Galina Vasilyevna Starovoitova (; 17 May 1946 – 20 November 1998) was a Soviet dissident, Russian politician and ethnographer known for her work to protect ethnic minorities and promote democratic reforms in Russia. She was murdered in 1998.

Early life and academic career

Galina Vasilyevna Starovoitova was born in the Ural Mountains city of Chelyabinsk on 17 May 1946 to a Belarusian father and a Russian mother. She earned an undergraduate degree from the Leningrad College of Military Engineering in 1966 and an MA in social psychology from Leningrad University in 1971. In 1980, she earned a doctorate in social anthropology from the Institute of Ethnography, USSR Academy of Sciences, where she worked for seventeen years. She conducted PhD research at the end of the 1970s, focusing on a sensitive topic at that period, specifically on the role of ethnic groups in Soviet cities. The data of her study were drawn mainly from Leningrad.

Before re-launching her legislative career in 1995, Starovoitova spent her time at the Institute for the Economy in Transition in Moscow, as co-chair of the Democratic Russia Movement, and as a fellow in the Washington-based United States Institute of Peace. With former political prisoner Sergei Grigoryants, and funding from George Soros, she co-organized a series of international conferences in Moscow in the mid-1990s around the theme "The KGB: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow".

In 1995, she was elected to the Russian State Duma from the political movement "Democratic Russia - Free Workers Union". The movement was led by her and two prominent members of the Moscow Helsinki Group: Lev Ponomarev and the dissident Orthodox priest Gleb Yakunin.

Galina Starovoitova was a strong defender of ethnic minorities. She said, "If in accordance with international standards we recognize the rights of nations to self-determination, we must recognize it also within Russia." Sergei Stepashin, then FSK director, and others convinced Yeltsin that military operations were necessary and would be very quick and successful.

She was an editorial board member of Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published in cooperation with the American University and Moscow State University.

Over the years, Galina Starovoitova attended numerous international meetings and discussions, where she had conversations with world leaders including Margaret Thatcher, Jacques Chirac, Václav Havel, Henry Kissinger and Lech Wałęsa.

Starovoitova was strongly against the omnipresence of security services in Russia and believed that lustration was necessary but none of the other elected representatives supported her. Starovoitova has drafted a law on lustration and presented it to the Duma at least 5 times.

In April 1998, she became the leader of "Democratic Russia", then registered as an official party, in order to prepare for State Duma elections that were to be held in December 1999. State security people took the post of Prime Minister in succession at the time. Cabinet of GRU-connected Sergei Kiriyenko was replaced in August 1998 by cabinet of SVR veteran Yevgeny Primakov. Her aide, Ruslan Linkov, was wounded in the attack.<!--

Investigation

Just two days before, Aleksander Litvinenko and seven other FSB officers asserted at a press conference in Moscow that FSB leadership had decided to return to the practice of political assassinations.[http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engEUR460401998] However, then FSB Director Vladimir Putin said: "I do not have any elements from which I can conclude that this was a political murder." [http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engEUR460401998]

--> The murder investigation took place under the personal control of Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin, a prominent member of the pro-Western Yabloko party, former reformist FSB boss under Yeltsin and future Prime Minister of Russia. In June 2005, two hitmen, Yuri Kolchin and Vitali Akishin, were convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 and 23 years of imprisonment respectively. Akishin was named as the one who pulled the trigger and Kolchin as one who had organized the attack. On 28 September 2006, Vyacheslav Lelyavin was sentenced to 11 years in prison for his role in organizing the murder.[https://web.archive.org/web/20140320042733/http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/man-gets-11-years-for-starovoitova-murder/202061.html] Sergey Musin, Oleg Fedosov and Igor Bogdanov are still wanted for the investigation.

According to official investigation, the murder was organized by former GRU hitman Yuri Kolchin. However, the people who ordered this assassination and paid for it have never been found..

See also

  • List of unsolved murders (1980–1999)
  • List of members of the State Duma of Russia who died in office

Footnotes

  • Galina Starovoitova tribute page
  • USIP — Sovereignty after Empire Self-Determination Movements in the Former Soviet Union. Case Studies: Nagorno-Karabakh. by Galina Starovoitova, Publication of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP)
  • Russia: High-Profile Killings, Attempted Killings In The Post-Soviet Period, Radio Free Europe, 19 October 2006
  • Anna Polyanskaya about Galina Starovoitova (Russian)
  • What was Starovoitova killed for? Interview with Ruslan Linkov, by Anna Polyanskaya, 3 May 2005. Machine translation.