November 20th, 1998

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia

(AP) -- An outspoken liberal lawmaker who planned to run for president in Russia's next elections was shot to death Friday in St. Petersburg, police said.

Galina Starovoitova, one of the most prominent women members of the lower house of Russia's parliament, was attacked in the entry way of an apartment building, police said. A neighbor found the body in a pool of blood late Friday night and called an ambulance, they said.

The Interfax news agency said her aide, Ruslan Linkov, was also seriously injured. It said Starovoitova was in St. Petersburg to attend a session of the Northern Capital political movement Saturday.

A pistol and automatic rifle were found at the scene, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

Police would not speculate on a motive for the killing.

Boris Yeltsin ordered the interior minister, the head of Russia's main intelligence service and the prosecutor general to take urgent measures to investigate the attack, Interfax quoted presidential spokesman Dmitry Yakushkin as saying. Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin was ordered to go to St. Petersburg immediately.

Outspoken reformer

Starovoitova, 52, of the reformist party Democratic Russia, tried to run for president in 1996 but her registration was turned down for technical reasons. She had said she would run again in 2000.

She served as President Boris Yeltsin's aide on ethnic issues in 1991-92 -- the only woman in his immediate circle -- and was on the human rights committee of the USSR's Supreme Soviet. She was elected to that body from Yerevan, Armenia, in 1988.

Starovoitova earned a reputation as one of the most outspoken reform supporters in the Russian parliament, where she frequently sparred with hard-liners including ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

In 1990 she won an unprecedented libel suit against Pravda when the former official Soviet newspaper published a story accusing her of calling for the forcible elimination of the government.

'I'm an independent woman'

Born in the Ural Mountains city of Chelyabinsk, Starovoitova was trained as a psychologist and later received a doctorate in history. She remarried earlier this year and had one son and a grandson, according to a recent interview with the magazine Profil.

"I'm an independent woman. I'm accustomed to earning my own money, coming and going as I wish. When I don't feel like it, I don't cook, I don't clean," she said in the interview, which focused on her recent marriage.

Her husband, Andrei Volkov, said in the interview that when he first saw Starovoitova on television he was impressed with her eloquence and thought to himself: "There are actually smart women in our country?"

Contract killing?

There have been several attacks on prominent figures in St. Petersburg recently. A finance official's car was bombed last week and a top banker was killed last week, and police attributed both attacks to business deals. An aide to Russia's parliament speaker was shot in the head last month in whatpolice suspect was a contract hit.

Contract killings are often used to settle business disputes in Russia, and such hits have become increasingly widespread in recent years.

It was unclear whether Starovoitova had any major business dealings, though she led a relatively modest lifestyle compared to many fellow lawmakers. She said in the Profil interview that most of her money was in Russian banks that have frozen accounts because of the country's latest economic troubles.