Reports from Moscow say 64-year-old Russian opposition politician and activist Valeriya Novodvorskaya has died at a Moscow hospital.
Novodvorskaya reportedly died from “intensive toxic shock” after being admitted to an emergency room in the early morning hours of July 12.
Novodvorskaya was a Soviet-era dissident who founded the radical liberal “Democratic Union” in 1988.
She was imprisoned at a Soviet psychiatric hospital with a diagnosis given to many Soviet dissidents at the time – “sluggishly progressing schizophrenia.”
In recent years, she has been openly critical of Russian government policies – including the wars in Chechnya and the domestic policies of President Vladimir Putin.
She ran for parliament in 1993 for the ‘Democratic Union” as part of the “Russia’s Choice” bloc.
In 1995, she ran on the list of the Party of Economic Freedom.
But she was not elected in either vote and never held public office.
With reporting by IFX and Radio Echo Moskvy