheva in the 20th century, there was only one wife of the first person in Russia, who led an active social and political life, and did not hesitate to influence her husband. The name of the woman Alexandra Fedorovna Romanova. The activities of the last Russian Empress became one of the factors that led the Russian Empire to collapse in 1917.

Soviet citizens of the mid-1980s, of course, could not personally remember this, but genetic memory made them treat Raisa Maksimovna with caution.

But in the West they were delighted. Raisa Gorbacheva clearly fit into the idea of ​​the "first lady", and for many representatives of Western countries her appearance was an indicator that the USSR during perestroika was becoming more humane.

The British magazine "Woman's Own" named her Woman of the Year in 1987, the International Together for Peace Foundation awarded Gorbachev with the "Women for Peace" award, and in 1991 - with the "Lady of the Year" award.

Her photographs did not leave the covers of Western publications, leading journalists of the world dreamed of doing interviews with her, stylists noted her excellent taste.

Raisa Gorbacheva led an active social life - thanks to her assistance, the Soviet Cultural Fund was founded, new museums were created, and architectural monuments were restored.

Gorbacheva participated in the work of the board of the Fund "Help to the Children of Chernobyl", patronized the International Charitable Association "Hematologists of the World for Children", patronized the Central Children's Hospital in Moscow.

From the point of view of today, Raisa Maksimovna was engaged in the classic activities of the "first lady".

But for the USSR, such activity of the wife of the head of state was unusual. Citizens reflected their bewilderment in anecdotes:

“- How does CPSU-MIR stands for?
- Who Rules the Soviet Union - Misha and Raya!

The "First Lady of the USSR" has become a hostage to the impending political and economic crisis in the country. The failures of her husband among the people were immediately transferred to her. Gorbachev appeared in jokes as soft-bodied, unable to take a step without his wife.

“Early in the morning Gorbachev went out on the balcony to smoke.
- Misha, are you smoking in your shorts again? - he heard the voice of Raisa Maksimovna "
- Yes. How do you know?
“Voice of America just broadcast.”

Style and charm of Raisa Gorbacheva: 10 images of the first lady of the USSR

Clothes as a reason for hatred

The clothes of Raisa Gorbacheva became the talk of the town. There was talk among the people that millions of state rubles were spent on them, and the secretary general's wife changes costumes several times a day.

“There are a lot of myths and conjectures about some of my extraordinary predilection for villas, summer cottages, luxurious outfits, jewelry. I did not sew Zaitsev, as he hinted in his interviews, neither Yves Saint Laurent, as the journalists claimed ... I was dressed by women masters from the atelier on Kuznetsky Most, ”Raisa Maksimovna later explained.

Today, against the backdrop of endless top models, "socialites", wives and daughters of oligarchs, the then "splendor and luxury" of the life of Mikhail Gorbachev's wife seem ridiculous. But for Soviet women who were unaccustomed to this, who made their own outfits with the help of patterns from the magazines Rabotnitsa and Peasant Woman, Raisa Gorbacheva became an eternal irritant.

And the deeper the country slipped into economic problems, the stronger became hostility and even hatred for the wife of the head of state.

With a large crowd of people on the pedestrian Arbat, the reader recited a pamphlet addressed to the Gorbacheva couple, which began with the words:

“Gorbachev woke up early, got up confidently from the sofa,
She didn’t let Rai sleep on the family bed ... "

Former head of the General Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU and assistant to Gorbachev Viktor Boldin in his book "The collapse of the pedestal", he later wrote that the KGB was instructed to select a staff of servants for the "first lady" from silent, hard-working women, no younger and no more attractive than the hostess.

Even during the reign of Gorbachev in Moscow, there were rumors about a documentary film "The Queen" filmed by someone from the guards of the head of state, which described all kinds of indecencies and abuses of the ruler's wife.

After resignation

The history of the beginning of the century was repeated - the country was heading for collapse, and angry citizens were "washing the bones" of the leader and his wife who had lost authority.

For the first time, Soviet people felt some kind of compassion for Raisa Maksimovna after they saw footage of the return of the Gorbachevs from the three-day "Foros captivity." The "First Lady" was not like herself, she looked tired and confused.

However, it was only an episode. In December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged the collapse of the USSR, although he expressed disagreement with it, after which he changed his office in the Kremlin to an office in the Gorbachev Foundation.

