Is it true that the United States awarded Mikhail Gorbachev the medal “For Victory in the Cold War”?

A photograph of the President of the USSR, whose jacket is decorated with a Cold War Victory Commemorative medal, has been circulated on the Internet. We have verified the authenticity of this photo.

A portrait of Gorbachev, allegedly wearing the American Cold War Victory Medal, can be found on various social networks and on several blogging platforms: "VKontakte", Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, "Yandex.Zene", Cont.ws etc.

Let's start with the fact that this portrait of Gorbachev with a medal on his chest is photoshopped. Fact checkers from Vox Ukraine discovered, that the original photo was taken back in 2010 by photographer Venya Markovsky. His Flickr page has a whole photo report — Gorbachev was photographed at an event in May 2010, and in none of the many photographs he is wearing a medal on his jacket.

The medal shown in the edited photograph still exists. However, this is not a state award - for example, on the Medals of America website you can purchase for $20.95. Similar awards wear official status only in Louisiana and Texas. The ribbon for the medal is also separately recognized in Alaska (in all three cases we are talking only about the National Guard). This medal is not mentioned in the list of official awards, published on the US Armed Forces website - there is only a Cold War Recognition Certificate, which can be obtained by military and civilians who served during the Cold War.

Note that the lack of a special medal for Cold War veterans is widely discussed problem in the USA. In 2019, even to Congress entered a bill to introduce such a reward, but for almost two years the initiative has remained motionless. As colleagues from Vox Ukraine note, this situation is quite understandable: it is very difficult to fairly determine who exactly is worthy of receiving a medal, and the list of potential recipients includes millions of people who served in the American army from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s.

In 2008, Gorbachev received The Freedom Medal is a prestigious award given by the National Constitution Center of the United States. The justification on the center's website states that the USSR president was celebrated "for his courageous role in ending the dangerous, decades-long Cold War and for bringing hope and freedom to millions of people who lived behind the Iron Curtain." Notes in the domestic media then came out under headlines like “The United States will reward Gorbachev for ending the Cold War” (RBC) and “Gorbachev received an American medal for ending the Cold War” (“RIA Novosti"). However, the Freedom Medal is not the award that was “painted” to the Soviet leader in the widely circulated image, and the motivation for the award mentions a “role in ending” and not “victory” in the confrontation between the USA and the USSR.

Mostly not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. "Vox Ukraine". Photofake: Gorbachev was awarded the medal “For Victory in the Cold War” in the USA
2. National Constitution Center. Mikhail Gorbachev