Press Release, 20.11.2023

On the day of the 25th anniversary of the murder of State Duma MP and politician Galina Starovoytova,  Chairman of the St. Petersburg branch of Yabloko Alexander Shishlov, and Yury Shein, member of the Registrar Council of the Moscow Yabloko and General Director of the Regional Public Fund for Support of Science, Education and Culture named after Galina Starovoytova, laid flowers at the grave of Galina Starovoytova at the Nikolskoye cemetery in St.Petersburg. The service was performed by the Archbishop of the Apostolic Orthodox Church, Father Grigory (Mikhnov-Voitenko).

Also, members of Yabloko spoke at the memorial event commemorating Galina Starovoytova at the Interior Theatre; there were about 40 people. The soloist of the St. Petersburg Shostakovich Academic Philharmonic cellist Ilya Izmailov performed fragments of Bach’s Suite N1. Nikolai Belyak, the artistic director – director of the St. Petersburg State Interior Theatre, Vladimir Kostyushev, director of the St. Petersburg Public Foundation “Museum of Galina Starovoytova”, Yuliy Rybakov, State Duma deputy of the 1-3 convocations and others spoke at the event.

“Galina Starovoytova’s professional opinion, her academic knowledge, will and political instinct would undoubtedly help our country today. Then there was a time of bright people in politics, now it is the opposite, but we need to think about the future. The work of Galina Starovoitova lives on – the competition, which is held annually by the foundation named after her, helps to attract young people to learn and defend humanistic values, human rights and dignity,” Alexander Shishlov, Chairman of the St. Petersburg Yabloko, said.

Yury Shein, who worked with Galina Starovoytova in 1992-1993 in the Democratic Russia movement, emphasised that Galina Starovoytova would remain true to her principles and would be on the side of truth, goodness, and peace.

At the end of the evening, fragments of speeches and interviews with Galina Starovoitova and a selection of photographs from her family’s archive were shown. Many kind words were said by the speakers to Galina Starovoitova’s sister, Olga Starovoitova, who did a lot to perpetuate the memory of her sister and preserve and study her heritage.

Deputy Chairman of Yabloko Boris Vishnevsky noted that “every day we are becoming increasingly more convinced of how great this loss was, and how much we lack politicians like Galina Starovoitova today. She tirelessly and selflessly fought against any incitement of national hatred, realising how dangerous it was”.

“Galina Starovoitova was one of the first to understand how necessary it was to cleanse the state mechanism of people involved in the crimes of the totalitarian regime. It’s a pity that her idea of ​​adopting a law on lustration was not supported – in this case, we would have avoided many troubles and misfortunes for the country and its citizens,” Boris Vishnevsky emphasised.

Politician, human rights activist and State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova was shot by hired killers in the entrance of her house in St. Petersburg on 20 November, 1998; her assistant Ruslan Linkov, who accompanied her, was seriously injured.