RUSSIA: HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE ATTEND THE FUNERAL OF MURDERED DEMOCRATIC RUSSIA PARTY POLITICAN GALINA STAROVOITOVA

Record ID: 319194

  • Title: RUSSIA: HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE ATTEND THE FUNERAL OF MURDERED DEMOCRATIC RUSSIA PARTY POLITICAN GALINA STAROVOITOVA
  • Date: 24th November 1998
  • Summary: SAINT PETERSBURG , RUSSIA (NOVEMBER 24, 1998) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. GV EXTERIOR VIEW OF THE NEVSKY LAVRA MONASTERY CHURCH WITH PEOPLE STANDING OUTSIDE 0.10 2. MV COFFIN CARRIED INTO CHURCH/ MOURNERS CROSSING THEMSELVES (3 SHOTS) 0.20 3. SV COFFIN PLACED ON THE STAND 0.26 4. SV PEOPLE IN CONGREGATION 0.31 5. MV STAROVOITOVA'S
  • Embargoed: 9th December 1998 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: SAINT PETERSBURG ,RUSSIA
  • Country: Russia
  • Reuters ID: LVA6J98R24FEXNJB32ISKDR1XBQP
  • Story Text: Hundreds of people in St.Petersburg have been
    attending a funeral service for Russian liberal
    parliamentarian Galina Starovoitova, murdered four days ago.

    She was buried at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra monastery in St.

    Petersburg.

    Braving sub-zero temperatures on Tuesday (November
    24), thousands of ordinary Russians turned out to pay their
    last respects to the feisty 52-year-old politician and
    grandmother Galina Starovoitova.

    The queue of mourners filing past her coffin in St.

    Petersburg was so long it forced a three-hour delay to her
    burial at the city's Alexander Nevsky Lavra monastery - famous
    as the resting place for noted Russians, including Fydor
    Dostoyevsky and composers Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky.

    Galina Starovoitova was a co-chairman of the Democratic
    Russia party and sat in Russia's State Duma lower house of
    parliament, where she had become an isolated figure
    criticising the chamber's dominant Communist and
    ultra-nationalist factions.

    Her death has been widely described by Russian media as
    the first politically-motivated murder of a major figure since
    the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

    This has sent shock waves through a society which had
    seemed hardened to news of contract killings, but most of the
    previous victims were men and many had business interests.

    President Boris Yeltsin was not at the ceremony but his
    spokesman linked the Kremlin leader's admission to hospital
    with pneumonia on Sunday with the emotional and psychological
    stress brought on by Starovoitova's murder.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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