Scientist, politician, leader of Russia’s democratic forces in the 1990s
Galina Starovoitova was born on May 17, 1946, in Chelyabinsk. In April 1948, her family moved to Leningrad. It was in this city that Galina grew up, graduated from the Faculty of Psychology at Leningrad State University, and completed postgraduate studies at the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences. She moved to Moscow with her husband and son in 1987.

In 1989, Galina Starovoitova was elected a people's deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. From 1990, she headed the Human Rights Committee in the Supreme Soviet. In 1991–1992, she served as an advisor to Boris Yeltsin on interethnic issues. Moreover, Yeltsin seriously considered her candidacy for the position of the country’s first civilian Minister of Defense.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1995, Starovoitova was elected a deputy of the State Duma. She had other ambitions as well. In 1996, an initiative group tried to register her as a candidate for the presidency of Russia, but the Central Election Commission did not allow it, rejecting part of the collected signatures.

In April 1998, she became co-chair of the “Democratic Russia” movement and was preparing for new elections — in December 1998, the legislative assembly was elected in St. Petersburg, and Galina Starovoitova headed the “Northern Capital” coalition. She openly stated her intention to give up her State Duma mandate to work in the city’s legislative assembly and later run for governor of St. Petersburg.

Starovoitova was considered one of the most well-known politicians of the democratic direction. Her murder caused a wide public outcry in Russia and several countries worldwide. A few days later, she was buried at the Nikolsky Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

The investigation into the case lasted several years. On June 30, 2005, the St. Petersburg City Court sentenced Yuri Kolchin, recognized as the organizer of the crime, to 20 years in a maximum-security colony, and Vitaly Akinshin, one of the perpetrators, to 23 and a half years. Both were charged under one of the most serious articles of the Russian Criminal Code — “Assault on the life of a state figure” (Article 207, “Terrorism”).

At the same time, the third participant in the crime — Oleg Fedosov, who, like Akinshin, was a member of the “Tambov” criminal group and who, according to the investigation, fired at Galina Starovoitova — disappeared, and his whereabouts remain unknown.

Human rights activist and deputy of the State Duma of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd convocations, Yuliy Rybakov, recalled that his and Galina Starovoitova’s deputies’ offices were located next to each other — on the same stair landing on the third floor of building 35 on Bolshaya Morskaya Street in St. Petersburg, and there was a constant flow of people coming to them for help. “She worked conscientiously with them, holding deputy receptions for many hours, listening to everyone. It was not easy because people came irritated, tired, exhausted by the harsh life we all lived in the 1990s. People expected immediate help, but of course, we could not provide such help, yet we tried to do everything within our power.”

At the same time, he described Galina Starovoitova as a rather reserved and independent person with a strong character. “At the first session of the Congress of People’s Deputies of the RSFSR, Boris Yeltsin took the podium with a proposal to recognize the sovereignty and independence of Russia. This happened against the backdrop of the beginning of the ‘parade of sovereignties’ — the Baltics had already declared sovereignty, Armenia, Georgia. Russia was already at the tail end of this process. Yeltsin came to the podium and declared the need to adopt the Declaration of Independence of Russia. And the entire hall, where in fact democrats, internally ready for this, made up at most a third, supported it. Deputies, including communists, spoke one after another, saying yes, forward, we must free ourselves from the burden that was on Russia, and voted for it. Later, they would accuse Yeltsin of having destroyed the USSR, but then they unanimously voted for this Declaration. And one of the few deputies who did not vote for it was Galina Starovoitova, who said: ‘You know, this is a bomb!’ The other thing is that it was already inevitable,” the human rights activist continued.

Yuliy Rybakov commented on the results of the investigation into Galina Starovoitova’s murder: “The perpetrators are known, the intermediate customers are known, but the main customer, the one from whom it originated, in my opinion, is still unknown. Although the entire chain seems to have been established, I do not believe the final version that the customer was the criminal environment of St. Petersburg. I think the threads went higher.”

Political scientist Sergey Shelin believes that, unfortunately, Galina Starovoitova was unable to realize her political ambitions. He explains: “She began her political career fighting for the Armenians of Karabakh, and the story of the Armenians of Karabakh ended with their disappearance today. Another failure she suffered was as Boris Yeltsin’s advisor in the early 1990s when she tried to find a solution to the issue of Russian ethnic autonomies. Yeltsin rejected her advice then. She failed as a liberal politician and was killed in 1998 by the entire system of Russian life at that time, when it had not yet become dictatorial but was already cruel and cynical.”

