Galina Starovoitova 1945 -1998
VOL. 9/1 (ISSUE 31) - January 1999
In this issue:
Galina Starovoitova 1945 -1998
On November 21, 1998 - the day we got the news of Galina Starovoitova's assassination - we wrote to many of our friends, colleagues, and readers to remind them that Galina had lectured at the Graduate Faculty several times as a guest of TCDS; that she had been our second Visiting Professor in Democracy; and that she had been serving as one of our three international advisors: in short, that she was one of us. Everyone who had gotten to know her at the GF had been impressed by her warmth, her keen intelligence, her energy and focus, her down-to-earth humor, and her almost palpable integrity. And I suspect that for those of us finding some degree of fulfillment in our research, our conferences, and our debates, who are no longer - or may never have been - at the very front lines of political transformation, Galina's murder was doubly shocking, because it revealed that our democratic principles, and even we personally, are more vulnerable than some of us had thought. And then came the aftershock of Xu Wenli's arrest and 13-year sentence, a self-educated intellectual whose decidedly non-political contribution on China to our Bulletin last spring [issue#28] was nevertheless consistent with the kind of courageous commitment before which most of our own efforts pale. And in this season of shocks, subtler tremors have come our way even from Washington, where our own democracy is facing some severe tests.
What can be done? Our letter about Galina elicited scores of suggestions on how to honor her memory. TCDS helped compose and circulate for signatures an appeal to the Russian Duma for a prompt and thorough investigation. At its winter Commencement exercises on January 22, the New School University is posthumously conferring upon Galina V. Starovoitova its first, just recently established University in Exile Award. And the establishment of a Galina Starovoitova Democracy Fellowship, which so many friends and associates have suggested, is the next goal that we at TCDS are now working toward. For the moment, we find it appropriate, if hardly adequate, to devote this issue of the Bulletin to pieces by and about Galina, since collectively they contain much that is relevant to our recent awakening to that renewed sense of vulnerability.
The article below was written by Galina in 1996. Remembering that it is our collective duty to ensure that the voices of the victims of political murders are not silenced, we wanted to include at least a sample of Galina's own words and thoughts - the views she had fought for and was murdered for - on these pages for us right here... and for you out there, wherever you may be reading them.
Elzbieta Matynia
Being a Woman Politician In Today's Russia
by Galina V. Starovoitova
The late 19th and early 20th Century suffragette movement achieved some notable successes in Russia. Indeed, women here gained the right to vote in 1917, after the February Revolution that overthrew the Tsar, while American women had to wait until the 1920s, and women in Switzerland until 1971. However, less than a year after women gained the vote, the Bolsheviks dissolved the democratically-elected Constituent Assembly and established their own dictatorship. It was not until 1993, when multi-party elections were restored, that we were again able to choose freely. And, as a reaction to the long-standing discrimination against women in politics under the old regime, a women's party appeared - something unheard-of in the rest of the world. Yet it makes perfect sense. After all, a feminist movement existed in the USSR in the 1960s and 1970s and was regarded as part of the larger dissident movement. When the latter was crushed during the Brezhnev era, so was feminism. Today there is a second wave of feminism, seen first in the Women's Party, and now largely represented by non-governmental organizations.
Officially, the Soviet regime had always proclaimed that there was equality between the different nationalities, ethnic groups, and the sexes within the USSR. This view became widely accepted in the Soviet Union, and led many to believe that the problem of inequality had been solved. But as Marx himself noted many years earlier, labels sometimes deceive not only the customer but the salesman as well. But in fact the national and ethnic tensions had never been resolved and, of course, surfaced explosively after perestroika. The situation was similar for women: while they enjoyed the privilege of heavy manual labor, work in foundries and metallurgical plants, and could sit in the make-believe parliament of a dictatorial regime, it was not real equality.
In fact, the differences between the genders, just as between ethnic groups, are among humanity's richest resources. The principle of cultural relativism therefore does not permit us to state with any confidence which ethnic group is more successful. I believe that this also applies to the biological differences between the genders. Perhaps woman's undisputed advantage in being able to conceive and give birth proves to be at the same time, her unique vulnerability.
More than 70% of the unemployed in Russia today are women. During the years of stagnation that preceded perestroika, however, women were less subject to social pressure and conformism, and were far more enterprising, as they were obliged to support their families. When things changed, they proved better prepared to cope with a market economy than many men.
