Mikhail Gorbachev, who died late on Monday, was the only leader of the Soviet Union to ever visit Malta, in a December 1989 trip that is remembered as a milestone in contemporary Maltese history.

Gorbachev was here, of course, to meet US President George Bush in a historic summit that was credited with having buried the Cold War in the stormy waters of Marsaxlokk Bay.

The Soviet leader flew to Malta after another historic meeting - with Pope John Paul II in Rome.

In contrast to Bush, he was accompanied by his wife Raisa on the trip. Also in contrast to Bush, he did not use a helicopter to travel from Luqa to Valletta to meet Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami, instead opting to be driven in a Russian presidential car.

The Valletta meeting with Fenech Adami was held at around midnight, but  despite the late hour Castille Square was full of onlookers, eager to get a glimpse of the popular, reformist leader.

Mikhail Gorbachev meets with Eddie Fenech Adami.

People burst out shouting 'Gorby, Gorby,' as he appeared before and after the meeting at the top of the Castille steps and he delighted the crowd by shaking hands with quite a number of people before getting into his car after the meeting, at about 1am.

Rough weather played havoc with the plans for the summit meeting. The two presidents were due to have alternate meetings on board the US Sixth Fleet flagship Belknap and the Soviet cruiser Slava (later renamed Moskva and recently sunk during the Ukraine war). Both were anchored at Marsaxlokk Bay.

But since getting to them was difficult in rough weather, meetings were held on the Soviet cruise ship Maxim Gorky, securely berthed to a quay in what is now the freeport.

As Gorbachev welcomed Bush on board, reporters asked him what he planned to do with the Warsaw Pact (the Eastern bloc defence alliance). He replied, jovially, that the first thing he intended to do was "to eliminate those types of warships which you cannot board in this type of weather."

Asked if he had a secret agenda for the meeting, he quipped "We will have a secret agenda to disarm the Sixth Fleet."

The two presidents sat across a table so narrow that their papers touched. Gorbachev later said they could kick each other.   

“For me and President Bush, it was very important to look each other in the eye, to clarify each other’s intentions and to evaluate the proposals that the two sides brought to the negotiating table,” Gorbachev had told Times of Malta's Vanessa Conneely in a feature to mark 30 years since the summit was held. 

The meeting was held just weeks after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and although no agreements were signed, it crucially served to build confidence between the two sides.

"The world is leaving one epoch and entering another. We are at the beginning of a long road to a lasting, peaceful era. The threat of force, mistrust, psychological and ideological struggle should all be things of the past," Gorbachev had told a press conference in a crowded, stuffy hall on board the Gorky.  

While Gorbachev was making history with Bush on board the Gorky, his wife Raisa - who died a few years ago - was visiting places of interest in Valletta, not without its own problems.

Fr Marius Zerafa, the former director of museums, who showed her around, told Times of Malta in 2019 that in his autobiography, he recalled Gorbachev writing something like ‘When I visited Malta I saw lines of rubble walls, while my wife got taken to see the island’s treasures’.

Raisa Gorbacheva is shown around St John's by Fr Marius Zerafa.

Russia’s First Lady was taken on a tour of St John’s Co-Cathedral. The tour was due to take place in the morning, but was initially cancelled because of the bad weather.

“So, we all left. Then, at 3pm, I got a call from the Prime Minister’s office to say that she was on the way. I told them ‘I don’t have a car’, and they said; ‘we’ll send you a car’. When I got back to the Co-Cathedral, the Prime Minister’s wife and daughter were already there and Mrs Gorbachev had just arrived. But then we realised the door was locked and the sacristan – who had the key – was nowhere to be found," Fr Zerafa recalled.

"Once we got inside, she loved it and asked lots of interesting and educated questions. I apologised for the bad weather, but assured her we only kept this kind of weather for special guests to Malta, such as herself and St. Paul."

Gorbachev, like Bush, left Malta as soon as the summit meeting was over.