The citizens of the former USSR were not up to Raisa Maksimovna: some tried to survive in the fire of armed conflicts, others barely made ends meet under the weight of "shock therapy".

The Gorbachev family did not know such troubles. They were still welcomed in the West, and at home they were given privileges that allowed them to avoid the problems that ordinary citizens experienced.

The stories in the media about the next visit of the retired president and ex-“first lady” to a Western country did not add points to them in the eyes of their compatriots.

“We are all to blame before Raechka”

A bolt from the blue in the summer of 1999 was the news that Raisa Gorbacheva was diagnosed with leukemia. And according to Russian tradition, this trouble radically changed the attitude towards the wife of the retired president of the USSR.

There were “heroic” versions of the causes of her illness among the people. They said that it was all about the radioactive cloud that covered the hometown of the then Raisa Titarenko after testing atomic weapons. According to another version, the disease developed after the wife of Mikhail Gorbachev visited the Chernobyl nuclear power plant immediately after the 1986 disaster.

They wished her a speedy recovery, sent numerous greetings, and prayed for her health. The Russian media published regular bulletins about her state of health.

Raisa Maksimovna, who was in the sterile ward of one of the best clinics in the world in Munster, Germany, once said: “Probably, I had to get such a serious illness and die so that people would understand me.”

Neither the best doctors nor the most modern means helped. On September 20, 1999, at about 3 am local time, Raisa Gorbacheva passed away.

She was buried on September 23, 1999, at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow. Along with the figures of politics and show business, modest old pensioners hurried to say goodbye, not hiding their tears.

They, who survived the most difficult trials in the years after the collapse of the USSR, snatched money from their funds for flowers, and told reporters: "We are all to blame for Raechka."

Since the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev, three “first ladies” have already changed in Russia, and this institution is becoming familiar to our country. But neither Naina Yeltsina, nor Lyudmila Putina, nor Svetlana Medvedeva did not play such a prominent role as was prepared for Raisa Gorbacheva.

Today the Institute of Pediatric Hematology and Transplantology in St. Petersburg bears the name of Raisa Gorbacheva in 2007. This clinic was created with the support of the Gorbachev Foundation. A worthy cause and a worthy memory of a woman who left a mark in the history of the country.

Many years ago, when the future first and only president of the USSR was still diligently summarizing the classics of Marxism-Leninism, he was struck by Engels' phrase that a woman is a different civilization. Whether because he took the expression he liked “on a pencil”, or maybe just love for his wife turned out to be too strong, Gorbachev never hid his admiration for the woman living nearby, recklessly overturning the brutal stereotypes of his compatriots with unaccepted tenderness.

The life of this woman has always been in the spotlight. Her appearance in public as the first lady in the country was condemned by many. However, in the West, Raisa Gorbacheva made a real revolution, showing the whole world what a Soviet woman could look like...

Acquaintance

The wife of the future president of the USSR Raisa Titarenko was born on January 5, 1932 in the city of Rubtsovsk, Altai Territory, in the family of a railway engineer.

In 1949, Raisa, having graduated from high school with a gold medal, came to Moscow and entered the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University. Here, in the hostel, her first meeting with the future Komsomol leader Misha Gorbachev took place.

Mikhail Gorbachev recalled years later with a characteristic peculiarity of his speech:

“Then it was a craze to learn ballroom dancing. In the lobby of the club once or twice a week. A student of the law faculty of Moscow State University in 1953 was learning. The guys from the room told me: Mishka, there is such a girl! .. I went, saw and began to pursue. I'm in my second year, she's in her third. I’m twenty, she’s nineteen… She had a personal drama, her parents interfered in the relationship, she was in a quarrel, worried and was disappointed… My harassment was met coldly… We walked side by side for six months, holding hands. Then a year and a half - when they no longer only held hands. But still, they became husband and wife after the wedding.

She did not ask for parental blessings for marriage with Gorbachev, notifying her mother and father at the last moment. The wedding turned out to be a student wedding, without wedding rings. But the suit and dress on the bride and groom were completely new - Mikhail earned money for them on a combine. The future Secretary General that summer went to conquer the virgin lands.

