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Murder of liberal MP shocks Russia
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| Contributor | Ralphie |
| Last Edited | Ralphie Dec 30, 2010 11:53pm |
| Category | News |
| News Date | Nov 22, 1998 11:00pm |
| Description | Russia's depleted ranks of democrats were in shock and mourning yesterday after the murder of a leading female parliamentarian, whose death underscored the dangers that now come hand in hand with political life.
Security service investigators were trying to establish the motive for the murder of Galina Starovoitova, a highly respected liberal who was once a close aide to Boris Yeltsin.
Women are extremely rare in the upper reaches of Russian power, and her death marks the first occasion in which a senior female politician has fallen to an assassin's bullet. News that she was gunned down in the stairwell of her apartment in the middle of St Petersburg on Friday sent a wave of revulsion through the political establishment.The Kremlin dispatched the Interior Minister, Sergei Stepashin, to the city, and sent a telegram to parliament saying the investigation would be placed under Mr Yeltsin's "personal control".
It also issued a statement from the President describing her murder as "a peremptory challenge to the entire society" which "wounds every Russian who cherishes democracy". A shaken Yevgeny Primakov, the Prime Minister, appeared on television to appeal for "an immediate end to banditism".
Ms Starovoitova, a 52-year-old St Petersburg intellectual, was a rare example of a genuine democrat who never belonged to the Communist Party, or to the ranks of the apparatchiks who still tread the corridors of power. In the final years of Mikhail Gorbachev's rule she became a prominent voice, not least because her opposition to the Soviet system and fluent command of English appealed to the Western media. |
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