At the same time, he disagrees with the opinion that Starovoitova was an unsuccessful politician. “Yes, a number of projects she promoted did not receive support and could not receive it. Take, for example, the lustration law that Galina Vasilyevna promoted, which called for the lustration of party apparatus employees. But under the conditions when the head of the country as president was a candidate for membership in the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee and the first secretary of the Moscow City Committee, such a bill could not be adopted. Moreover, a significant part of the regional heads were former party apparatus employees. It was truly unrealistic and doomed to failure from the start. But the important thing is that this issue was raised, and there are a number of her speeches that left a mark,” Igor Yakovenko explains his position.

…On that day, November 20, 1998, Starovoitova flew to St. Petersburg from Moscow. At the airport, she was met and driven home by her assistant Ruslan Linkov, who entered the entrance with her; it was dark inside. The killers also shot at him; Linkov was seriously wounded in the head but managed to survive. Moreover, the flashes of gunfire allowed him to see the face of one killer and the silhouette of the second: long hair, a woman’s coat. Almost four years later, in court, Linkov, the main witness in the case, identified one of the killers and pointed to a certain Vitaly Akinshin. The second killer, as it turned out later, was also a man, but to disguise himself, he decided to wear a wig and women’s clothes.

“I knew her personally. We had a good relationship. She was a wonderful, very responsible person. She did a lot for the processes of democratic development in our country. Her contribution is noticeable and significant,” Vladimir Putin, then director of the FSB, commented on Starovoitova’s murder two days after her death to Interfax.

He said that “purely on a human level” he “felt unbearably sorry for Galina Vasilyevna” and called Starovoitova’s murder “disgusting”: “This is one of the black pages of our recent history. It does not adorn us, the state as a whole, from any side.”

The search for the criminals took the FSB four years. The first arrests took place in the fall of 2002. Then six people were arrested in St. Petersburg — Yuri Kolchin, Vitaly Akinshin, Igor Lelyavin, Igor Krasnov, Alexey Voronin, and Yuri Ionov. They all worked at the security company “Faithful Prince Alexander Nevsky,” headed by Kolchin. Kolchin himself was a former GRU officer, personal driver of one of the leaders of the Tambov criminal group in St. Petersburg and a deputy of the 2nd State Duma convocation from the LDPR party, Mikhail Glushchenko.

In 2005, the city court issued a guilty verdict only for two: Kolchin was recognized as the organizer of the crime, Akinshin as the killer. They were sentenced to 20 and 23 years respectively under Article 277 of the Russian Criminal Code (terrorism, assault on the life of a state and public figure) and Article 105 (murder). Another perpetrator of the murder, Oleg Fedosov, has not been found to this day. During the investigation, law enforcement officers discovered many details that eloquently indicate what resources were at the disposal of the murder organizers. For example, surveillance was established over all of Starovoitova’s movements. She was followed at airports and railway stations, bugs were installed in the entrance of her house, and attempts were made to conduct video surveillance.

However, for a long time, the investigation failed to establish the main thing: who was the customer of the crime and what were the motives for eliminating Starovoitova.

Initially, the simplest version was considered — robbery. Neighbors heard a quarrel on the stairs and a shout of “Open up!” after the first shots — hence the assumption that the killers were looking for money that Galina Starovoitova supposedly had to bring from Moscow for her “Northern Capital” bloc. It was said to be about a million dollars, but this version was not confirmed. Different sums were seized at the crime scene: one and a half thousand dollars and a thousand Bulgarian levs, and the killers did not touch this money. Nothing was stolen from Starovoitova’s belongings either, which did not fit the robbery version.

In the text of the first verdict handed down to the killers, the crime was explicitly called political, that is, committed to force Starovoitova to stop her socio-political activities. At the same time, during the trial, Kolchin’s lawyers pointed out that the investigation had not answered the question: what exactly prevented Yuri Kolchin in the political activities of deputy Galina Starovoitova?

Kolchin decided to make a deal with the investigation and name the person who asked him to organize the crime only ten years later. According to his testimony, it was a former colleague of Starovoitova in the State Duma, the very liberal democrat Mikhail Glushchenko.

On November 8, 2013, Glushchenko was charged under the articles “Assault on the life of a state figure” and “Complicity in organizing a crime.” Six months later, the ex-deputy made a deal with the investigation and gave a confession. He named the customer of the murder — the criminal authority Vladimir Barsukov (Kumarin), leader of the Tambov criminal group operating in St. Petersburg, who was called the “night governor of Petersburg.” Investigators found that Glushchenko himself was part of this group — under the nickname Misha Khokhol.

