Russia's Gunpoint Politics

By PAUL QUINN-JUDGE/MOSCOW

Galina Starovoitova was a Russian democratic politician of the old school. An ardent admirer of the late Andrei Sakharov, she had once been a powerful force in the Duma, the lower house of parliament. In recent years her voice was lonely and often ignored. But hers was a name that many Russians knew, and if she no longer held great political power, her moral power remained intact.

Her relative political weakness made her murder two weeks ago seem all the more cynical, as if those who had ordered it felt they were ridding themselves of a minor irritation. At her funeral last week there was a collective sense of outrage. Coming on the heels of a burst of depressing public statements--anti-Semitic diatribes by another member of parliament, claims that the Russian security services were being used for free-lance assassinations, allegations of corruption leveled against Yeltsin--the killing reminded everyone of the dark side of Russian politics. And it has reignited the old debate about how Russia should be ruled: Can liberal democracy work, or is a more authoritarian hand needed?

Starovoitova's killing, on the staircase of her St. Petersburg apartment, appeared to be a professional piece of work. The killers tracked her from Moscow, and were not fooled by a last-minute change of her travel plans. Security sources say the hit bore the marks of the special services, Russia's blanket term for the security police and intelligence bodies. The sources speculate that the killers, reportedly a man and a woman, were either moonlighting security police or former operatives now working for the underworld.

The killers underestimated the public response. Instead of being dismissed, the murder may have destroyed the last vestiges of confidence in the system. The media pummeled the government for incompetence and toleration of extremism and venality. Corruption, unsolved murders, open demonstrations by neo-Nazis and anti-Semites mean just one thing, the newspaper Izvestiya declared in a typical front-page editorial: "It means that in Russia today there is no state; it is dead."

Starovoitova's friends and allies in the democratic movement vowed to unite their fragmented organizations in the wake of the killing. But they also traded accusations with their political enemies. One former Starovoitova ally, Anatoli Chubais, claimed "communists and bandits" were behind the killing. A prominent Starovoitova colleague alleged that Duma speaker Gennadi Seleznev, a communist, had ordered it. Some communists retorted that Starovoitova's allies had killed her to create a martyr. A leading communist Deputy accused businessman Boris Berezovsky of ordering the hit. Calmer heads suggested that the murder was connected to a dirty election campaign in St. Petersburg.

Starovoitova's killers are in little danger of being brought to justice. None of the well-planned murders of prominent people--such as St. Petersburg's deputy mayor, who was shot down by snipers in 1997--has been solved. But the planned political violence is having an effect. Calls are growing for the government to invoke emergency powers. Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov has rejected such demands, but he is under pressure to do something. What he can achieve with a system that is riddled with corruption, however, is open to question.

--By Paul Quinn-Judge/Moscow