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Sad Return

20 July, 00:00

By Vitaly PORTNYKOV, The Day The return to Russia's northern capital from Paris of former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, the legendary orator of the USSR's First Congress of People's Deputies, was portrayed by the Russian media as a true sensation. Perhaps not because his coming back has anything to do with the former Mayor's Office corruption case, which could claim center stage in the criminal columns, but because Mr. Sobchak, regardless of his personal merits or otherwise, remains a symbolic figure embodying early perestroika euphoria when the People launched what was believed a final onslaught on the system at the Kremlin, that Communist holy of holies.

I do not know whether I should mention what has changed since then. Perhaps we have in the first place. Politicians? They have either adapted themselves to the political situation or turned into marginalia, people who should be mentioned in history textbooks rather than current political science.

Almost the first thing Mr. Sobchak did after returning home was to visit the St. Alexandr Nevsky Lavra Monastery, placing flowers on the graves of Galina Starovoitova and Mikhail Manevich. When I heard of this I recalled meeting Mrs. Starovoitova at the Duma's buffet and her story about KGB veterans' sojourn at the apartment of one of the Soviet secret police functionaries. "They decided to discredit all of the first wave democrats. Sobchak and Stankevich could be accused of making bad decisions, criminal cases could be rigged against them, for they remained in power long enough," the woman had mused. "Now take me. I can assure you, Vitaly, they have no incriminating evidence on me whatever, so I can work normally and have no fear."

I remember her collecting things and placing them in her famous bag, big enough yet looking elegant. And then she was off hurrying to attend yet another parliamentary session. It was several months before Anatoly Sobchak's trip to Paris, over a year before Galina's assassination, and several years before Sobchak's return.

Newspaper output №:

№27, (1999)

Section

Day After Day