Women always officially participated in Soviet political life; 30% to 40% of the deputies in the Supreme Soviet were women. The first woman astronaut in the world came from the USSR; so did the second. However, the female members of the Soviet parliament were, of course, not actually elected but appointed like their male colleagues, and they voted with just the same subservient unanimity.
In 1989 Gorbachev permitted the first relatively free elections, with several candidates for each parliamentary seat. At the same time, he introduced special quotas for these women's organizations that acted as subsidiaries of the Communist Party. But the women who were selected by the 20-30 members of the regional Women's Council, naturally, enjoyed an incomparably lower legitimacy than the deputies who had to compete with men for the support of tens or hundreds of thousands of voters.
Let me share with you my own experience. In the 1989 elections to the Soviet parliament I stood for the first time as a candidate in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. I faced four male opponents in a constituency with three hundred thousand inhabitants. One of the candidates was a writer, very well-known in Armenia and in the Armenian diaspora; two were chief editors of popular magazines; and the fourth was a famous sportsman. He was in fact, an Olympic and World-Champion weight-lifter, but perhaps I proved too much of a "heavyweight" even for him. They had access to the media and were supported by the newspapers and magazines. I had nothing of the kind; I did not know the language and was not an Armenian. Unlike them, though, I had never been a member of the Communist Party, and that enabled me to say what I really thought about the policies I was suggesting. To the voters this proved more important than my gender. I won about 80% of the vote.
A year later I was elected to represent my native city of St. Petersburg in the parliament of the Russian Republic. At that time, the law permitted individuals to be members of two parliaments simultaneously. I won exactly the same percentage of the vote against two male competitors. As a result, I became the only woman among six deputies sitting in both Soviet and Russian parliaments. It had been a hard battle, but it seemed to me that in an equal contest any woman could just as easily defeat a man. Consequently, the first legislative amendment that I successfully introduced was to abolish the special quotas for women in the electoral law. If we insist that we have certain distinctive qualities as women, I argued then, men might imagine that a woman's gender represents the limit of her attainments. The deputies laughed and voted the amendment through. As a result, women obtained only 5% of the seats in the next elections to the parliaments of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other Soviet republics.
In the December 1995 elections to the state Duma no less than 25 candidates were competing for one seat in the St Petersburg constituency where I was running. This was a Russian electoral record. I defeated 24 men (generals, bankers, politicians) and my gender probably helped me do so. It is hard to say how the vote would have been allocated if there had not been a single woman on the ballot.
There are fewer prejudices against women politicians in Russia, I believe, than in many Western countries. I worked in the USA for some time and women there, when asked, always thought that it was much more difficult for them to take up a political career than for Russian women. A popular American magazine recently discussed whether a woman could become president of the USA. The contributors agreed that a woman might become vice-president in the near future. When pressed about the presidency they said there was only one chance: if the president was shot (like Kennedy), then a woman vice-president might take his place! A recent sociological survey in Russia found, on the contrary, that 47% would prefer to elect a woman as president and a further 22% would consider such a possibility. The reasons they gave were very simple. Women do not usually drink or start wars.
The women who set up the Women of Russia party for the 1993 elections were well-organized. Their leader, Alevtina Fedulova, was at one time in charge of the Young Pioneers (a Communist organization for 10-14 year olds) and then became an assistant to Mikhail Suslov, the head of ideology in the Communist Party before perestroika. She did little to improve her reputation under Gorbachev. This was common knowledge yet the idea of getting women into politics was so popular that many gave such women their vote. As a result Women of Russia passed the 5% limit in the 1993 elections and this helped ensure that a tenth of the deputies in the State Duma were women. But the male-dominated system remains, as can be seen from a quick look at Russia's telephone systems. Apart from the service for ordinary people, there are several for those in positions of authority. A glance at the telephone directory for those listed under Exchange No. 2 reveals that 2% are women, and only 1% of those listed in even more restricted Exchange No. 1 are women.
And when women do get into parliament it is difficult psychologically for them to take part in debates because they are often subject to verbal abuse. One such incident was experienced by the well-known woman deputy Bela Denisenko. A professor and deputy minister of health, she belongs to the democratic caucus of deputies. When she began to speak in favor of putting medical insurance on the agenda, the Speaker of the Parliament Ruslan Khasbulatov, turned off her microphone. The rest of the deputies demanded that she be allowed to finish what she was saying. He turned the microphone back on: "Well, and what else did you want to say?" he rudely enquired. Denisenko, taken aback by this behavior, replied: "That was below the belt. Let me gather my thoughts and then finish what I was saying." To which Khasbulatov immediately retorted, "I don't have anything to do with what's below your belt." And once again turned off the microphone.
