His newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, said Wednesday that it feared foul play and together with Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky called for a complete investigation into the death.

"He was one of those rare journalists and deputies who really fought corruption, and not just superficially," Yavlinsky told reporters.

"This is a terrible and irreplaceable loss for all of us," the Russian Union of Journalists said in a statement. "A man has passed away whose name has long been synonymous with honest, brave and incorruptable journalism, civil courage and loyalty to professional duty."

Shchekochikhin, a gray-haired man who occasionally stuttered when he spoke, first made a name for himself in the early 1980s, writing newspaper articles exposing corruption in the Soviet ranks. He served as deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta since 1997 and a deputy in the State Duma since 1995.

He joined the Duma's security committee shortly after his election in December 1995 and was named the committee's deputy chairman after his re-election in 1999. He was the driving force of the Duma's anti-corruption commission. He also served as an organized crime expert to the United Nations.

Shchekochikhin suffered a slight stroke in April but had recovered when he was hospitalized on June 23 at the prestigious Central Clinic Hospital suffering an allergic reaction, Novaya Gazeta journalists said Thursday.

"He was already working on articles," Vyacheslav Izmailov, a well-known Novaya Gazeta investigative reporter in his own right, said in a telephone interview.

Shchekochikhin slipped into a coma Saturday and never regained consciousness.

Izmailov and Alexei Dadayev, Shchekochikhin's aide in the Duma, said Shchekochikhin did not have any known allergies.

Yavlinsky said Yabloko and Novaya Gazeta want a team of independent experts to help determine the cause of death. "His exact diagnosis has not been determined. There have only been some rather worrying assumptions," he said.

The Pravda.ru news agency suggested that Shchekochikhin might have been poisoned.

"We haven't ruled out this possibility," said a source at Novaya Gazeta. "He was getting threats after he published a series of articles about the Tri Kita case."

Customs accused the Tri Kita furniture store of evading millions of dollars in import duties in 2000, sparking a scandal that led to a high-profile investigation by the Prosecutor General's Office. President Vladimir Putin and the Duma also weighed in on the issue.

Shchekochikhin accused prosecutors of corruption and of trying to quietly close the case.

The Novaya Gazeta source did not say who was threatening Shchekochikhin. Novaya Gazeta deputy editor Sergei Sokolov refused to comment.

Yabloko spokeswoman Yevgenia Dillendorf said Shchekochikhin had many enemies and had received a number of threats. Last year, the Federal Guard Service provided his younger son, a medical student, with a bodyguard, apparently in connection to a threat involving Tri Kita, Dillendorf said.

No criminal case has been opened into Shchekochikhin's death because the cause of the death has not been determined, she said.

Born in 1950 in Kirovobad, Azerbaijan, Shchekochikhin graduated with a degree in journalism from Moscow State University in 1975 and then reported for Moskovsky Komsomolets and Komsomolskaya Pravda. His star began rising in 1980 when he started to work for Literaturnaya Gazeta, first as a reporter and later as the editor of its investigations desk, where he published articles exposing corruption and abuse of power in the nomenklatura.

In 1990, he was elected to the Supreme Council from a district in the Voroshilovgrad region, part of what is now Ukraine. He was a member of two council committees, including the one that fought crime.

He briefly hosted the "Journalistic Investigation" program on state-controlled ORT television in 1995, before station management pulled the show for "destabilizing the situation in the country," according to Interfax.

Shchekochikhin also co-founded Memorial, which has become a leading human rights group, in 1988.

"He was the one who helped create our society at a time when any dissident thinking was dangerous and parties were banned," Memorial executive director Yelena Zhemkova said in an interview.

"He was not only the embodiment of our values, but he could write as well. He spread our values across the Russian readership. Russia does not have many people like him."

A memorial service will held at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Central Clinic Hospital. In keeping with his wishes, Shchekochikhin will be buried at a cemetery in the village of Peredelkino, just outside of Moscow.

Shchekochikhin is survived by a wife and two sons. His older son is a journalist.

The Moscow Times, July 4, 2003