When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reached your limit of one free article.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Exclusive International news coverage

Ad-free experience NEW

Weekly digital MagazineNEW

9 daily & weekly Newsletters

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Free trial

30-days free access, then $2.90
per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
Russia

Goodbye Mr. Perestroika: World's Front Pages Bid Adieu To Mikhail Gorbachev

International newspapers pay homage to the last of the USSR leaders.

Goodbye Mr. Perestroika: World's Front Pages Bid Adieu To Mikhail Gorbachev

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev waves at a Russian book launch event in 2015.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, died Tuesday from a long illness at the Moscow Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow, at age 91. His six years at the head of the USSR, from 1985 to 1991, were notably marked by his role in bringing the Cold War to an end, changing the course of world history.

Born in 1931 in a poor peasant family of Russian and Ukrainian heritage in Privolnoye, Gorbachev grew up in the aftermath of the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 and under the rule of Joseph Stalin. After rising through the ranks of the Communist party, Gorbachev’s reforms ushered in a period of perestroika (“restructuring”) and glasnost (“openness”), contributing to the mostly peaceful end to the Cold War and eventually, the fall of the USSR.


Tributes have been pouring in from politicians and leaders across the world: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called Gorbachev "a one-of-a-kind statesman" while U.S. President Joe Biden paid tribute to a "rare leader" who worked for a better future.

At the same time, international commentators noted that his death came amid Russia’s current war against Ukraine, and renewed dangers of global conflict and nuclear perils, putting a new dark twist to his “ambivalent legacy,” as French daily Le Monde puts it.

Here’s how international outlets featured his passing on their front pages:

U.S. - The Washington Post

The Washington Post

Brazil - Estadao

"The last leader of the Soviet Union dies at 91" — Estadao

Switzerland - Neue Zürcher Zeitung

“Mikhail Gorbachev dies at 91” — Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Spain - ABC

“Goodbye mister perestroika” — ABC

Italy - Corriere Della Sera

“Farewell Gorbachev who changed the world”— Corriere Della Sera

UK - The Guardian

The Guardian

Austria - Kleine Zeitung

"This man wrote the history of the world" — Kleine Zeitung

Peru - El Comercio

“Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the USSR who ended the Cold War, dies” — El Comercio

Ireland - Irish Independent

Irish Independent

Germany - Frankfurter Allgemeine

“Mikhail Gorbachev dies” — Frankfurter Allgemeine

Argentina - Clarin

"Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader who changed the world map” — Clarin

Canada - Toronto Star

Toronto Star

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Society

Maestro Messi: Soccer As A True Art Form

The Argentine Lionel Messi is the personification of soccer sublime . He has come to move fans in ways that art lovers are moved by a painting.

photo of messi making a move

Messi makes his move during a MLS match, September 3, 2023, at the BMO Stadium, in Los Angeles, CA. Inter Miami FC defeated LAFC 3-1

Jon Endow/Image of Sports/Newscom via ZUMA
Luis Vinker

This article was updated on Sep. 8, 2023 at 4:35 p.m.

-Essay-

BUENOS AIRES — Lionel Messi, that giant of soccer, is entering the twilight of his career by joining an American team, Inter Miami. He has received all the praise and glory anyone could in the world of sports, not to mention an ocean of publicity, online and offline, and all the money you could hope to earn. A while back, Marius Serra, a journalist with Barcelona paper La Vanguardia, counted 564 press articles on Messi in Spanish alone.

One is reminded of the "perfect beauty" evoked in one of Shakespeare's plays, mentioned in the novelist Stendhal's (1829) travel diary, Promenades dans Rome. Indeed, beside Messi's status as an icon for soccer fans from Buenos Aires to Bangladesh, is there an artistic dimension to this personage? His followers speak of him in superlative terms that suggest inspiration bordering on dizziness. That is how Stendhal felt viewing works of art in Florence.

One of his biggest fans is the Englishman Roy Hudson, a former footballer now based in Fort Lauderdale close to Miami. Recently he compared the exhilaration of watching Messi live to watching a Shakespeare play with the writer himself or watching Rembrandt paint. Millions of people living in Florida could now watch the greatest soccer player of all time, he said. In 2016, when Messi was in Barcelona, he compared him to the magician Houdini.

He has been a subject for at least two contemporary artists, Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami. Hirst's triptych, Beautiful Messi Spin Painting for One in Eleven, sold for €448,000 for charity a decade ago. Though still young, he already boasts several biographies. One writer, Jordi Puntí, the author of Todo Messi, sees in him the concepts of lightness, speed, precision, visibility and multiplicity, which the Italian author Italo Calvino foresaw decades ago as shaping art and literature this century.

Keep reading...Show less

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reached your limit of one free article.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Exclusive International news coverage

Ad-free experience NEW

Weekly digital MagazineNEW

9 daily & weekly Newsletters

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Free trial

30-days free access, then $2.90
per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch

The latest