Galina Wassiljewna Starowoitowa

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Galina Wassiljewna Starowoitowa ( Russian Гали́на Васи́льевна Старово́йтова ; born May 17, 1946 in Chelyabinsk ; † November 20, 1998 in Saint Petersburg ) was a Russian human rights activist, ethnologist and politician. She was the leader of the "Democratic Russia" movement and actively campaigned for democratic reforms in Russia. On November 20, 1998, she was shot dead in the stairwell of her apartment in St. Petersburg. The circumstances of the crime have not yet been fully clarified.

Life

Galina Starowoitowa was born on May 17, 1946 as the daughter of a Belarusian father and a Russian mother in Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains . In 1948 the family returned to Leningrad . In 1966 she graduated from the Leningrad Military Technical University, and graduated from the Leningrad University in 1971. In 1980 she received her doctorate at the Institute of Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences . In her doctoral thesis published in 1987, she dealt with the Tatars of Leningrad. In addition, she published around 70 articles, essays and monographs, the thematic focus of which was the Caucasian peoples. After the birth of the Armenian National Democratic Movement, she became an advocate for self-determination in the Nagorno-Karabakh region . From 1994 to 1998 she was visiting professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University of Providence , Rhode Island , where she lectured on the politics of self-determination for ethnic minorities.

Political career

Galina Starovoitova began her political career in 1989 when she was elected to the People's Deputies Congress , where she represented the interests of the Armenian SSR . The focus of her political work was particularly on the drafting of a new constitution and on the problem of ethnic minorities in the Caucasus . During the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, she represented the position of the Armenians in Congress. From 1990 until its dissolution in 1993 it had a seat in the newly established Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian Federation in Saint Petersburg. In the summer of 1991 Starovoitova supported Boris Yeltsin's election campaign as President of the Russian Federation and was appointed his advisor on interethnic issues. She was released from her duties at the end of 1992, presumably in connection with her open criticism of Moscow's position in the conflict between Ossetians and Ingush. In 1995 she was elected to the State Duma by the “Democratic Russia” movement, which she chaired together with Lev Ponomarev and the cleric Gleb Jakunin . In the run-up to the first Chechnya war , she campaigned for a diplomatic solution to the conflict and took a clear position against Boris Yeltsin's policy in Chechnya. In April 1998 she was appointed head of the Democratic Russia movement and was supposed to prepare the alliance for parliamentary elections the following December. Starovoitova was against an extension of the powers of the FSB and voted against the nomination of Yevgeny Primakov as prime minister.

Assassination and investigation

Starovoitova's grave in Saint Petersburg

Galina Starovoitova was shot three times in the head on November 20, 1998 in the stairwell to her apartment on the Griboyedov Canal in St. Petersburg. Her companion, Ruslan Linkow, was seriously injured in the attack. The investigation into the murder was carried out under the personal supervision of the then Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin (former head of the FSB and later Russian Prime Minister). In June 2005, two suspects were found guilty of murder and sentenced to 20 and 23 years in camp, respectively. In September 2008, another suspect was sentenced to 11 years in prison for his role in organizing the crime. Three other suspects are still on the run. According to the official investigation report, the murder was organized by former GRU killer Yuri Kolchin. The actual masterminds behind the murder have not yet been identified.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ izvestia.ru
  2. ↑ 23_25 kirov.spb.ru
  3. ↑ Ten years without Starovoytova, Мария Калужская, Grani.ru, November 20, 2008
  4. ↑ fembio.org
  5. ^ Bullets Silence Voice of Reason, KM, Perspective, Volume IX, Number 2 (November – December 1998), Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy, Boston University
  6. ↑ Yeltsin launches probe into top politician's murder, CNN, November 21, 1998
  7. ↑ Anna Politkovskaya (2007) A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia, Random House, p. 38.
  8. ↑ 8-я годовщина трагической гибели Галины Старовойтовой, interview with Valery Borschov by Vladimir Alexeyevich Kara-Murza, Radio Svoboda, November 20, 2006.
personal data
SURNAME Starovoitova, Galina Wassiljewna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Старово́йтова, Гали́на Васи́льевна
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian human rights activist, ethnologist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Chelyabinsk
DATE OF DEATH November 20, 1998
Place of death St. Petersburg