After this, admittedly, the women deputies wrote a collective letter, declaring that if such things happened again they would leave the debating chamber and inform the public, in Russia and abroad. We were also supported by a group of male deputies.
Several times I myself have been the object of insulting comments. For instance, a member of the opposing faction tried to unsettle me as I walked to the microphone by shouting: "Here comes Starovoitova. Just look how bow-legged she is!"
Recently, a woman deputy in the Duma asserted that "Zhirinovsky may want to brain-wash us." The response of the Speaker, Ivan Rybkin, was unorthodox to say the least: "Let's keep the washing out of politics, shall we?" I could cite numerous examples of this kind.
Many Russian women who go into politics face a crisis in their family life. Their husbands cannot accept being married to prominent women and almost all the most well-known women politicians have divorced while they were in parliament.
It is hardly surprising, then, that women in Russia and other East European countries feel they are being discriminated against when they wish to participate in politics. Paradoxically, the more democratic East European countries become, the fewer women there are in the upper echelons of power. One attempt to redress the balance was the creation of the Women of Russia party, organized on the basis of gender and not a political platform. But it was a short-lived and specifically Russian experiment. It served as a challenge, even if unconscious, to male chauvinism. Unfortunately, the party did not live up to the public's expectations. On the one hand, the women's party attempted to express what it thought were the interests of the state, by supporting the launching of military activities in Chechnya. This disillusioned many women voters. On the other hand, the party did not put forward any policies of its own and remained a marginal pseudo-political organization. It was therefore not surprising that in the December 1995 elections Women of Russia failed to pass the 5% limit. The party now has no representatives in the new Duma, though it occupies a place in the history of parliamentarism as the only experiment of its kind. Compared to Norway, which has an interesting law that prohibits either gender from holding more than 60% of the seats in parliament, Russia is still very far from such standards.
In Russia, when women are given ministerial posts and the like, they have mainly been entrusted to deal with such matters as social services. Yet, in the very recent past, the defense ministers of both Finland and Canada have been women while the British intelligence service is headed by a woman. On coming to power, French president Chirac gave a third of ministerial portfolios to women. President Clinton also made some increase in women's participation in government by appointing one as attorney general. During his incumbency the number of women senators has increased threefold.
Nevertheless, the participation of women at the highest levels in politics does not in itself mean that they will champion women's interests there. Margaret Thatcher's election as British Prime Minister did little to improve women's lot, and after Benazir Bhutto was elected President of Pakistan, the position of women in her country actually became worse.
Thatcher, Bhutto and Corazon Aquino are very different women and they pursued different policies. In my encounters with all three, I found myself most impressed by Aquino, president of the Philippines. A mother of five, she endured exile, and then witnessed the assassination of her husband as soon as he returned home. There were seven attempts on her life but she managed to stay in power and handed it over, in a democratic transfer, to her successor, thereby leading the country smoothly from dictatorship to democracy. The Philippines, it should be added, is a Catholic, Spanish-speaking country and, although it is located in the Pacific Ocean, its citizens feel a strong tie with Europe. Aquino herself even feels that her country, in some sense, paved the way for the "velvet revolutions" in the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany.
Let me close with the following declaration/statement. Psychologists believe that the pursuit of power is part of the individual's hedonistic nature. Taking control over others helps to satisfy certain desires. I believe that the exercise of power is a form of creativity and self-expression. Political power also gives us the possibility of shaping and guiding the future, for ourselves and for our children. I see no reason why women should tolerate their exclusion from these natural human desires and aspirations.
by Adam Michnik
Speaking at the grave of Galina Starovoitova after she was murdered in Saint Petersburg on November 20, one of the Russian mourners recalled that terrorism in Russia is nothing new. But the nineteenth-century terrorists, so perspicaciously depicted by Dostoevsky in The Possessed, terrible as they were, had certain ethics.; they paid with their own lives for taking the lives of their enemies. The terrorism of today's Russia is the work of cowardly bandits, who are interested in nothing but money, whether they are doing the bidding of politicians or not. Authorities don't know how to deal with this criminal Mafia. "No one among us expected," concluded the speaker, "that the road to freedom would be so difficult."
