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| A MURDER IN RUSSIA | |
 December 24, 1998 
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In a special report from Russia, Correspondent Jennifer Griffin examines the murder of a pro-democracy legislator and the impact her death is having on the Russian politics.
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OKSANA MALYSHEVA, St. Petersburg Resident, Teacher: (speaking through interpreter) This death has become a symbol. It shook all of Russia. Staravoitova was connected with the dawn of Perestroika, with the growth of our self-conscience, the feeling of freedom. But freedom costs too much in Russia. To live freely and say what you think is equal to death. There is a lot of history that revolutions swallow their children. Staravoitova was the child of Perestroika and now "democratic" Russia has destroyed her.
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| Support for democracy. | ||||||||||||||
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Boris Altshuler represents what is left of Russia's intelligentsia - men and women who risked their lives fighting for civil and human rights for the past two decades. He, like Staravoitova, was friends with Andrei Sakharov -- the nuclear scientist who became Russia's most outspoken rights campaigner in the 1970s and 80's but who died before seeing the Soviet Union collapse. Altshuler says he fears Russia's entering in which the democratic gains he and Sakharov and the other dissidents fought for in danger of being lost.
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'Any so-called reformer'. |
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The recent campaign there was filled with well-organized dirty tricks designed to prevent the re-election of local democrats. To confuse voters, candidates with the same names as the democrats were listed on the ballot. But the trick failed and a record high turnout of voters returned many democrats to office. It was that kind of anti-democratic corruption that Staravoitova warned against in an interview taped shortly before her death.
JENNIFER GRIFFIN: (funeral dirge in background) Her funeral brought out the leaders of Russia's democratic and reform-minded parties, people like Anatoly Chubais, one of the authors of Russia's privatization, and Boris Nemtsov, a former first deputy prime minister under Yeltsin. These reformers are now out of power and their proposed free market economic reforms tarnished in the minds of many voters by the collapse of the Russian economy. And some of them are personally shadowed by allegations of corruption.
ANDREI KORTUNOV, President Moscow Public Science Foundation: They came to power as outsiders. They didn't have experience. They didn't have contacts. Sometimes they didn't even know the country too well. Second, most of them have retrained and socialized fighting the system. Therefore, for many of them, destruction was the name of the game, not creation. JENNIFER GRIFFIN: Former First Deputy Prime Minister Nemtsov admits mistakes were made, but says politicians like himself are being blamed for reforms that never happened. BORIS NEMTSOV, Former First Deputy Prime Minister, Russia: We made a lot of mistakes, that's true, concerning not privatization but concerning a lot of compromises with communists and with nationalists and others. And frankly, reforms didn't proceed in this country for the last six years because we have communist-oriented parliament.
PROFESSOR: These are already directly applicable to jobs. |
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JENNIFER GRIFFIN: At the Tura University in Moscow young executives are using this time of recession to get American MBA's.
JENNIFER GRIFFIN: Irina Zamarina says her generation had forgotten about politics and was focusing only on making money. The August financial crisis and Staravoitiva's murder forced them to pay attention to politics again. IRINA ZAMARINA: We were very much into politics a few years ago. Then for the last couple of years we didn't talk about politics, which was a good sign; things were on a good side. Now, especially after Staravoitiva was killed, everyone is back to politics. JENNIFER GRIFFIN: But even if they go back to politics, students like Alexander Gavrilin know their own economic prospects are likely to be poor for sometime. ALEXANDER GAVRILIN, MBA Student: I'd like to apply to Russian business and maybe some joint ventures, but I don't know if there are some in the future because of economic collapse. JENNIFER GRIFFIN: But a few from the older generation that have seen so much suffering - like 92 year old Vera Kupriyanova - still hold out some hope, if not for herself, at least for the next generation. VERA KUPRIYANOVA, St. Petersburg Resident: (speaking through interpreter) Democracy has only just started. Maybe some things were better under the communists, but I don't want communism back, and I don't think it will come back. I didn't have money then and I don't have money now.
BORIS NEMTSOV: If you ask people, do you for freedom of press - they're for multi-party system - I think that answer will be yes. But if you ask people do you for democracy, people answer no, because people believe in very concrete symbols of democracy, but not in general democracy. And it seems to me that it's necessary to explain people what democracy means. JENNIFER GRIFFIN: Some analysts think it could be too late and that the real threat will be if the country's anti-democratic forces take power through democratic means. ANDREI KORTUNOV: I don't think that there is any leader in this country right now who might dare to say I don't care about democracy, I don't care about elections, I don't care about free media. The country has changed too much. So whoever it will be, he or she will have to accept democracy as something given. However, the danger is that instead of this out-front attack on democracy, we might have some infiltration of authoritarianism, and this is a phenomena which will be much more difficult to fight against than just outright attacks on democratic principles. JENNIFER GRIFFIN: The next immediate test for Russia's political institutions, most officials and analysts agree, will be getting the country through a long and difficult winter.
