From 1994 to 1998, she was a visiting professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, lecturing on the politics of self-determination for ethnic minorities.

[3] In the USSR Congress, she became a member of the reformist faction, the Inter-Regional Group of People’s Deputies, which was led by Sakharov and included other notables such as Yuri Shchekochikhin, Sergei Yushenkov, and Boris Yeltsin.

Instead, she became presidential advisor on interethnic issues until the end of 1992,[3] when she was dismissed by Yeltsin apparently under pressure from conservative elements for criticizing Moscow's support for Ossetians in their ethnic cleansing campaign against the Ingush in the North Caucasus.

With former political prisoner Sergei Grigoryants, and funding from George Soros[citation needed], she co-organized a series of international conferences in Moscow in the mid-1990s around the theme "The KGB: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow".

The movement was led by her and two prominent members of the Moscow Helsinki Group: Lev Ponomarev and the dissident Orthodox priest Gleb Yakunin.

They convinced Dudaev to sign a protocol where he agreed to withdraw his demands for immediate Chechen independence and begin official negotiations, according to another Duma member Valery Borschov.

[9] Over the years, Galina Starovoitova attended numerous international meetings and discussions, where she had conversations with world leaders including Margaret Thatcher, Jacques Chirac, Václav Havel, Henry Kissinger and Lech Wałęsa.

She said, "I propose a decision to order a medical examination of deputies of the State Duma, especially in the light of yesterday's voting on the battle against anti-semitism, when many of our colleagues gave us reason to doubt their mental health".

[10] In April 1998, she became the leader of "Democratic Russia", then registered as an official party, in order to prepare for State Duma elections that were to be held in December 1999.

Galina Starovoitova tried to prevent such people from coming to power using her personal connections with different political figures and with Yeltsin's wife, according to Valeriy Borschov.

[8] Valeria Novodvorskaya claimed that the Russian state security services murdered Starovoytova to eliminate her influence on Boris Yeltsin and her resistance in appointing former KGB general Yevgeny Primakov as Prime Minister of Russia.