chael Reagan attended the 2004 funeral of his father, former US president Ronald Reagan, the man sitting behind him, he recalls, was the last leader of the Soviet Union: Mikhail Gorbachev.
Mikhail Gorbachev and my wife and I became friends over the years,” Reagan said from Los Angeles on Tuesday after learning of the Russian’s death aged 91. “What I most remember is him telling me that every time my father and him met, my father would always end every meeting with, ‘If it’s God’s will’, and Mikhail Gorbachev would say to me, ‘I would look around the room to see if God was there’.”
Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev, capitalist and communist, were an unlikely pairing but their series of high profile summits have been praised for helping to end the cold war. Together they negotiated a landmark deal in 1987 to scrap intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
Related: Mikhail Gorbachev obituary
Former Reagan administration officials spoke on Tuesday of the leaders’ chemistry and shared a determination to pull the world back from the brink of a superpower war. They lauded Gorbachev as a Soviet leader who, unlike his implacable predecessors, was willing to constructively engage with Washington.