The authorities of his native village banned the opening of the Mikhail Sergeevich museum
The first and last President of the USSR celebrated his 85th birthday. For the anniversary of Mikhail GORBACHEV, a museum was supposed to open in the Stavropol village of Privolnoye. A fellow villager of the former Secretary General, founder of the group “Tender May” Andrei RAZIN, was going to exhibit in the house that once belonged to the Gorbachev family a huge archive that he inherited from Mikhail Sergeevich’s mother. However, due to a ban from local authorities, the ceremony did not take place.
Upset, Razin revealed to Express Gazeta one of the secrets of the sensational exhibition.
I will say this: I will definitely open the museum as soon as the head of the village administration changes. Then Privolnoye will receive thousands of tourists.
- How did the Gorbachev family archive come into your possession? Many people don’t believe that it even exists.
My grandmother, Valentina Mikhailovna, was friends with Mikhail Sergeevich’s mother, her neighbor Maria Panteleevna, all her life. When she got old, she began to look after her. Just imagine: since 1985, when he became Secretary General, Gorbachev has never visited his mother! Even when he drove around the Caucasus Helmut Kohl and was several kilometers from my father’s house, I still didn’t stop by. I was embarrassed by my mother, a collective farmer. He also didn’t send a penny of money. All her needs were provided by the collective farm.
In 1985, six people from the KGB came to the village with their wives and children. People were evicted from the private houses closest to Maria Panteleevna’s site, and they moved in there ready-made. They blocked the street with a barrier. No one except my grandmother was allowed through freely. And when the USSR ceased to exist and Gorbachev resigned, all six KGB officers fled a few days later. They abandoned Maria Panteleevna, who had diabetes, to the mercy of fate. Weighing 150 kilograms, she turned out to be completely helpless. My grandmother could no longer cope with her alone, and I sent her my guard to help her.
Hid books with Hitler's autograph from my mother
On September 15, 1992, Maria Panteleevna called to congratulate me on my birthday and during the conversation asked me to enter into a guardianship agreement with her, she continues Andrey Razin. “She cried, complained that Misha didn’t want to take her home, that only she and Valya were left. I left the laid table and my friends and went to Privolnoye. The head of the village and the secretary of the village council, who is also a notary, were waiting for me at home to conclude a guardianship agreement with Maria Panteleevna. She insisted that for the care that I would provide her, all property should be transferred to my name. Well, I didn't care as long as she didn't worry.
Gorbachev at that time flew to all countries and, as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, taught people about life. For some reason I wrote in a Stavropol newspaper that a person who has forgotten his mother cannot care about the fate of the globe. A few days later, scandals began between us and trials began. But nothing worked out for Mikhail Sergeevich. We signed a settlement agreement only in 1995, after his family home and the entire archive became my property.
- So what was in the archive?Documents and 200 photographs. “Misha doesn’t need this, save it for posterity,” Maria Panteleevna asked me. I have already published many photos. But today I’m telling Express Newspaper first about one relic!
In a suitcase with Gorbachev's papers, I found three photo albums dedicated to the 1936 Olympics, with the seal of the Reich Chancellery and the signature Hitler. Maria Panteleevna said that Misha brought them when he worked as secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and worked on its archives. Somehow Gorbachev took the albums and hid them with his mother. There was also a German left-handed watch with a swastika and SS paraphernalia - crosses, embroidered shoulder straps, buttons. According to his mother, all this was left over from wartime: Misha found a dead German officer somewhere and skinned him like a stick.
So this is where his love for the Germans began?! Apparently, he was so worried about his action that he decided to atone for his guilt before Germany by handing over the entire eastern part of the country to the West Germans.
Half a kingdom for a stupid cross.
- What would you wish your fellow countryman for his birthday?
As a family member, I would like to wish him good health. Age is serious, but there is no need to be discouraged. He has good genes, if he throws less dirt on Russia, he will live for a long time.
Today, many journalists more often call Andrei Razin not a producer, but the second Ostap Bender. He never graduated from cultural education school. But the lack of education, which was present in Razin’s biography at that time, did not prevent the young man from realizing that “Tender May” could bring considerable income. In promoting the group, Razin was helped by an imaginary relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev. And a few years later, Andrei Alexandrovich met in court with the mother of the first president of the USSR.
