MOSCOW, August 31. /TASS/. Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and the last Soviet president, will be buried at Moscow’s Novo-Dyevitchiye cemetery, next to his wife, a source familiar with the wishes of the former president’s loved ones told TASS on Tuesday.

Gorbachev died at the Central Clinical Hospital on August 30. He was 91.

"Mikhail Sergeyevich will be buried, as he willed, next to his spouse Raisa at the Novo-Dyevitchiye cemetery," the source said.

A source in the politician's entourage told TASS on June 20 that Gorbachev was constantly observed by the Central Clinical Hospital doctors. According to the source, the former president was hospitalized in 2020, "at the very beginning of the coronavirus pandemic" at the doctors’ request.

Gorbachev held the highest state office for six years. He proclaimed a new course almost immediately after his appointment as Secretary General of the Communist Party’s Central Committee in 1985, then headed the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, proposed to establish the post of president and abolished the article of the Constitution on the leading role of the party.

Gorbachev resigned his post of the President of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991. The Soviet Union ceased to exist at the same time.