A Russian Diary (2 page)
Authors: Anna Politkovskaya
By the way: at this writing, Anna Politkovskaya's
A Russian Diary
isn't being published in Russia.
ON THE DAY THAT ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA was shot to death, October 7, 2006, in the elevator of her apartment block on Lesnaya Street, the editor of
Novaya Gazeta
says that she was about to file a long story on torture as it is routinely conducted by Chechen security forces supported by Russia. That story will almost certainly never be read by anyone, inside or outside Russia. Even the substance of it will probably never be known. Russian police seized her notes, her computer hard drive, and photographs of two people she would reportedly accuse of torture.
It is dangerous to be a real journalist in Russia today. A conscientious Russian journalist, unlike reporters in North America or Western Europe, doesn't have to travel into war zones to risk his or her life. Danger comes to his or her doorstep, car, or apartment block.
The Glasnost Defense Foundation, led by Alexey Simonov of the Moscow Helsinki Group, reports that during 2005 alone, six Russian journalists were murdered, sixty-three were assaulted, forty-seven were arrested, and forty-two were prosecuted. The editorial offices of twelve publications or broadcasters were attacked. Twenty-three editorial offices were closed. Ten were evicted from their premises. Twenty-eight newspapers or magazines were confiscated outright. Thirty-eight times, the government simply refused to let material be printed or distributed.
Thirteen Russian journalists have been killed—in Russia, not Chechnya, Iraq, or Afghanistan—since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.
Any American journalist who reads Anna Politkovskaya's journals should find it difficult to accept with a straight face the awards we give one another that laud us for being bold or courageous.
I've probably had a fairly typical career for a reporter who has covered conflicts. I've had to duck sniper fire, been shaken by bombs, and once spent two anxious days locked in a room by teenage Palestinian kids who said they didn't trust Jews and wanted the tapes of my interviews. I've been called a Communist by fascists and a CIA agent by Communists, and I've been not too cleverly or subtly threatened. But as a member of the Corleone or Soprano family once said, “This is the business we've chosen.”
Yet after reading
A Russian Diary,
I hope I always shrink from the arrogance to compare any challenges I face to those of a conscientious Russian journalist. If the president of the United States, Bill Gates, the CEO of Exxon, or the head of the Chicago mob doesn't like one of my stories, he has the power to crush … a pen in his hand and
write a really strong letter.
The likes of Seymour Hersh, Nina Totenberg, and Brian Ross would be in prison in today's Russia—or driving cabs for their own protection. When American reporters challenge the government or corporate line on a story and spotlight abuse, deceit, greed, crimes, and conflicts of interest, they can wind up on
All Things Considered, The Daily Show,
and the bestseller list. They bring home trophies, get good tables in restaurants, and are given fellowships.
If Anna Politkovskaya had the courage to attempt so much with so little, how can those of us who are reporters in the unsurpassed freedom of America demand anything less of ourselves?
A Russian Diary
is not a personal memoir in the way Americans have come to expect. Readers will discover little here of Anna Politkovskaya's personal life. There is little visible, even between the lines, of the strain of Anna's career on her family, or the “special challenge” of being a woman in a war zone (she would have been hard to book on
Oprah Winfrey).
She does not tell self-serving anecdotes about her colleagues. She rarely shares the gritty details of how she was able to dig up, cajole, or uncover a story. There are no entries of the kind that say, “Had coffee with a pleasant young woman named Jolie at the Satsita refugee camp in Ingushetia, and she said …” She rarely speaks of being scared—except for her country.
Of course Anna had a personal life. She had two children and was about to become a grandmother. Her sister, Elena Kudimova, told me in a letter, “Anna never thought about being remembered, because as a normal human being less than fifty years old, she was looking forward to living, especially inspired by the fact that she would have been a grandmother soon.”
She was considered a caring friend, and friends have told the story that once she returned home to Moscow from Grozny, where she had reported on a Russian rocket attack that killed scores of people, including babies, new mothers, and grandmothers, in a market and a maternity hospital, only to find her husband packing up to move out of their apartment. “I can't take this anymore,” he was supposed to have said, which might sound more sympathetic the second or third time you hear it.
I don't think what Westerners might call Anna Politkovskaya's
work
— which wasn't ambition for money, notoriety, or advancement, but the struggle for the survival of her country—was more important to her than her family. Anna heard a ticking clock winding down on a box of dynamite in a darkened room. She could see no good life for her family or anyone's family unless the country that she loved could pull back from its fall into despotism and cruelty. As a patriot and a parent, Anna Politkovskaya gave her life to try to prevent that.
“People often tell me I am a pessimist; that I do not believe in the strength of the Russian people; that I am obsessive in my opposition to Putin and see nothing beyond that,” she wrote. “I see everything, and that is the whole problem. I see both what is good and what is bad… By 2016 many of my generation may no longer be around, but our children will be alive, as will our grandchildren. Do we really not care what kind of life they will have, or even whether they will have a life at all?”
March 1, 2007
CONTENTS
PART ONE
:
THE DEATH OF RUSSIAN
PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY
December 2003-March 2004
PART TWO
:
RUSSIA’S GREAT POLITICAL
DEPRESSION
April-December 2004
PART THREE
:
OUR WINTER AND SUMMER
OF DISCONTENT
January-August 2005
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
Some of Anna's diary entries include comments she added at a later date, and these are separated by a centered asterisk. Comments in parentheses are her own. Her murder just as the translation was being completed meant that final editing had to go ahead without her help. Information added by the translator is enclosed in square brackets. An asterisk in the text indicates an entry in the glossary.
HOW DID PUTIN GET REELECTED?
ACCORDING TO THE CENSUS OF OCTOBER 2002, THERE ARE
145.2 million people living in Russia, making us the seventh most populous country in the world. Just under 116 million people, 79.8 percent of the population, describe themselves as ethnically Russian. We have an electorate of 109 million voters.
December 7, 2003
The day of the parliamentary elections to the Duma,* the day Putin* began his campaign for reelection as president. In the morning he manifested himself to the peoples of Russia at a polling station. He was cheerful, elated even, and a little nervous. This was unusual: as a rule he is sullen. With a broad smile, he informed those assembled that his beloved Labrador, Connie, had had puppies during the night. “Vladimir Vladimirovich was so very worried,” Madame Putina intoned from behind her husband. “We are in a hurry to get home,” she added, anxious to return to the bitch whose impeccable political timing had presented this gift to the United Russia Party*
That same morning in Yessentuki, a small resort in the North Caucasus, the first thirteen victims of a terrorist attack on a local train were being buried. It had been the morning train, known as the student train, and young people were on their way to college.
When, after voting, Putin went over to the journalists, it seemed he would surely express his condolences to the families of the dead. Perhaps even apologize for the fact that the government had once again failed to
protect its citizens. Instead he told them how pleased he was about his Labrador's new puppies.