She portrayed wars in which thousands of innocent citizens were robbed, abducted, tortured, raped, or killed by, at first, Russian military forces and the Russian-backed Chechen administration. Later Chechens themselves joined in preying on their people.
As Politkovskaya explained in "A Small Corner of Hell," "Nighttime criminals attack the ruined homes of people who are already wretched enough as it is. On the one hand, this criminality is led and encouraged by Federal servicemen. . . . shooting, robbing, and raping. [Eventually] the gangs combing the ruins at night are a fraternity of criminals from the Chechen ranks, mixed with [Russian] servicemen [none of which] give a damn about. . . the fact that they belong to opposing sides." And you thought you couldn't tell the players in Iraq without a scorecard.
Poltikovskaya may have sealed her own fate with another book, "Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy" (Metropolitan Books, 2005). Besides chronicling the Russian leader's brutal pursuit of the Second Chechen War, it also accused the Russian secret service, the FSB, of stifling dissent.
Nor was the Russian public spared. "It is we who are responsible for Putin's policies," Poltikovskaya wrote. Its rejection of the first war notwithstanding, "Society has shown limitless apathy. . . . The KGB respects only the strong. The weak it devours. We of all people ought to know that."
Of her profession, Politkovskaya maintained that "if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be. . . the bullet, poison, or trial -- whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit."
Anna Politkovskaya was found shot dead in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006. Organizations like PEN and Amnesty International, both of which had given her awards, issued the expected denunciations. Also, more than 1,000 Russians, bravely distinguishing themselves from the ranks of the apathetic, filed past her coffin.
That Politkovskaya's murder occurred on Putin's birthday helped point the way toward official complicitness. If what was a likely attempt to curry favor with the president weren't so obvious, the suspects might have avoided arrest.
But an FSB colonel, an officer from the Department for Fighting Organized Crime, and a federal authority in Chechnya were apprehended. In August 2007, Novaya Gazeta journalists and Anna's grown son issued a statement concurring that those arrested were indeed deserving of investigation, still supposedly ongoing.
Parallels can be drawn between Politkovskaya's work and that of the great Russian World War II journalist Vasily Grossman, who, arguably, saw more of life than any journalist in the history of the planet. (If that sounds hyperbolic, refer to "A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941-1945" by Anthony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova [Pantheon, 2006]).
While no one can match the range of Grossman, Politkovskaya enjoyed one advantage over him -- the opportunity to interview participants and victims on both sides of the conflict. But Grossman, too, incurred the wrath of the Russian government.
He wrote odes to the Russian people and soldiers during the war that may well have helped inspire them to victory. But, after the war, he turned his efforts to documenting the crimes of the Holocaust during a period of vehement official anti-Semitism, as well as those of his own government during the collectivization of the late 1920s and early thirties. As a result, he was reduced to the status of a non-person who couldn't get his novels published.
It's one thing for journalists, caught up in a noble cause, to endanger their own lives. But the pressure on them is exponentially intensified when the effect on their families is taken into consideration.
The claim "I have a family" might seem like an excuse for journalists or would-be whistleblowers to avoid taking the high road. But the decision to put your family in a state of crisis, not to mention harm's way, obviously can't be taken lightly.
Taking responsibility for placing your family in that situation requires a breed of courage seldom seen and even less understood.
This was best illustrated when the Nord-Ost terrorists asked to see Politkovskaya. "I say 'yes,'" she wrote in "A Small Corner of Hell." "My son manages to get through to me in the midst of all the people calling me: 'Please don't do this! We can't take it anymore!' . . . It's a difficult conversation.
"He can't even express in words how tired everyone around me has gotten from these experiences that take up their whole lives. . . . But later, he will help me more than anyone else with the negotiations, talking with the terrorists on the phone until my arrival."
Russ Wellen is the nuclear deproliferation editor for OpEdNews. He's also on the staffs of Freezerbox and Scholars & Rogues.
"It's hard to tell people not to smoke when you have a cigarette dangling from your mouth." -- Mohamed El Baradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency
Great story about a lady whose name I may never be able to spell or pronounce.
Along witht he last quote about smokes hanging out of our mounths. Why can't Americans see that we have 20,000 logs in our eyes, in are dealings with Iran?
by
Michael Dewey (4 articles, 1 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 203 comments)
on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 12:03:21 PM
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