“It is clear to everyone that Glushchenko did not care about Starovoitova; he was a transmission link,” Glushchenko’s lawyer Alexander Afanasyev told RBC. “In May 1998, in the premises of the rowing sports club ‘Znamya’ on Krestovsky Island, he had a meeting with Kumarin. Kumarin gave the order to liquidate Starovoitova — he did not offer any reward, nor any help with weapons or other things.”

Afanasyev assured journalists that Barsukov did not name any motives for the murder. “Glushchenko can only assume that the liquidation of Starovoitova was needed [by Barsukov] to take control of the city’s legislative assembly. By that time, he had brought the executive authorities under his control,” Afanasyev said.

Notably, by the time Glushchenko gave his confession, Barsukov was already serving a sentence related to the attempted murder of entrepreneur Sergey Vasilyev and raider seizures in St. Petersburg. The court sentenced him to 24 years in a maximum-security colony. In April 2019, the FSB Investigative Service for St. Petersburg issued a ruling to bring Barsukov as an accused in the Starovoitova murder case. However, he did not confess to this murder.

However, all these years, many questions remained about the official version. Many noted the fact that although Glushchenko was sentenced to 17 years in a maximum-security colony, his confession to organizing Starovoitova’s murder and the deal with the investigation helped him avoid a much harsher punishment. By the time he “spoke out,” Glushchenko was already serving an eight-year sentence for extortion; he was also accused of murdering three other people, including a former business partner and colleague in the LDPR faction, Vyacheslav Shevchenko. Later, three more murder episodes were added to the case, among the victims was even the nephew of the former mayor of St. Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak.

Glushchenko categorically denied involvement in these six murders, and if not for the unexpected confession of involvement in Starovoitova’s elimination, he would have had every chance to be imprisoned precisely for these crimes.

For example, Starovoitova’s sister Olga doubted that Barsukov benefited from the murder. “Although Barsukov was considered the ‘night governor’ of St. Petersburg, he hardly had an independent motive for the murder: he was not involved in politics, and Galina Vasilyevna was not involved in business,” she explained. According to Olga, the real customers of her sister’s murder should be sought among those she fought against. At the same time, Ruslan Linkov said that the main political opponents of the deputy were Governor Vladimir Yakovlev and members of the LDPR mired in criminal affairs. For example, according to him, Starovoitova could influence decisions of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly and block projects of the governor in which she suspected corruption components.

Deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Alexey Kovalev stated that Starovoitova’s murder could be related to her demand that Vladimir Yakovlev publicly report on the use of a multimillion-dollar World Bank loan provided for the reconstruction of the center of St. Petersburg.

They also recalled Starovoitova’s fight against the State Duma commission operating in the city to check the results of privatization in St. Petersburg. Its head was deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Yuri Shutov (later sentenced to life imprisonment for a series of contract killings and died in prison). This commission almost openly extorted money from entrepreneurs to avoid reviewing specific privatization cases. Galina Starovoitova, for her part, tried to protect business from racketeers in power.

“Yuri Kolchin and Vitaly Akinshin, convicted of the murder of State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova (front row, left to right)” (Photo: Sergey Smolsky / TASS)

Starovoitova was buried in St. Petersburg at the Nikolsky Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra; thousands of city residents came to say goodbye to her. A significant delegation also flew in from Moscow: Viktor Chernomyrdin, Yegor Gaidar, Valentina Matviyenko, Sergey Kiriyenko, Arthur Chilingarov. A curious detail was noted by journalists from Kommersant present at the memorial service: “St. Petersburg Governor Yakovlev was absent: he is ill and being treated outside his city. Acting governor Viktor Yatsuba read his mourning speech from a paper: ‘Dear Petersburgers and guests of our city! The governor mourns…’ At the coffin, Chernomyrdin and Gaidar stood face to face. The acting governor turned a crumpled page: ‘I want to express confidence that the perpetrators of the murder will be found.’ At these words, Gaidar looked expressively at Chernomyrdin.”

Recently, Vladimir Putin pardoned former operative Sergey Khadzhikurbanov, who was sentenced to 20 years for the 2006 murder of Anna Politkovskaya. Khadzhikurbanov signed a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense and participates in the special military operation.

Sources:

https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/03/16/ee-ubili-iz-strakha

Kommersant newspaper No. 218 (3057) dated 20.11.2004

https://ria.ru/20181120/1533101060.html