OLD PREJUDICES IN NEW PETERSBURG
Anti-Semitism may have been behind the murder of a Russian politician,
says Mark Webster St Petersburg THE FACE in the open coffin was that of a mild-mannered but redoubtable 52-year- old grandmother, but for the thousands who filed past her body in the marble hall of St Petersburg's Museum of Ethnogra- phy this week, the funeral of one of the country's fiercest proponents of democracy was evidence of something rotten at the heart of modern Russia. Here was proof that the country's gangster culture touched every corner of the political system.
It's probably just as well that Boris Yeltsin was too ill to attend her funeral. Given his recent erratic behaviour he would probably have muttered something semi-coherent and distracted attention from the real tragedy of the event. As it was, the body of the murdered liberal deputy, Galina Starovoitova, was lowered into the frozen Russian soil in the ceme- tery of the Alexander Nevslcy monastery watched by a vast crowd of her supporters and friends.
Hers was a brutal end, sadly in tune with the state of politics in today's Russia. In what could have been a contract killing from the pages of Le Carre, she was gunned down in the dimly lit stairwell of her apartment block in St Petersburg. An aide who was with her was badly injured can do you crack, smack, E's, wizz and beef on the bone.' but survived. The assassins — one of them a woman — fled, leaving two guns behind.
After her killing, hundreds of supporters stood in the freezing cold outside her apartment building. She had been enor- mously popular as a constituency MP, and the building quickly took on the appear- ance of a shrine with flowers, cards and photographs. Many more turned out in public squares in St Petersburg and Moscow to remember her.
In the anguish which followed, politi- cians of most parties expressed their out- rage and speculated freely as to why she had been killed. A presidential spokesman said Boris Yeltsin was so shocked that it might have brought on his latest bout of pneumonia. The trajectory of an assassin's bullet is not always straight. The addled President went on to promise that be would head the investigation into her death personally — a dubious comfort to her friends and relatives.
Starovoitova was the sixth parliamentari- an to be murdered here in the past five years. But there are several aspects of this killing which make it such a gloomy por- tent for the country's future. All the others who have been murdered are thought to have had some questionable business con- nections which meant that they could have fallen foul of the ubiquitous mafia. Starovoitova's only interest was in human rights and in particular how to clean UP the murky world of domestic politics an.c1 its incestuous relationship with big busi- ness.
In a country where precious few women have made much impact on the political scene, hers was an even more remarkable achievement in that she made a difference without sacrificing her integrity. She was a. human rights campaigner with Andrei Sakharov even before the collapse of com- munism, and a founder member of the pro-democracy movement. The stockY: tough, principled liberal frequently jolcen. that she might be the target of a political assassination. Friends teased her that sbe, wasn't important enough to warrani killing. Yet it's now clear that the bandits w.h° have successfully pillaged the Russian economy and used the proceeds to suborn parts of the political machine would brook no criticism. Starovoitova was going to stand for election as governor of the Leningrad region around St Petersburg on an anti-corruption ticket. That would have allowed her to review contracts which have put millions into the overseas bank accounts of Russia's new rich.
She was also fearless in her savage criti- cism of the Communist party, threatening to publish a dossier of their alleged mis- deeds. She went further and, as an increas- ingly isolated voice in the Russian parliament, led the attack on a Communist deputy who had made wildly anti-Semitic remarks at a public rally. Albert Makashov caused a storm when he said that if anyone tried to do away with him he would 'take at least five yids with me'. He followed that by attacking the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, as 'worse than the worst yid'.
When the nationalist — and Communist — dominated parliament showed a marked reluctance even to distance itself from the remarks, Starovoitova fought on. After her death the Communists lost no time in trying to besmirch her reputation, alleging without any evidence that she too must have been involved in shady transac- tions, and that is what brought about her death.
While the police investigation continues, there is one other recent development which augurs badly for the future. There is an increasing body of evidence which sug- gests that some of the country's contract killings are actually being carried out by the successor to the KGB, the state securi- ty organisation or FSB. One of the coun- try's leading financial oligarchs, Boris Berezhovsky — no stranger to controversy himself — produced some FSB agents who stated they had been ordered to assassi- nate him.
Catching the mood of the crowd at Gali- na Starovoitova's graveside, the Prime Minister, Yevgeny Primakov, was among the first to opine that the country was 'drifting towards fascism'. Her death has forced Russians to look at the state of their democracy and the danger that, though they may now enjoy freedoms unheard of in the past, areas of public life are out of control.
Certainly for now, her killing has appar- ently galvanised public opinion with a force previously unseen here. It is just within the bounds of possibility that the shock which sent Boris Yeltsin's tempera- ture soaring will be enough to persuade the Russian government that a purge of the corruption in the political system is vital. But the lesson of the recent past is that the political temperature cools as quickly as President Yeltsin's.
Mark Webster is ITN's Moscow correspon- dent.
Previous page