"Adoptive" grandmother
First of all, it is worth mentioning that Andrei Razin comes from Stavropol, where, as you know, Mikhail Gorbachev was born. In Stavropol, Razin entered the cultural and educational school, but never finished it. After serving in the army, he returned to his native land, where for about 2 years he worked as deputy chairman of a collective farm located in the village of Privolnoye. It was then that Razin introduced himself for the first time as Gorbachev’s nephew in order to get some equipment for the collective farm. Then he used this legend many more times, trying to promote his new group “Tender May”.
Even when he was already famous, Razin from time to time visited the village of Privolnoye, Stavropol Territory, to visit his named grandmother Valentina Gosteva. He met her when he worked as deputy chairman of a local collective farm. Mikhail Gorbachev’s mother, Maria Panteleevna, also lived there, in Privolny. Andrei Alexandrovich became friends with her too. Razin was very sociable.
Custody agreement
In 1993, Andrei Razin, being on good terms with Maria Panteleevna Gorbacheva, persuaded her to sell her only house in Privolnoye. The old lady signed the contract. Why Gorbachev decided to make this deal, and where Mikhail Sergeevich himself was at that moment, history is silent. However, in Nikolai Zenkovich’s book “Mikhail Gorbachev. Life before the Kremlin” quotes the words of a certain Kaznacheev, who claimed that the president rarely visited his mother; his son did not visit her even when he was in the Stavropol region on business. Razin himself has repeatedly stated through the media that Gorbachev does not care about his mother at all.
However, according to some reports, Maria Panteleevna was going to move to Moscow, to be with her son. But then she changed her mind and agreed with Razin that she would live in the house she had already sold until the end of her days. A custody agreement was concluded between the parties.
The house was returned, but not to the mother
However, this agreement soon became the subject of a dispute in one of the courts of the Stavropol Territory. Lawyers for Gorbachev and his mother argued that the deal should be considered illegal, since Maria Panteleevna was an illiterate and generally gullible woman, which Andrei Alexandrovich did not take advantage of. In addition, guardianship, according to the law, can only be established over an incompetent person, which Gorbachev never was.
Apparently, because of this whole story, the health of Maria Panteleevna, who was already at a fairly advanced age, had deteriorated. The old woman even had to be hospitalized. Also in 1993, Gorbachev died. After her death, Razin nevertheless returned the house to Mikhail Sergeevich.
Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev is the former General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, the first and only president of the Soviet Union.The activities of the Soviet leader influenced the course of world history, in particular, it led to the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and the Warsaw Pact countries, ensured the signing of an agreement with the United States on reducing the number of medium-range missiles, and contributed to the reunification of Germany. These and other merits of his became a compelling reason for awarding the politician the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the post-Soviet space, the historical role of the ex-president is assessed ambiguously - some consider him an outstanding political figure who managed to break a powerful totalitarian system, others blame him for the deliberate collapse of the state and even for all the current troubles of the Russian Federation.
Childhood
The future leader of the superpower was born in the Stavropol region on March 2, 1931 in the Russian-Ukrainian family of collective farmers Sergei Andreevich and Maria Panteleevna (nee Gopkalo). Both of his grandfathers suffered from the Soviet regime: his paternal grandfather was exiled to Siberia, his maternal grandfather was accused of “anti-Leninism” and was almost executed. 
During the Second World War, his father fought, and Mikhail and his mother fell into occupation. After the liberation of the village, he continued his studies at school, from the age of 15 he worked as an assistant combine operator, and at the age of 17 he was awarded his first order - the Red Banner of Labor.
In 1950, the young man received a certificate and without exams (as an order bearer) became a student at the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University, and 2 years later - a member of the CPSU. Upon completion of his education in 1955, he was assigned to work in the prosecutor's office of the city of Stavropol.
Career development
Mikhail Sergeevich worked in his specialty for a little more than a week, and then switched to Komsomol work - he headed the regional propaganda department of the youth organization of the Communist Party. 
