Anna Politkovskaya, Russia's bravest human-rights journalist, who was murdered last October in Moscow, is generally described as a critic of Vladimir Putin. She was that, but so much more. Anna was one of the world's difficult people, who would not take "no" for an answer, in defending those whose rights had been trampled on - whether Chechen villagers, bullied Russian soldiers, orphans, the relatives of those killed in terrorist incidents. When I last saw her, at a conference in Sweden, shortly before her murder, she was castigating members of the Russian human-rights community for not doing enough to defend Chechens framed on dubious terrorist charges.
Anna held everyone to the highest standards and found them wanting. She ruffled a lot of feathers and many Russians, Putin included, failed to utter words of sympathy following her death. But she was not arrogant, because the person she drove hardest was herself. She wrote solely for the low-circulation Novaya Gazeta newspaper because she was barred from appearing on Russian television. She received a huge daily postbag of letters from people who believed she alone could fight for their rights. She made dozens of exhausting trips to Chechnya. She also made frequent trips to the West to pick up journalistic awards - she was less interested in the prizes themselves than in the generally futile hope that she could use the occasion to persuade western governments to pay more attention to Chechnya.
A Russian Diary, finished not long before her death, is the product of that frenetic life and makes for sombre reading. Day by day, Anna registers what she regards as Russia's slow surrender to a new corrupt autocracy. The "democrats" of the 1990s are ineffective and divided; Putin curbs or coopts the opposition; parliament stops debating real issues; the media is bought up by Kremlin-sponsored corporations; journalists sink into self-censorship; a nasty "war on terror" goes on in the south of the country, virtually unrecorded except by her and a few others.
Some Russians mocked Anna for being relentlessly gloomy, turning a blind eye to Russia's return to "stability" and economic prosperity. At times she does see Russia merely as a prison of the KGB and its successor, the FSB. Yet her Cassandra-like warnings are being borne out. In some of the most compelling pages in the book, the author visits the 30-year-old Chechen boxer and alleged torturer Ramzan Kadyrov in his heavily fortified house. Kadyrov, whom she calls "the baby dragon", brags mafia-style, "It isn't a good idea to be one of my rivals. It isn't good for your health." Yet this man, who has been accused of involvement in Anna's murder, was recently appointed by Putin president of Chechnya.
The overarching theme of this dark and powerful book is that Russia is a lawless place, where the powerful do as they wish. It leaves the reader with the bleak conviction that those who killed the author will not be brought to justice.
Source: TimesOnline
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