A member of the State Duma, parliament's lower house, and the only woman to run for the Russian presidency in the 1996 election, Starovoitova was shot dead in the stairwell of her home in central St. Petersburg, Russia's second city, in November 1998.
Friends will gather at the grave of Starovoitova, who would have turned 60 Wednesday. A ceremony to open a small park that will bear her name and a sculpture of the politician, seen as a symbol of perestroika and the democratic movement in Russia, will take place later in the day.
Two people, intelligence officer Yury Kolchin and Vitaly Akishin, were sentenced in July 2005 to 20 and 23.5 years in jail, respectively, for organizing the murder and gunning down Starovoitova.
On Tuesday, St. Petersburg City Court started hearings in the trial of two more people, Vyacheslav Lelyavin and Pavel Stekhnovsky, suspected of helping organize the assassination.
