Galina Starovoitova was the first Russian politician I ever met. It was a freezing afternoon in October 1991, and she was at a rally in Moscow commemorating the victims of the Soviet KGB.

It turned out she was always at rallies, always championing any liberal cause that crossed her path. I remember her big, strong face, topped by a fur hat, and her clear, feisty voice booming through a loud hailer.

Fearless: A political battler

She was on her way up in those days - an adviser to Boris Yeltsin. A woman with bold plans and ambitions for Russia's young democracy, she seemed fearless and tireless.

The last time I met her was a month ago in her run-down office in St Petersburg.

At the age of fifty-two she had just remarried, and had recently published another academic paper on her favourite topic, minority rights.

She was polite and cheerful as ever - she gave me a signed copy of her book.

Death threats

But there were problems.

She said she had been getting death threats and that her telephone was being bugged by the security services that she so often criticised.

Being a Russian liberal was getting difficult.

She and her colleagues had long since become disillusioned with President Yeltsin and his lethargic opportunism.

But her own party, Democratic Russia, was also floundering - the victim of political infighting and public disenchantment with the country's hesitant reforms.

She had become a lone voice in parliament, surrounded by louder nationalist and communist politicians. She was also embroiled in a vicious local election campaign, marred by anti-semitism and blatant corruption.

Shock at murder

Then on Saturday, I woke up to the news that Galina Starovoitova had been murdered - shot three times in the head outside her St Petersburg apartment. Her young, soft-spoken aide, Ruslan Linkov, was in hospital in a critical condition.

For the first time in seven years, I felt like giving up on Russia - getting on a plane and abandoning a country which finally seemed to have stepped into the abyss. I know thousands, perhaps millions of Russians must have felt more shocked than me.

For many people, Galina Starovoitova was virtually the only unquestionably decent figure left in Russia's sordid political landscape.

They stood for hours in the snow, in a long line, waiting to file past her coffin. It was a jolt to see her red hair and serene face peering out.

Later, when someone suggested that people should turn their lights off in unison one evening for a few mintues in rememberance, twenty thousand people jammed just one call-in programme to voice support.

It was at that point that I thought, perhaps, her death might actually prove to be some sort of watershed, that it would galvanise the country's democratic forces, jolt the political elite out of its indolence, and put Russia back on the reformist path it once set out on so energetically.

Responsibility for killing

But that hope did not last long. No-one seems to know yet who killed Mrs Starovoitova, but no-one doubts that it was a political assassination of some sort, perhaps by local rivals, the security services or some extremist group.

Mourning: Ordinary Russians distraught

Already, an ugly round of finger-pointing has begun - Democrats accusing Communists of silencing one of their most vocal critics. Communists accusing Democrats of masterminding it themselves to win sympathy.

Her death has already become just another weapon to be brandished on Russia's ideological frontlines.

Even Boris Yeltsin, sick in hospital, has tried, far too late, to reclaim the comradeship he once shared with Galina Starovoitova. His aides feebly claimed that his latest bout of pneumonia was brought on by the news of her death.

Has anything changed?

And so, a week on, precious little seems to have changed in Russia, except, perhaps, that people have lost even more hope in their country's future.

For years Russians have been told to be patient - told that their sacrifices will pay off and that very soon, the economy will pick up.

For a while, people believed it. I certainly did.