MOSCOW, June 16 (RIA Novosti) - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has released a disc of Russian love songs in memory of the 10th anniversary of his wife's death, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said on Tuesday.
Only a few copies of the disc "Songs for Raisa," which consists of her seven favorite Russian love songs, have been released. One of them was put on sale at a London charity auction last week.
The auction was attended by London Mayor Boris Johnson, the British prime minister's wife Sarah Brown, Harry Potter author JK Rowling and Russian ambassador to the U.K. Yury Fedotov.
During the event, Gorbachev, 78, sang the love song "Old Letters" winning a storm of applause from the audience, the newspaper said.
Russian musician and leader of the rock group Mashina Vremeni, Andrei Makarevich, who accompanied Gorbachev on the guitar, said the album was sold to an Englishman for 100,000 pounds ($164,000)
The $2.8 million raised at the auction will be used for the treatment of children suffering from leukemia. Raisa Gorbachev, wife of the last Soviet leader, died of the same disease in September, 1999 aged 67.