Successfully advancing in his career, in 1956 he already became the secretary of the city committee, and 5 years later he took a similar post in the regional committee of the Komsomol. In 1961, he was nominated as a delegate to the XXII Congress of the CPSU, a year later - party organizer of the regional committee of agricultural administration, then - head of the department of regional party organizations. He studied in absentia at the economics department of the Stavropol Agricultural Institute and earned a reputation as a promising, thoughtful and principled party worker. In 1966, Gorbachev headed the city party committee.
Many top officials of the country came to Stavropol on vacation, with whom the future Secretary General had good relations. It is known that Yuri Andropov valued Gorbachev, called him a “Stavropol nugget” and considered his candidacy for the position of deputy chairman of the KGB of the Soviet Union.
In 1970, he was appointed first secretary of the regional party committee. The young and proactive party functionary, in addition to Andropov, was highly valued by other first-echelon leaders, including Brezhnev, Gromyko and Suslov. In 1978, he was elected Secretary of the Central Committee, and he moved to the capital. Two years later he was included in the Politburo.
In 1985, he was nominated for the post of General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. Since 1988, Gorbachev began to combine it with the post of head of the Supreme Council. Once at the pinnacle of power, he became the initiator of processes that remained in history under the names “perestroika”, “acceleration”, “glasnost”, “prohibition”. Among the achievements of his reign are also the right to choose one’s religion and the opportunity to travel abroad. On March 15, 1990, the politician became President of the USSR and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the military forces.
Mikhail Gorbachev announces the introduction of Prohibition
In 1991, a number of party functionaries, major security officials, members of the government and the KGB announced the formation of the State Emergency Committee and reported that the leader of the state was unwell.
In August, the Soviet leader resigned as secretary general, and in November he resigned from the CPSU. In December, the leaders of the union republics signed an agreement to create the Commonwealth of Independent States, ending the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Later, the ex-leader did not acknowledge responsibility for the collapse of the USSR and shifted it onto Russia and Boris Yeltsin.
Mikhail Gorbachev on the Belovezhskaya Accords
Having decided to resign, the former head of the superpower began to engage in active social activities. He organized the Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Research, wrote a number of scientific papers, and published the works “Alone with Myself,” “Life after the Kremlin,” and “Gorbachev in Life.”
Mikhail Gorbachev. First and last
In 2016, he received congratulations from Vladimir Putin on his 85th birthday. The ex-president sometimes criticized the policies of the leader of the state, but on the whole he always supported them. In 2017, he presented his memoirs “I Remain an Optimist” at a meeting with readers in the capital’s “House of Books.”
Personal life
The former president is a widower. He met his late wife Raisa Maksimovna (before Titarenko’s marriage) during his student years. They got married in 1953 and after graduation they moved to the North Caucasus together. 
In 1957, the couple had a daughter, Irina. His wife worked as a lecturer for the Knowledge Society and taught at the philosophy department of the Medical and Agricultural Institute. After moving to the capital, she lectured at Moscow State University, was involved in social activities and always supported her husband’s progressive endeavors.
Mikhail Sergeevich and Raisa Maksimovna Gorbachev. Love story
In 1999, she was diagnosed with leukemia and, despite the efforts of German oncologists, she died. This was a huge blow for Mikhail Sergeevich. In 2009, with the help
When the first settlers came to these lands, they were amazed at the unprecedented beauty of the local nature, and with all their hearts and once and for all gave the place they liked a suitable name - Privolnoye. Couldn't have said it better. Here truly wonderful landscapes open up to the eyes of the traveler, and for the villagers there is nothing sweeter in the world. The picturesque banks of the Yegorlyk River sheltered Ukrainian settlers on one side, and the Khokhols settled here, and on the other side, as you might guess, the Muscovites. And there is a noticeable hill in the vicinity, whose name is Gorbachi. Once upon a time, this is where the ancestors of the Gorbachev family settled. Back in the middle of the last century, their huts stood, which are no longer there, fell into disrepair, the place became unpromising, people moved to the center of the village, and the hill they inhabited became just a beautiful meadow...
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Photo from the collections of the Stavropol Local Lore Museum-Reserve named after. G. Prozritelev and G. Prave.