“It is difficult to say how his fate would have developed if he had not married Raisa,” Valery Boldin, an assistant to Gorbachev during his presidency, writes in his book published in America. “The attitude to the outside world and the character of his wife played a decisive role in his fate and, I am sure, to a significant extent affected the fate of the party and the whole country.”

Years of life and work in the Stavropol Territory

After graduating from university, Raisa entered graduate school, but Gorbachev refused an offer to work in Moscow, and the couple left for Stavropol, her husband's homeland, where she was to live for twenty-three years. In his specialty, Gorbachev worked in the prosecutor's office for exactly ten days, and then went to public work and soon took the post of first secretary of the Komsomol city committee.

In 1957, after the birth of their daughter Irina, the Gorbachevs were given two rooms in a communal flat. They moved to a separate apartment shortly before, in April 1970, Mikhail Sergeevich became the first secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU. His wife then taught philosophy and sociology at the institute.

The return of the Gorbachevs to the city of their youth

As political scientists emphasize, when, after the sudden death of another member of the Central Committee in the Kremlin, the only place that Gorbachev, with his narrow specialization, could apply for - the post of secretary of the Central Committee for agriculture - Mikhail Sergeyevich found himself in Moscow, jumping over several career steps at once. So in November 1978, the family was again in the capital. At first, the Gorbachevs lived in the state dacha, where Sergo Ordzhonikidze once lived. Then they got an apartment, and two years later - a new cottage.

When her husband became the head of state, Raisa was terribly worried and asked Mikhail Sergeyevich how she should behave now. “Nothing has changed for us,” he replied. "Behave like before." But "as before" did not work anymore ...

“Her activity, luxurious toilets - all this was too defiant,” says historian Roy Medvedev. “Gorbachev’s behavior harmed her husband as well - the irritation of the people spread to him.”

And indeed: barely appearing on television, Raisa Maksimovna aroused persistent curiosity among men and sharp hostility among most women of the entire Soviet Union. People actually felt that she changed outfits too often, too aggressively “climbs into the frame” and talks too much (and slowly!) She was also not forgiven for her mentor teaching manner of proclaiming long-known common truths.

“There are a lot of myths and conjectures about my extraordinary addiction to villas, summer cottages, luxurious outfits, jewelry,” Raisa Maksimovna was surprised. “I didn’t sew either with Zaitsev, as he hinted in his interviews, or with Yves Saint Laurent, as the journalists claimed ... I was dressed by female craftsmen from the atelier on Kuznetsky Most ... "

However, claims to clothing are not the only ones presented to Raisa Maksimovna. V. Boldin writes in his book that the KGB, at the request of the wife of the first leader of the country, selected a staff of servants for her, which was supposed to consist of silent, hard-working women no younger and no more attractive than Raisa Maksimovna herself.

Before the era of Gorbachev, Valentina Tereshkova, as a rule, met with the wives of presidents, prime ministers, kings and other high-ranking persons who came on visits to the USSR. She knew how to find a common language with any person. They say that Raisa Maksimovna did not like the position of the leader and the authority of Tereshkova. Only she began to perform these functions - the focus should, of course, be the first lady.

Be that as it may, but the first lady of the USSR broke the tradition, by virtue of which the wives of the highest Soviet leaders remained behind the scenes of public life. She stood at the origins of the Soviet Cultural Fund, created in the late 1980s. It was with her support and direct participation that his numerous cultural programs were carried out. She managed to convince everyone that the Museum of Marina Tsvetaeva is simply necessary. She was also engaged in charitable activities, was the honorary chairman of the international association "Hematologists of the World for Children", personally patronized the Central Children's Clinical Hospital in Moscow. In 1997 she created the Club, which became her last hobby and social cause. The main goal of the Club was to discuss social problems: the role of women in modern Russia, the situation of vulnerable sections of society, especially children.

Undoubtedly, Gorbacheva's personality aroused great interest abroad as well. At the moment of her appearance on the political horizon, foreign newspapers were full of headlines: “The only one of the Kremlin wives who weighs less than her husband!”; "Communist lady with Parisian chic!" Subsequent events showed that interest in the first lady of the USSR did not weaken over the years. In 1988, Raisa Gorbacheva was awarded the "Women of the World" award, in 1991 - the "Lady of the Year" award. It was noted that the wife of the President of the USSR acted in the eyes of the world community as a "messenger of peace", and her strong support for Gorbachev's plans was also emphasized.

