HIGH CRIMES….

Galina Starovoitova, a member of the Duma and one of Russia’s true democrats, died in a hail of bullets outside her apartment in St. Petersburg on Friday (November 20). In the Duma, Starovoitova had recently led the failed effort to censure General Albert Makashov, a Communist Party Duma member, for anti-Semitic statements. Former Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais called her murder “obviously political.” Playing the old Russian game of “who stands to gain,” Chubais pointed a finger at “communists and gangsters.” Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov used the event to attack President Boris Yeltsin’s government for weakness and incompetence: “Not a single crime which has shaken the public in recent years has been solved.”