Several years ago, an expedition of employees of the Stavropol Local Lore Museum-Reserve named after. G. Prozritelev and G. Prave. Museum workers were attracted by the remains of an ancient Cossack redoubt located in the Krasnogvardeisky district, and the second main goal was to get acquainted with the small homeland of the most famous Privolnensky. Thus, in the rich storerooms of the museum, a somewhat unique fund of M. S. Gorbachev appeared. He is unique not because of some newly discovered facts from his biography - what new can be found here? – and records of simple human memories made during meetings with villagers. A participant in the expedition, researcher at the history department, Tatyana Ganina, told me about this.
“We will forever remember these ten days in Privolnoye precisely because of the opportunity to directly communicate with relatives, friends, and simply fellow villagers of Mikhail Sergeevich. Of course, I was generally interested in the opinion of my fellow countrymen about him. Nice, sweet, warm-hearted people live in Privolnoye. And the topic of Gorbachev is very difficult for them. In its own way, it’s even painful, because it has happened more than once that visiting tourists, people who call themselves journalists, simply grossly distorted and misinterpreted the words of Privolnaya residents... And articles, programs, films appeared that had little or no correspondence with reality...
It is known that in modern Russia the attitude towards the first President of the USSR is very ambiguous. Too much has changed, some perhaps not for the better. But the Privolnians do not want to judge their famous fellow countryman. All of them are almost unanimously, quietly, sincerely proud that their land is his homeland. Each resident will happily lead the guest along Naberezhnaya Street, to the house in which the elder Gorbachev family lived, where the daughter of the secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU, Irina, was raised as a child by her grandparents for some time. Today the house has a different owner, who carefully preserves its coziness like a peasant, complaining about the disrepair and problems with repairs. Families of Gorbachev's first and second cousins, former classmates and friends live on the neighboring streets.
Many of the museum workers’ interlocutors unanimously repeated: “he” was very trusting, soft, and in big politics with such a character you cannot resist, so they “set him up”, “they did not allow him to turn around, they put a spoke in his wheels.” And the whole village is also unanimously confident that thanks to the name of Gorbachev, when he was at the pinnacle of power, Privolnoye became so comfortable - to the envy of many. They even built a hospital here that was fit for any regional center. Today the village can no longer afford to maintain it. However, some residents believe that the local authorities did all this... out of fear: what will “himself” say if he suddenly comes to his native land?
Popular rumor, as usual, preserves, passing from mouth to mouth, a variety of stories, some real and some semi-mythical. But there are still more real ones. “Misha studied very well at school, he was very capable, he grasped knowledge on the fly, in algebra lessons he even solved problems for the teacher! She used to cry, couldn’t decide, apparently she didn’t have enough literacy, but Misha would take it and decide!” “And he was smart! He played ditties on the balalaika, his father bought him a balalaika.” And it’s okay that some of the ditties were “with cuss words”; what kind of village kid doesn’t know them! Well, for this there was a scolding from the stern Maria Panteleevna... Classmates recalled that the Gorbachev family lived stronger than others. Firstly, for a long time, until he was 14 years old, Mikhail was an only child, and secondly, his father, Sergei Andreevich, thank God, returned alive from the war, but he was a sniper at the front! He was respected for his enormous hard work and calm, reasonable character. “Won’t hurt a fly!” He was an excellent mechanic. Surely the son also inherited his father’s best qualities, take at least the well-known story of young Mikhail being awarded an order for his work as a helmsman for his father, a combine operator, during the 1946 harvest. The year turned out to be fruitful, of course, but the links of the father and son Gorbachevs, as well as their comrades father and son Yakovenko, threshed a record amount of grain. In the post-war years, it was not unusual for teenage boys to work in the fields alongside their elders. And this work, of course, is not easy. So both glorious families deservedly received awards: the fathers of the Order of Lenin, the sons of the Red Banner of Labor. Yes, the presence of a high award may have affected Mikhail’s successful admission to the university, but who would dare to accuse such an order-bearer of careerism? “Then they didn’t give orders just like that!” - say the fellow countrymen. And they are right.