* * *
She belonged to a generation that did not dare dream that freedom would come. When freedom did come, she placed her faith in it with all the strength of the naïve romanticism of a Russian intelligent. She was one of the charismatic leaders of the first generation of perestroika. She contributed greatly to the demolition of the Soviet prison of nations, and added her brick to the construction of the edifice of Russian democracy. The Russian intelligentsia, long deprived of freedom, savored its intoxicating taste. They were aware that in the fight for freedom there is a price to be paid. This is why Russia gave birth to a generation of courageous and noble people. But freedom is for everybody - also for rascals, cheaters, and hooligans. When freedom is young, and not yet solid, it is always accompanied by an undeclared war between the idealist, who strives for truth and honesty in public life, and the gangster, who is satisfied with the freedom to rob. Galina Starovoitova fell victim in such a war...I liked Galina Starovoitova, a direct and cheerful woman, friendly toward the world. We met in the summer of 1989, when I visited Moscow for the first time. It was a year when the world was in ferment and the sky over the Soviet Empire was trembling. The impossible was becoming possible and even banal. The most romantic prophecies turned out to be real as if they had been the most obvious predictions. Galina - "Galya" - came to a meeting of university students at which I was speaking about Poland, the Polish democratic opposition, the Workers Defense Committee, KOR, and Solidarity. After the meeting, this nice, golden-haired woman came up to me, introduced herself, and proposed going to dinner. We passed the evening in her room, provided to her in her capacity as deputy to the Highest Council of the Soviet Union, talking about Poland and Russia, dictatorship and freedom, Gorbachev and Jaruzelski, Yeltsin, Sakharov and Walesa. In the ensuing ten years, we had many similar conversations in Moscow and Rome, Paris and Japan, Switzerland and the United States, and in Italy. When we spoke for the last time in Moscow, Galina told me that she planned to give me photos from our excursion in the canals of Venice, with my little son Antos. I had no time to pick up these photos, in which we were sitting in a Venetian vaporetto, laughing and happy that fate allowed us such moments. Most probably, I will never pick up these photos, and will never again be able to enjoy so much that recovered freedom.
* * *
The year of 1985, the year when the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Konstantin Chernenko, was dying, was a period of bleak helplessness. For many years, Russia had been governed by a group of stolid old men. The members of the dissident movement seemed defeated; some tempted their luck in exile, others were dying in camps. It seemed that there was no hope. And then, from the General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, came the words that soon were known worldwide: perestroika, uskorenie, glasnost-reconstruction, speeding up, transparency. These words provoked fright, distrust, and hope. The fright was in the men of the apparat, whose seats were shaking beneath them; the distrust was among the hardened émigrés, who saw in these words a shrewd and deceitful move by the Communist power; and hope was awakened among the intelligentsia, which for a very long time had been drowning their gloom in the glasses of vodka drunk in the kitchens of Leningrad and Moscow. Galya Starovoitova was among the first ones who decided to place their faith in hope. She was a cultural anthropologist by profession and a typical Russian intelligent by temperament - an intelligent, not a politician, although it was her involvement in politics that brought her fame and death from the hand of a hired murderer...The leaders of the first wave of perestroika did not understand politics - its games, mechanisms, and brutal cunning. They understood, however, what conscience is. Instinctively, they accepted as their own the system of values and the way of thinking of Andrei Dimitrevich Sakharov, a great physicist, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, defender of human rights, and prisoner of conscience, who was able to turn defenselessness into strength. It was he, the inheritor of Herzen and Chekhov, the most excellent and noble incarnation of the best characteristics of the Russian intelligentsia, who became a spiritual leader of all those who were not satisfied with praising Gorbachev and who were trying to turn Russia into a democratic state. Their principle was the truth; their characteristic was straightforwardness, their method was a nonviolent way of forcing change; their spiritual climate was free from hate and thoughts of revenge.
