General Lev Rokhlin (51) was buried in Moscow yesterday. According to Russia's security services he was shot by his wife, Tamara, after a party in his dacha near Moscow to celebrate their son's 14th birthday.
The FSB, the internal successor to the KGB, announced quickly that there was no political reason for the general's death. Unnamed security spokesmen were quoted as saying he had been drinking heavily of late and that his wife had a history of psychiatric problems. The police announced that Mrs Rokhlina had confessed her guilt.
In western democracies the official account of how Gen Rokhlin met his end would have been accepted without demur. In a country such as Russia, where for decades false official statements have been the rule rather than the exception, the reaction has been different.
Communist and nationalist deputies in the Duma, of which Gen Rokhlin was a prominent member, immediately claimed that he was assassinated by government agents.
Ordinary Russians were sceptical of both claims and a common view arose that Gen Rokhlin died because he knew too much about corruption in the army.
At the weekend new statements about the general's death came into the open. On the nominally-independent NTV channel Gen Rokhlin's son-in-law, Mr Sergei Abakumov, told viewers that Mrs Rokhlina was forced to confess. She told him, he said, that she was threatened that her daughter and her son would die if she did not admit to the murder.
On the mainly state-controlled ORT station, Gen Rokhlin's daughter, Yelena, was in tears as she told what she described as the "true" version of the murder.
Mrs Rokhlina and 14-year-old Igor Rokhlin were, she said, together in the dacha when the killers sneaked in and murdered the general with a single shot to the head. The widow and her son were then threatened that the entire family would be hunted down and killed unless she confessed.
Mr Alexander Morozov, deputy head of Gen Rokhlin's Defence of the Army political party, claimed in another interview, that the murder weapon, Gen Rokhlin's PSM 5.45 mm service pistol, would have been too complicated for an amateur to use.
Both TV channels have, however, switched from unquestioning support of President Yeltsin to unquestioning opposition, thus throwing some doubt on the credibility of the interviews.
Gen Rokhlin was an unusual officer. He opposed Russia's war in Chechnya openly but still felt it his duty to command the troops which took Grozny by storm. As a senior officer of Jewish origin his background differed from most of the Russian generals who had come up through the Soviet system and, when he moved into politics, he espoused the cause of the ordinary Russian soldier against that of the military establishment.
He became chairman of the Duma's defence committee and launched attack after attack against the deterioration in military standards, an exceptionally brutal initiation process called dyedoschina, and corruption at a high level in the armed forces.
Mrs Rokhlina has yet to be charged with her husband's murder.