Young Gorbachev grew up like all the village kids: there was a lot of work in the farmstead, and he helped herd the cattle, and he met the cow in the evenings, and he brought many buckets of water from the well... “He’s such a rich falcon!” – in the mouths of today’s Privolnensky grandmothers one can still hear echoes of old girlish loves. It was probably no coincidence that the young wife he brought, a thin city dweller, was initially greeted rather coldly. Our own rural assessment criteria had an impact. “She’s just as ordinary, dark-haired (tanned, that is). We thought – bring some wine!..”
Gorbachev’s former classmates, Natalya Stefanovna Kuzmenko and her husband Viktor Ivanovich, told museum workers how Mikhail’s grandfather personally “wrinkled his pistons”: there were such homemade leather shoes, traditional in the south. So Misha has pistons with fur inside - he loved, you know, his grandson’s grandfather. “And his handbag was so fancy,” that is, from hemp canvas, from which everything was sewn back then - pants, shirts, skirts... There were no briefcases. But Misha was awarded a New Year's briefcase for his excellent studies - a luxurious gift at that time.
Also, his fellow countrymen said, Misha loved to communicate with teachers, and they were all young then, not much older than the students themselves. In a word, psychologically Mikhail was clearly ahead of his peers. “He was rich, he had all the textbooks, that’s why he studied well,” explained one of his classmates. True, he immediately “declassified” innocently: “We’re not going to class, we’re sitting and playing with the ladies” (dice, that is). In fact, those who wanted to study, studied. Yes, one childhood friend dropped out of school at the age of 12, and remained an ordinary collective farmer all his life. And classmate Tamara Gavrilovna Polyakova (the wife, by the way, of Gorbachev’s second cousin) said: “I wanted to study so much, although I had to babysit the younger ones, but I still graduated from both school and the agricultural institute, and became an agronomist.” Other successful classmates include officer Gennady Donskoy, famous Stavropol poet Gennady Fateev...
The village also well remembers the “Khokhlyatsii” family of Gorbachev’s mother; her maiden name was Gopkalo. Maria Panteleevna’s father once headed a collective farm in Privolnoye, and left a kind, grateful memory of himself. He helped many soldiers' widows in difficult years. Mikhail looks very similar to his grandfather, Pantelei Efimovich. Maria Panteleevna herself, they remember, was a simple, “ordinary” collective farmer woman, she worked like everyone else. She kept the house in order and strictness.
At the end of the seven-year school, Mikhail continued his studies, first in the neighboring village of Kommunar, and in the 10th and 11th grades at school No. 1 in Krasnogvardeisky, where he had to rent a room, and this also says a lot: a teenager is separated from his family, which means he has was independent and disciplined. And on weekends, to visit relatives, I had to walk about 15 kilometers! Occasionally, however, I was lucky - the collective farm chairman gave me a lift in a lorry, but more often I still got there on my own. And even then his fellow countrymen respected him for his “learnedness.” One of her peers, Alexandra Grigorievna Varnavskaya, also a Gorbachev in her maidenhood, recalled how more than once in the late evenings, when the lights in the whole village had already gone out, one window would glow for a long time: “Why is the Gorbachev’s light on? And this is Misha reading!”
Mikhail Sergeevich’s second cousin Pyotr Petrovich Polyakov, a former chief engineer on a collective farm, and his wife Tamara Gavrilovna, Gorbachev’s classmate, said in a conversation with museum workers: at the regional level, “he” was an excellent leader. And being the chief regional commander, he never forgot the Privolnenskys; the doors of his regional committee office were always open for them. This was confirmed by his childhood friend Viktor Fedorovich Myagkikh: Gorbachev maintained purely human communication with his fellow countrymen at any government posts, there was no “distance”, but there were good and strong contacts.