Since his retirement, Gorbachev has written six books. In the West, many of them became bestsellers, while in Russia they were almost never published. The books required painstaking work: every figure, every fact was verified and confirmed by archival documents. A large share of the rough work was done, again, by Raisa Maksimovna.

Illness of Raisa Maksimovna Gorbacheva

... After the Belovezhskaya collusion and Gorbachev's voluntary resignation, she disappeared from the field of view of the general public. The Gorbachevs lived in a dacha that the Russian government granted the President of the USSR for life use. In his book Life and Reforms, Mikhail Sergeevich wrote that his wife had been ill for two months: the consequences of Foros and the post-Foros events in the country had an effect. According to some information, it is known that Raisa Maksimovna suffered a stroke in Foros, which caused paralysis of her arm and half of her face. And shortly before her death, she told her husband: “Yes, I probably had to get such a serious illness and die so that people would understand us.”

Gorbachev died of leukemia, a cancer of the blood, when she was 67 years old. Perhaps, scientists believe, this is the indirect fault of those who conducted tests at the Semipalatinsk test site in 1949. Then a radioactive cloud covered the hometown of Raisa Maksimovna - Rubtsovsk. Since then, leukemia has been the most common disease in the Altai Territory.

Doctors know that it is, alas, easy to “oversee” this disease: the patient begins to feel weakness, loss of strength, the temperature rises slightly, which is usually perceived in the home circle as symptoms of overwork or a cold. And only a sufficiently detailed analysis reveals the so-called "shift" in the blood formula: individually, all indicators are more or less within the normal range, and the overall picture requires immediate hospitalization of the patient and the start of a course of treatment.

The decision to treat Raisa Maksimovna in Munster was taken jointly by Russian and German doctors, with full mutual consent. And so it turned out that she spent the last months of her life in Germany, at the clinic of the University of Westphalia under the supervision of Professor Thomas Buchner, one of the leading hematologists and oncologists in Europe.

“To be completely honest, the likelihood of a successful outcome was low,” he admitted. – At first, she was prescribed chemotherapy, after which we hoped to do a bone marrow transplant. The donor was supposed to be Lyudmila Titarenko, her own sister. But during chemotherapy, immunity is sharply reduced and the risk of infection increases. Raisa Maksimovna had just such a case. At one time she began to recover sharply, and we hoped that a life-saving operation could be carried out soon. But suddenly she felt worse - she fell into a coma. She died without ever regaining consciousness.

Having received the terrible news, Gorbachev spent the whole morning in his room, coming to his senses and deciding what to do next. Probably the most difficult thing for him in recent days was that Raisa Maksimovna was unconscious, and he could not say even a word to her.

The memory of Raisa Maksimovna

On the anniversary of the death of the first lady of the USSR, the Vagrius publishing house published the book "Raisa", compiled from diaries, interviews, articles, a large number of letters and telegrams that flowed like a river to the Gorbachev family in the last days of Raisa Maksimovna ...

“I didn’t touch, and even now I almost don’t touch the office, as it was under Rais,” Mikhail Sergeevich admits. We had a large room separated by a wall. I worked in one part, Raisa Maksimovna worked in the other. When I finally came to my senses, I discovered that the table, the window sills in her office were all covered in papers. She started working on the book. I found the blueprint for this book. Thirty-three chapters. And the title is written with a red pen: "What the heart hurts about." I started looking, flipping through, and, my God, I felt that it was probably my fault that she had passed away. So load with trials an impressionable, very responsible person, vulnerable to injustice ... "

“I constantly observe how completely strangers stop and stand for a long time at the grave of Raisa Maksimovna,” says Galina Vasilyeva, head of the Novodevichy cemetery. - This woman had some kind of attractive force ... Very often the Gorbachevs come with the whole family and stand sad for a long time. Mikhail Sergeevich takes care of the grave himself. And he never asks us for anything. Probably can't trust this to a stranger."

“It has been a long time since she was gone, but the grief has not diminished,” admits the former president of the USSR. “It has only become dull, but not weakened.”

Raisa Maksimovna often comes to him in a dream: he hears a phone call, picks up the phone, and this is her! "Where are you from?" Mikhail Sergeevich invariably asks. But no response...