They were the first to reject not only the party nomenclatura and Bolshevik ideology but also Russian nationalism and devotion to the empire. At the beginning they met at the club "Moscow Tribune," then at the parliamentary Interregional Group. They spoke about the dramatic conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, about the pogroms in Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, about the bloody events in Georgia. It was they who condemned the massacre of Tienanmen Square in Beijing. Galya first gained great authority through her work in defense of persecuted Armenians. In the months before the putsch of General Yanayev in 1991, she tried to mediate between Gorbachev and Yeltsin. At the time of the putsch, she was on the side of the democrats, which did not surprise anyone.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Galya was an advisor to Yeltsin on the question of nationalities. Did she advise him well? I am not sure. The national question in the Russia of that time was like a tangled, bloody knot, which no one knew how to disentangle. Galya believed deeply that Russia had to shed its cloak of imperialism. She believed, after Herzen, that a nation that oppresses other nations couldn't be free. This is why she was ready to support all those who demanded sovereignty. Yet the matter was not obvious. The Bolsheviks in Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan transformed themselves into Asiatic potentates. A dissident and former prisoner, chosen as a president of Georgia, became an authoritarian despot, who started to put in prison his former friends from the democratic opposition. For Galya, however, they were all simply fighters for freedom from Soviet domination. Only a few years later did I hear from her a slightly different view. She spoke about the responsibility of the former colonizer for the shape and the trajectory of decolonization. She was not sparing in her criticism of her own illusions. She saw clearly that it is not enough to be against Moscow in order to earn the name of democrat and the respect due to one. But she never joined those who replaced the rhetoric of democracy with the rhetoric of empire...
A few days before the assassination of Galina, the Russian national communist Makashov openly called for anti-Jewish repression. And as usual it was not the Jews who were the main target. They were at most a bait for the mob. The target was Russian democracy and Russian democrats, such as Galina Starovoitova.
It does not make sense to summarize in detail the ideas of contemporary "Black Hundreds." As they understand it, the division in Russia is simple. On the one hand there is the worldwide Jewish Mafia and its democratic agents in Russia. On the other, the patriotic movements: Russian national communists and Russian orthodox-monarchist patriots. The "Black Hundred" rejects the West as the seat of evil and the ruin of Russia. This is why it aims at the annihilation of Russian democracy, in which it sees the fifth column of Western civilization.
* * *
The democratic camp in Russia is weak and internally divided. The epoch of Yeltsin is ending. He was a politician who transformed Russia, although we still don't know to what degree he did so for good or for bad...
Will Russia find a place for itself in the twenty-first century? Galina was convinced that it will. She believed in democratic Russia because she loved her country and believed, in the words of the nineteenth-century philosopher Pyotr Chaadayev, that one cannot love one's country with a blindfold over one's eyes and a gag over one's mouth. Galina believed that the Russian nation would not allow itself to suppress another nation, would not succumb to anti-Lithuanian or anti-Ukrainian or anti-Polish hysteria. She wanted a Russia that would be able to take upon itself some of the responsibility for what was done in its name and by the hands of its representatives in the other republics within Russia, or the countries outside it. She never looked for false justifications by blaming the foreigners for Russian faults; but she always defended Russians facing injustice.A sudden death by assassins imposes a different perspective on an entire life. It is like a sieve that separates the things that are essential from those that are not. Such a death reminds us of the need to live in the circle of final questions - the final judgment that steadily faces us - and the sentence may be pronounced at any moment. There is therefore an imperative to live in such a way as to be able to look without shame into the eyes of what is final. There are people who live in order to kill. Such are Galina's assassins and their masters. And there are people who live to help others to live, and they are sometimes killed because of that. Galina Starovoitova was such a person.
Adam Michnik, Editor-in-Chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, followed Galina as Visiting Professor in Democracy at the Graduate Faculty. A full version of this article first appeared in the New York Review of Books (Jan., 17, 1999). It was translated by Irena Grudzinska Gross.
Remembering Galina Starovoitova
By Marina Temkina
I was glad to see her at the panel
for the Russian-speaking audience
at Workmen Circle. Her hard/soft voice
sounded like an extension of a monumental female,
solid, coherent, and telling the uncomplimentary truths of the war.
The good news is, I thought, our women
begin to speak about wars, the bad news: there is a war.
When my turn came, while reading my text
on Tolstoys' marriage, I glanced at her surprised face.
We sat next to each other at the reception.
"Who are these people in the basement?"
- Our literary ghetto.
"Are you a feminist?" she asked.
- I am gender conscious.
"I am a feminist," directly and calmly.
This is not expected from a Russian woman.
So I dared,
why have you expressed doubts about affirmative action?
"It's fair to help minorities and women at the beginning
of their careers but not all life long."
- Life does not end after the beginning,
I stumbled not knowing anymore what people like her think
in my ex-homeland and if I should go on explaining,
and if there are people like her.