Over the years, of course, meetings happen less and less often. But the tradition remains: to meet the distinguished guest in the building of the former board of the collective farm named after. Sverdlov, where the bank branch is located today. And the Privolnians really want their own Gorbachev museum to finally appear here, or at least a corner of it in the village museum. But so far there is no museum. There is only a detachment of enthusiasts collecting all sorts of memorable antiquities, but it is difficult to say when this spontaneous collection will be able to take on the form of a museum. It's a pity. It seems that the entire Stavropol region should be interested in this issue. Frankly, the fact that there is still no such museum in the small homeland of the Secretary General and the President is simply puzzling. Perhaps, thanks to the searches and discoveries of museum workers from the regional center, this gap will soon be filled? After all, no matter how you feel about the figure of Gorbachev, no matter how you praise or criticize him, his very name is part of our common history, isn’t it? Thanks to the name of Vladimir Lenin, modern Ulyanovsk has a unique quarter-memorial of the old city, and the village of Shushenskoye still attracts tourists, if not as a place of exile for the leader, then as a perfectly preserved corner of the Siberian village... Is this bad? The ideological layers are gone, but the historical memory remains.
Privolnoye deserves such a memory in all respects. One has only to walk along the quiet streets, intoxicating in the spring with the aroma of blooming gardens, or, stopping on the bridge, listen to the cheerful song of Yegorlyk.
Today, however, as during the years of his reign, the attitude towards the first president of the USSR remains ambiguous. Nevertheless, journalists still do not stop writing about the life of Mikhail Gorbachev, both past and present. Gorbachev’s pedigree is also of keen interest, especially his grandfather, whose name was Andrei Moiseevich.
Parents
Mikhail Gorbachev is a native of the Stavropol region of Ukraine. There, in the village of Privolnoye, he was born in 1931. His father Sergei Andreevich Gorbachev participated in the Great Patriotic War. He was wounded more than once at the front and was awarded the Order of the Red Star and the Medal “For Courage” for his service. At one time he joined the party. All his life, Sergei Andreevich worked as a combine operator and tractor driver. From ordinary workers he managed to become a foreman.
Mikhail Sergeevich’s mother, Maria Panteleevna Gorbacheva, bore the surname Gopkalo as a girl. She also worked on a collective farm. She was an illiterate and religious woman. At least, this is how her contemporaries remembered her in Nikolai Zenkovich’s book “Mikhail Gorbachev. Life before the Kremlin." Until the end of her days, Maria Panteleevna lived in Privolny.
Maternal line
The parents of the president's mother also came from peasants. With the advent of Soviet power, Gorbachev’s grandfather Panteley Efimovich Gopkalo immediately took her side. Pantelei Efimovich took part in the creation of collective farms, the chairman of one of which he himself later became. However, these circumstances did not save Gopkalo from Stalin’s repressions. In 1937, he was arrested and accused of sabotage and membership in a Trotskyist organization. Gorbachev's grandfather was threatened with execution. A lucky chance helped him avoid death. The fight against the so-called “excesses” began; the head of the GPU of the Krasnogvardeisky district, who initiated the arrest of Gopkalo, committed suicide. Pantelei Efimovich was acquitted and released.
The president's grandmother Vasilisa Lukyanovna, the wife of Pantelei Efimovich, bore the surname Litovchenko before her marriage. She was a religious woman. In her house, next to Orthodox icons, portraits of the leaders, Lenin and Stalin, hung.
Paternal line
Unlike Pantelei Efimovich, the other grandfather of the General Secretary on his father’s side, Andrei Moiseevich Gorbachev, did not want to be part of the new Soviet system in any way and refused to join the collective farm. He chose to remain a sole proprietor. However, Andrei Moiseevich could not cope with the norms, for which he was convicted in 1934. Gorbachev was sent to work in the Irkutsk region, cutting down forests. He returned home and immediately expressed a desire to move from individual peasants to collective farmers. He worked on the collective farm until the end of his days.
Mikhail Gorbachev's great-grandfather's name was Moses Andreevich Gorbachev. It was he who at one time transported the family from the Voronezh province to the Stavropol Territory. In the book of memoirs “Life and Reforms,” the President of the USSR argued that the resettlement of Moisei Andreevich, his wife Stepanida and three sons occurred against the will of his great-grandfather. However, historian Anatoly Kozhemyakin in his article “Moses Gorbachev was our fellow countryman” (information portal “Commune”) refutes this point of view. He writes that according to his calculations, Moisei Andreevich was born in the second half of the 19th century, when no one was forcibly sent to the Stavropol Territory.
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