Russians paid their final respects to the Soviet Union's last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, in a ceremony held in Moscow without much fanfare and with President Vladimir Putin conspicuously absent.
Several thousand mourners filed quietly past Gorbachev's open casket in the historic Hall of Columns, flanked by honour guards under the Russian flag.
The hall has long been used for high-level funerals in Russia, and it was where Joseph Stalin's body was first laid in state following his death in 1953, during four days of national mourning.
With Russia facing growing international isolation as a result of its military intervention in Ukraine, many in attendance cited Gorbachev's opening of the country to the rest of the world.
"It was a breath of freedom that had been missing for a long time, an absence of fear," 41-year-old translator Ksenia Zhupanova said at the hall's entrance.
"I am opposed to isolating us from the outside world; I am in favor of openness and dialogue." "This is what Mikhail Sergeyevich demonstrated to the world," she said, referring to Gorbachev by his patronymic.
The mourners ranged in age, with some old enough to recall the years of Soviet stagnation before Gorbachev came to power, and others young enough to have only known Russia under Putin.
Gorbachev died on Tuesday at the age of 91 after a "serious and long illness," according to the hospital where he was being treated.
Between 1985 and 1991, he tried to transform the Soviet Union through democratic reforms, but he eventually brought it down.
One of the twentieth century's great political figures, he was lauded in the West for his role in ending the Cold War and attempting to change the USSR, but reviled in Russia for the economic chaos and loss of global influence that followed the Soviet collapse.
On Thursday, state television showed Putin alone, laying a bouquet of red roses near Gorbachev's open casket at the hospital where he died.
Because of his "work schedule," Putin will not attend the funeral on Saturday, according to the Kremlin.