- About my recent trip to Russia?
I was afraid of "looking Jewish" and being killed
for speaking publicly of what I thought.
"Improbable now.
How do poets survive in America?"
- Not easily, if their idealism doesn't become pragmatic.
And how do the rarer species, women politicians, survive in Russia?
"With difficulties, it's not about the common good: national myths, money, power."
- Where did she get this sense of freedom in a country of communal living?
So we talked while drinking and eating sandwiches
that looked Russian and tasted American.
Somebody called to pick her up. Giving me her phone numbers, faxes, email she said,
"Look me up when you are there, we will do something together,
A reading for our men in Duma?"
- I won't find you
after today's news report of your body in a stairwell
with five bullet holes like a five-star label
on a bottle of Armenian cognac opened to celebrate
the last act of our democratic drama.
Marina Temkina is a writer and poet and the TCDS
Artist-in-Residence.
Farewell to Galina
by Alex Grigorievs
Farewell to GalinaI returned from St. Petersburg to Moscow in November last year with the idea that I must see Galina promptly. The campaign for the city-state legislature was turning sordid and I wanted to compare impressions with someone who had the insight of a participant. The issue was whether St. Petersburg will become the beacon of democracy for Russia or continue, along with the rest of the country, to evolve into a city ruled by a combination of corrupt administration and criminals.
Sordid as the campaign was I could not imagine that the next night I would wake up to listen to the news of Galina's murder. Everything seemed too late and futile. While she was there, one phone call away, and on the screen of my TV set confronting the communists turned nationalists in the State Duma, the ideals of perestroika and of a democratic and free Russia next to a free Latvia and a free Ukraine, seemed alive. In the prison of nations that the Soviet Union was, and Russia in many ways continues to be, Galina was always on the side of the oppressed. She was the most vocal and consistent proponent of the idea of Russia equal to rather than above other nations. Starovoitova's Russia could join NATO and could become a member of the European Union. It is Russia's problem that the reality of that country returning to petty delusions of imaginary imperial grandeur was getting ever further from the ideals of Starovoitova and other perestroika leaders. She refused to accept the country falling back into poshlost, and the country trampled on her.
The first call came when she was fired from the Kremlin where she had served as adviser to Yeltsin on inter-ethnic relations. She was vehemently opposed to the Russian aggression in Chechnya, and when the party of war won over the probably drunken president, she was un-ceremoniously discarded. The notification came in the mail, and the president never as much as said 'thank you' to a former ally who had helped get him elected. Human rights activists, consistent democrats are booed and ridiculed in today's Russia (if they are not prosecuted and jailed for alleged high treason as was Alexander Nikitin in St. Petersburg, and many others throughout Russia of 1999) in very much the same way as they were in the old Soviet Union.
I first met Galina in the spring of 1989. I came to Moscow from Riga trying to solicit support among Russian intellectuals for the Latvian independence movement. I found in her not just someone who shared our aspirations but also an excellent friend, a human being of exceptional warmth and compassion. After the upheavals of 1989-1991 our ways parted and we met again in the United States where I introduced her to the New School. A perfectionist, a brilliant and sharp speaker in Russian, Galina was as worried as a schoolgirl before a test whether her lecture in the New School would be good enough in English. So we went through her notes again, and even though there were practically no changes to make, she seemed visibly reassured. Just as she won me years ago, she won lots of friends in the New School and kept these intellectual ties and friendships until the end.
It is probably human nature, after the feeling of shock at a friend's death subsides, to try to see some message, some meaning, some portent in it. It seems to me now that Galina died to keep the ideal of a democratic Russia alive. Maybe not right now, but some time in the future, for Galina's son, for her grandson, that ideal will become a reality. Still I would rather see Galina alive among us than lying murdered in the dark stairway leading to her apartment on the Griboyedov Canal in St. Petersburg.
Alex Grigorievs, Senior Program Officer at the National Democratic Institute in Moscow, is a long-time friend and associate of TCDS.
Predsiedatel, Gosudarstvennaya Duma, Ohkotnij riad 1, 103009 Moscow, Russia:
We wish to express our shock and sadness at the news of the assassination of Galina Starovoitova. We knew her as a courageous defender of human rights, a politician of integrity, a respected and popular teacher. When her life was cut short by a brutal killing, her work for Russian democracy was far from completed. We urge the executive powers of Russia to take all possible measures to ensure an immediate and thorough investigation of this political murder. We can only hope that her death will serve as a wake-up call to all those who yearn for Russia to join the family of nations committed to non-violent social and political change.
