Kadyrov Yes, Starovoitova No

The renaming of a Moscow street in honor of Akhmad Kadyrov (see Chechnya Weekly, August 25) seems to reveal a double standard on the part of the municipal authorities. Not only does the city have a law forbidding that any street be named after anyone who has been dead for less than a decade, but it has specifically enforced that law within the last month.

According to an article by Anna Shamburova in the August 26 issue of Novaya gazeta, human-rights advocates in Moscow petitioned the mayor’s office to name a street in honor of the reformist Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova, murdered in St. Petersburg in 1998. The mayor’s staff refused, noting that only six years had passed since Starovoitova’s death.