In 1983 he defended his doctoral dissertation at the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography in Moscow and received the degree of Candidate of Historical Sciences.

In December 1989, he was arrested along with other members of the Karabakh Committee and spent six months in Moscow's Butyrka Prison.

After 1992, Galstyan broke with his former colleagues from the Karabakh Committee who had come to power in Armenia, namely Levon Ter-Petrosyan and Minister of Internal Affairs Vano Siradeghyan.

[1] In 1994, Galstyan co-founded the National Democratic Union opposition party together with former Karabakh Committee members Ashot Manucharyan and Vazgen Manukyan.

Many speculated that Vano Siradeghyan had ordered the murder, while in 1996, Defense Minister Vazgen Sargsyan argued that the murder was the work of the "Dro" group, an alleged secret terrorist group within the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, with the intention of causing further hostility between the former Karabakh Committee members in power and those in opposition.