Jonathan Aaron, Cambridge, MA
Richard Adams, filmmaker, New York
Andrew Arato, New School for Social Research
Shlomo Avineri, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Stanislaw Baranczak, Harvard University
Mikhail Baryshnikov, New York
Robert Bernstein, Founding Chair, Human Rights Watch
Martin and Zora Butora, Bratislava
Elzbieta Czyzewska, actress, New York
Aurora Dumitrescu, University of Timisoara, Romania
Marek Edelman, Poland
Barbara Epstein, New York
Jonathan F. Fanton, Human Rights Watch, USA
Delina Fico, Women's rights activist, Albania
Milos Forman, filmmaker, New York
Nancy Fraser, New School for Social Research
Judith Friedlander, New School for Social Research
Halina Frydman & Roman Frydman, New York University
Konstanty Gebert, "Midrash," Warsaw
Michel Gerard, sculptor, France/USA
Jeffrey Goldfarb, New School for Social Research
Irena Grudzinska Gross, New York
Jan T. Gross, New York
Ruth Ellen Gruber, Italy
William Guyster, Drew University
William D. Hartung, World Policy Institute, New York
Seamus Heaney, poet, Dublin
Arthur C. Helton, Open Society Institute, New York
Ira Katznelzson, Columbia University, New York
Vesna Kesic, Womens Human Rights Babe, Zagreb
Janos Kis, Central European University, Budapest
Komar & Melamid, artists, New York
Jacek Kurczewski, Poland
Jacek Kuron, Poland
Xiaorong Li, Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy
Sonja Licht and Milan Nikolic, Belgrade
Mark Lilla, New York
James Linville, Paris Review, New York
Fatos Lubonja, Editor-in-Chief, Endeavor, Albania
Arien Mack, New School for Social Research
Norman Manea, writer, New York
Norman Mailer, writer, Provincetown, MA
Elzbieta Matynia, New School for Social Research
Krzysztof Michalski, Vienna
Adam Michnik, Poland
Czeslaw Milosz, poet, US/Poland
Dmitri Nikulin, New School for Social Research
Cynthia Ozick, writer, USA
Hans-Peter Mueller, Humboldt University, Berlin
Gail Persky, New School for Social Research
Marta Petrusewicz, Hunter College, New York
David Plotke, New School for Social Research
Raymond Ravaglia, Stanford University
David Remnick, The New Yorker
Mstislav Rostropovich
Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch
Jeffrey Sachs, Harvard University
Paula and Miroslaw Sawicki, Poland
Jonathan Schell, writer, New York
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., historian & writer, New York
A.O. Scott, Lingua Franca, New York
Wallace Shawn, playwright, New York
Ann Snitow, New School for Social Research
Marina Temkina, poet, New York
Vladimir Tismaneanu, University of Maryland
Jan Urban, Prague
Lawerence Weschler, The New Yorker
Elie Wiesel, author, USA
Adam Zagajewski, Paris/Krakow
Reflections and Reactions from Friends of TCDS
The reaction to Galina Starovoitova's assassination from friends and associates of TCDS and the New School community was swift, intense and sincere. Although this is but a minute sample of those sentiments, they are representative of the hundreds of messages we received:
Galina Starovoitova was my lecturer in a class on Russian democratization and federalism at the Graduate Faculty in the Spring of 1996... Her optimism and belief became my own personal and academic credo of thinking and believing in the victory of democracy in Russia and elsewhere in East and Central Europe. Her cruel and tragic political assassination is my own tragedy now - a tragedy of a student and a person who witnessed the murder of these beliefs and optimism.
Mariela Vargova, graduate student, Graduate Faculty
I did not see the paper because I was in Chicago and only tonight have caught up with the news. This is too stunning, really and truly impossible to comprehend. You must be especially devastated. I can only offer a hug of condolence, which is dreadfully inadequate in the circumstances of evil deeds and unspeakable loss.
Yours, Ira Katznelzson
When I first read about your friend's death, somehow I built up all my defenses to try not to think about it. I have been familiar with political assassination since I am six years old. The first assassination I can recall was that of Jose Raquel Mercado (a former Labor Minister in Colombia killed in 1976); the last political assassination that I witnessed, was that of Professor Eduardo Umanya Mendoza, a Human Rights Activist who was shot last April. I was in Colombia when this occurred. He had been my professor at Journalism School in 1993.
