Dr. Deborah A. Palmieri

Galina Starovoitova is not a recognized name in America. But her recent assassination in St. Petersburg is like a shot heard around the world and her death is galvanizing popular sentiment for change like never before in Russia.

She was a liberal Russian parliamentarian, an MP representing the party Democratic Russia, the most well-known and outspoken female politician in Russia until she was murdered November 19 in the stairwell of her St. Petersburg apartment, the victim of three bullets to her head. Her killers, suspected to be one masked man and one women, left behind their weapons, a Beretta pistol and an Argan-2000 machine pistol. The life of a 52 year old woman, a mother, a grandmother and ardent fighter for democracy had been extinguished.

Galina Starovoitova had a reputation for being independent, courageous, outspoken, bold and controversial. She marched to the tune of her own drummer and was captive to no special political dogma - just the ideal of freedom and democracy. By academic training she was an ethnographer and sociologist. She was a close associate of Andrei Sakharov and in the late eighties became known for her advocacy of the Karabakh Armenians who were trying to escape from Azerbaijani control. She was a heroine to the Armenians and in 1989 won a write-in election up set to become a deputy from Armenia to the Congress of People's Deputies. In the early nineties she served as an advisor on nationality problems to President Yeltsin. In 1996, she tried to run for president, but was disqualified on technical grounds.

She spoke her mind and called it as she saw it. She was a vociferous critic of Yeltsin's military campaign in Chechnya. She criticized Mayor Luzhkov for persecuting and expelling people from the Caucasus from Moscow. She challenged the precepts of Vladimir Zhirinovsky and took him on publicly. And most recently, she soundly and loudly condemned the anti-Semitic remarks of Albert Makashov and the refusal of the Communist Party to censure him. She defended human rights, abhorred corruption and mafia dealings.

Theories abound about who killed her and why. Some speculate it was the communists; others the nationalists; yet others are certain it was a "St. Petersburg crime" - an euphemism for the St. Petersburg mafia. One rumor says she possessed a tape of a phone conversation linking St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev and organized crime. Others pointed to her son's business dealings. Some say she wanted to run for Yakovlev's seat and threatened the powers that be. Most likely, we will never know who the killers were.

What was particularly shocking about the crime was that she was considered a thoroughbred politician - no business dealings, no mafia links, just a politician through and through.

Many referred to her as Russia's "Iron Lady." Her murder marked the 6th Duma deputy assassinated since 1993. Some liken it to the Russian equivalent of Britain's loss of Princess Diana.

What does it mean? Does it mean a fragile democracy is on the verge of chaos and collapse? Reflected deep in this tragedy is the reality of a society in the throes of upheaval and change. It certainly marks a turning point in public consciousness that the corruption and mafia must be stopped. It's a symptom of the unbridled reign, especially in St. Petersburg, of bold gangsters or individuals so lacking in moral integrity and decency as to murder in cold blood a woman and nearly fatally wound her assistant. But like our own experience in the U.S. when we lost John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and others to politically motivated assassinations which shook the very foundation of our society, we survived and so will Russia. This incident will not disintegrate the country. One hopes it will, on the contrary, provide for a better society by mobilizing people to demand an end to such lawlessness and ferret out the roots of the criminal influences.

What follows below are some excerpts from eulogies delivered at her funeral and media commentary.

From eulogies at her funeral:

Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matviyenko - representing Prime Minister Primakov

"Forgive us who hold power, forgive us, your colleagues who were unable to protect you. It is terrible that it has become normal to kill priests, journalists and now deputies."

Viktor Chernomyrdin

"These shots were fired at all of us. I want to say once more that the authorities must acquire true authority in order to defend their citizens. If people start talking to politicians in the language of bullets, then we can imagine where that will get us."

Boris Nemtsov

"Why did they kill Galina Starovoitova? Why did they kill our comrade? There is only one answer. The scoundrels wanted to scare us."

Vladimir Lukin

"The authorities sleep and only when world public opinion begins to talk out loud do they wake up. . . No one expected the road to freedom to be so hard or that it would take so much courage to carry on the struggle honorably and to stand up for our ideas."

Media commentary:

Susan Eisenhower, Los Angeles Times, November 27, 1998

"Though Galina V. Starovoitova was not a household name outside Russia, the world is a lonelier place with her passing. One of the brightest lights of the Russian independence and reform movement was extinguished a week ago when Starovoitova and her aide were gunned down in the stairwell of her St. Petersburg apartment. Americans like to talk about our country as the 'land of the free and the home of the brave' but most of us will never know what it is like to have our principles tested in life or death terms. Starovoitova did and yet she chose to stand up and be counted, to oppose hatred and scapegoating - even as the economy collapsed, the crowd thinned, daylight dimmed and dark, ominous forces gathered to seek her demise. Her bravery, in the end, cost her her life."

"But just as her killing has wracked Russia's conscience, it should also sting ours. What have we done in our U.S. policy toward Russia that has prompted the architect of it, Deputy Secretary of State Stroke Talbott, to admit that Russia has been seized by anti-Western sentiment?"

Gail W. Lapidus, San Jose Mercury News

"The brutal assassination of liberal Russian parliamentarian Galina Starovoitova in the stairwell of her St. Petersburg apartment has deprived Russia of one of its most ardent and uncompromising defenders of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Her death November 19 sent shock waves across the Russian political spectrum, as many saw in it the sinister hand of Communist and nationalist enemies. Its evocation of the 1922 murder of Walter Rathenau, the foreign minister of the Weimar Republic whom reactionaries blamed for Germany's military defeat and lost empire, has brought to the fore once again the specter of a 'Weimar Russia' - a fragile democracy now facing the potential for extremist takeover. For the thousands who thronged to her funeral last week or mourned in private, she was not only a beloved political figure, a mother and a grandmother, but also a symbol of so many of the hopes once associated with reform."

New York Times, Editorial, Nov. 23, 1998

"The Russian reform movement has produced few leaders with an uncompromising dedication to democracy. Galina Starovoitova was one, and her murder in St. Petersburg on Friday was a terrible loss for Russia.

Initial evidence suggests that the killing was a political assassination.

Ms. Starovoitova was a woman of irrepressible energy and infectious enthusiasm. But her good humor and quick smile belied a steely commitment to combat the corruption and ethnic divisions that she correctly considered to be the enemies of Russian democracy."