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JENNIFER
GRIFFIN: In a land where people have grown used to Mafia violence and
contract killings, the murder of Galina Staravoitova, a female member
parliament, brought out deep emotion. (funeral dirge playing in background)
Staravoitova was gunned down in the hallway of her St. Petersburg apartment
in late November. So far police have made no arrests. Most Russians
regard the killing of this pro democracy member of parliament as a political
murder and as evidence that their country's post Soviet reform era is
ending. 
LYUDMILA
LAZAREVA, St. Petersburg Resident, Retired Nurse: (speaking through
interpreter) I have been living in St. Petersburg for many, many years.
Now, I'm so scared about what's happening. I have survived the blockade
of Leningrad during the second world war. I buried my father without
a coffin. I have seen a lot of difficult moments. We were so afraid
of fascism, and now it is hard to believe what is happening under a
democracy. 
JENNIFER
GRIFFIN: With all the crises Russia has endured recently, and in contrast
to the cynicism so often expressed by ordinary Russians, more than 10,000
people showed up to walk past Staravoitova's coffin as a tribute her
and to show support for democracy. 
BORIS
ALTSHULER, Moscow Research Center for Human Rights: For Russian people
democracy is synonym of criminal anarchy. They never saw democracy as
working rule of the law mechanisms. They don't know what it is. History
is a chain of missed opportunities. Only stupidity of some people in
1917 in Russia permitted Bolsheviks to come to power. Only stupidity
of Western politicians in 30's brought to power Hitler; only stupidity
and missed opportunities by Russian democrats will bring this danger
of restoration of totalitarianism. 
JENNIFER
GRIFFIN: There is a growing feeling that Russia's democracy is fragile
and under siege. President Boris Yeltsin, the founder of modern democratic
Russia, spends most of his days in the hospital. A former communist
spy Chief, Yevgeny Primakov, is prime minister and critical of most
recent free market economic reforms. Crime and corruption are rampant.
Millions are falling into poverty. And the communists who control Russia's
parliament are pushing laws to curb recently gained liberties -- like
one that would give the government control of the media -- legislation
inspired by press attacks on the Communists who failed to rein in one
of their lawmakers, after he said all Jews should be driven from the
country. 
The
Communist Parliament also passed a resolution to resurrect in central
Moscow the statue of the Soviets' first secret police chief, Felix Derginski,
which was torn down by pro-democracy demonstrators in 1991. The communists
say the statue represents the iron fist needed to clamp down on lawlessness.
Their critics say it symbolizes fear and dictatorship. And even where
democracy is working, like in recent local elections in St. Petersburg,
there are strong efforts to subvert it. 
GALINA
STARAVOITOVA, Murdered Member of Russian Parliament: This campaign already
had some difficulties when the supporters of campaign were collecting
the signatures before the registration of the candidates. Some of them
were beaten by the competitors, and there were ready several small clashes,
and within the campaign it will be very, very tensionable, and everybody
should be very careful. 
The
problem is any so-called democratic reformer who has served in Boris
Yeltsin's cabinet has been largely discredited. Many Russians associate
democracy and Yeltsin's reforms with the fact that their lives have
grown so much worse since the end of the Soviet Union. In Russia, the
average pension is worth around $20 per month, hardly enough to live
on. For the older generation, democracy has meant an end to the free
apartments, the subsidized food, and guaranteed jobs that existed under
communism. Some analysts blame Yeltsin's young reformers for economic
policy mistakes that have led many Russians to think that democracy
has failed. 
JENNIFER
GRIFFIN: Young people like these who recently attended a job fair in
search of work used to trust Nemtsov and the other reformers. They bought
into their program; they put their money in banks, while everyone else
kept it in mattresses. They also were among the first to lose their
jobs and their savings when the government virtually defaulted on its
debt, and the ruble crashed in August. But many of them remain resiliently
optimistic about capitalism and democracy. 
IRINA
ZAMARINA, MBA Student: If Russia goes back to communism, obviously,
I won't need it, but then I might end up in Siberia because I have the
credit of working for western companies already, and I will never be
trusted; maybe in a year the companies will come back. I understand
why they're leaving, but I think they will come back. 
JENNIFER
GRIFFIN: Russians seem to agree that even if democracy appears to be
in danger, the liberties associated with it are still popular.