Every time someone, another one, "the last victim," is killed in Colombia, the press, academia, non-governmental organizations release press statements in which the "enemies of democracy" are concealed under that same euphemism. We know who they are, if not by their proper names, by their pretended "ideology". We all know it is the radical right, the militaries, sometimes the leftist guerrillas... This cannot be said, unless you want to become their next victim.
How could you respond? You have to, somehow. You are in New York. You are safe. My recommendation is: If you can at least suggest who might be these enemies of democracy, do it. Avoid euphemisms, if possible. Avoid academic jargon. Be as precise as you can. They didn't kill an ideology, they killed a person, an individual, a name. The ones who did it also have names. You might not be able to say the names, I know, but at least it might come to their ears that Dr. Galina Starovoitova's friends somehow responded. Impunity is terrible, believe me.
Francisco Barrios, graduate student, Graduate Faculty
I met Galina first time in May 1990, at the first human rights meeting organized in Moscow as an open, not clandestine, event. She gave a great speech, and I was fascinated with her personality. Last time I met her - as you did, Elzbieta - in Sofia, a month ago. Her death is a warning to all those people who are ready to fight for democracy, human rights, dignity, in the countries of transition. This warning means to fight even stronger in building transborder coalitions.
Milan and I believe that the response must be as strong as possible: 1. Demand serious investigation; 2. Put the responsible people (not only the hit man) on trial; 3. Continue with strengthening legislation on organized crime; 4. The West should help Russia to fight corruption and organized crime on all levels, because it has more experience with this kind of crime; 5. The West should hit the interests of the Russian mafia wherever possible, especially the assets which this mafia is exporting from Russia; 6. New School should establish a fellowship program named after GS dedicated for Russians who want to learn how to fight corruption and organized crime.
Milan Nikolic and Sonja Licht, Belgrade
• Thursday, December 3:
Iouliia Gradskova, Scholar at the Gender Studies Center of the Moscow State Lomonosov University and Fellow at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington, D.C., gave a talk titled The Russian Woman's Identity: From the Object of Totalitarian Politics to Where?
• Thursday, February 25:
Slavoj Zizek, Philosopher from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, will give a talk The Obscene Tolerance of the Superego: Postcommunist Fantasies. Room 242, 6pm.
• Early March:
Fron Nazi and Fred Abrahams of Human Rights Watch will lead a discussion concerning the Albanian Question in the Balkans, which will focus specifically on issues relating to Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo. Because of the volatility in the region and Mr. Nazi's and Mr. Abrahams' work there, the date for this cannot be set far enough in advance to be listed here.
To be notified of the exact date and location of this talk, please e-mail ClarH445@newschool.edu or call us at (212) 229-5580.
• The first Democracy & Diversity Graduate Institute in Cape Town, South Africa, co-organized by the Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria, takes place from January 10-31, 1999. International faculty and students attended seminars on democratization, governance, women, globalization, and economic development.
• The eighth Democracy & Diversity Graduate Institute in Cracow, Poland will take place this year from July 11-31, 1999. Every year the summer institute welcomes more than 50 junior scholars from around the world for a three week intensive curriculum in society, politics and culture. For more information or for applications, please contact Ina Breuer at Tel: (212) 229-5580, fax: (212) 229-5894, or e-mail BreuerI@newschool.edu.
• Preparations are also well underway at TCDS for our third Summer Institute on US Society, The American Experience, at the Graduate Faculty. Each year the institute has brought to New York eighteen scholars in American Studies from such countries as Azerbaijan; Bangladesh; Cote D'Ivoire, Czech Republic, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos, Lithuania, Mongolia, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Palestinian Authority, Russia, Spain, Thailand, and Ukraine for an intensive programme designed to provide a first hand look at American society, specifically within an academic context.
• TCDS's 1998/99 Work-in-Progress Workshop: Democratization in Culture and Politics, continues in the Spring semester with several interesting papers. Already confirmed workshops include presentations by: Tomasz Kitlinski (Fulbright scholar) on Theories of Subjectivity, Jean Hoenninger (Anthropology) on Nazi Execution Sites in Poland and Donna Axel (Gender Studies) on the Network of East-West Women. For more information, dates and times or copies of the papers, please contact Tomek Kitlinski at e-mail: kitlinst@newschool.edu
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |