Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya[a] (néeMazepa;[b] 30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006) was a Russianinvestigative journalist who reported on political and social events in Russia, in particular, theSecond Chechen War (1999–2005).[1] She was found murdered in the elevator of her apartment block in Moscow on 7 October 2006, Vladimir Putin's birthday.[2]
It was her reporting fromChechnya that made her national and international reputation.[3] For seven years, she refused to give up reporting on the war despite numerous acts of intimidation and violence. Politkovskaya was arrested by Russian military forces in Chechnya and subjected to amock execution. She was poisoned while flying from Moscow viaRostov-on-Don to help resolve the 2004Beslan school hostage crisis, and had to turn back, requiring careful medical treatment in Moscow to restore her health.
Her post-1999 articles about conditions in Chechnya were turned into books several times;[4] Russian readers' main access to her investigations and publications was throughNovaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper that featured critical investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs. From 2000 onwards, she received numerous international awards for her work. In 2004, she publishedPutin's Russia, a personal account of Russia for a Western readership.[5]
Her parents bought an apartment in central Moscow in 1962[14][16] and Politkovskaya mostly grew up there. She attended amusic school and trainedfigure skating; according to her mother, she was noted for her frequent use of the local Krupskaya Library.[14] She graduated fromMoscow State University's school of journalism in 1980 with a thesis about the poetry ofMarina Tsvetaeva.[17][18][19] Thefaculty head at the time wasYasen Zasurskii [ru], a close friend of the Mazepas and their frequent guest in New York.[20] She married fellow studentAlexander Politkovsky in 1978; by 1981 they had two children, Ilya and Vera.[17] At first Alexander was better known, joining TV journalistVladislav Listyev as one of the hosts on the late-night TV-programVzglyad. Apart from her childhood years, Politkovskaya spent no more than a few weeks outside Russia at any one time, even when her life came under threat. She was a U.S. citizen and had a U.S. passport, although she never relinquished her Russian citizenship.[21]
Politkovskaya's initial employment was withIzvestia, the organ of theSupreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, in 1982.[22][23] According to her ex-husband in 2011, it was a brief internship in themailroom[e] and her only journalistic engagement during the 1980s as he failed to assist her career. In her son's words, until the mid-1990s she "wasn't even a journalist, she was ahousewife". Her own later account stated that "Sasha's work ... kept me from doing my own thing". She is said by Politkovsky to have worked temporarily as a cleaner at theMayakovsky Theatre.[26] However, after the spell atIzvestia she soon held another internship at theVozdushnyi transport (Воздушный транспорт, thein-house magazine of theMinistry of Civil Aviation[27][28]),[22][29][23][24] as a reporter and editor of theAeroflot emergencies and accidents section. As recalled by Politkovsky, her first travel assignment was on theplane crash in Omsk (1984).[30] Thecorrespondent role came with an unlimited air ticket, which enabled her to travel widely across the country and observe Russian society.[30][23] She was privy to developments in the media sphere through her husband, "Russia's number one television journalist" from 1987 onwards, and shared his political interests.[31] In the 1990 film about the Politkovsky family, she was portrayed as her husband's "assistant".[32] By the time of thedissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, she experienced threats against their family, which forced her teenage son's exile in London in 1992.[33] She was acolumnist for the socio-political newspaperMegapolis-Express [ru],[22] founded in 1990, before it turned into atabloid servingfake news in September 1994.[34] She was professionally involved in thecreative union Eskart – which by 1991 offered advertising services through its partnership with major media outlets, such as theAll-Union Radio, the organ of theMinistry of RailwaysGudok [ru],Kuranty [ru],Literaturnaya Gazeta,Moskovskiye Novosti,My [ru],Ogoniok,Oktyabr,Sovetskaya Kultura,Stolitsa [ru], andTrud[35] – and in theSt Petersburg publishing house Paritet, founded in 1992.[36][22]
Politkovskaya's career took off with the decline of her husband's influence following the1993 Russian constitutional crisis.[37] From 1994 to 1999, she worked as the assistant chief editor ofObshchaya Gazeta [ru], headed byYegor Yakovlev, where she wrote frequently about social problems, particularly the plight of refugees. From June 1999 to 2006, she wrote columns for the biweeklyNovaya Gazeta, a newspaper with strong investigative reporting that was critical of the new post-Soviet regime from the outset. She published several award-winning books aboutChechnya, life in Russia, andRussia under Vladimir Putin, includingPutin's Russia.[38][39]
Politkovskaya won awards for her work.[39][40] She used each of these occasions to urge greater concern and responsibility by Western governments that, after theSeptember 11 attacks on the United States, welcomed Putin's contribution to their "war on terror". She talked to officials, the military and the police and also frequently visited hospitals and refugee camps in Chechnya and in neighboringIngushetia to interview those injured and uprooted by the renewed fighting.[41]
In numerous articles critical of the war in Chechnya and the pro-Russian regime there, Politkovskaya described alleged abuses committed byRussian military forces, Chechen rebels, and the Russian-backed administration led byAkhmad Kadyrov and his sonRamzan Kadyrov.[citation needed] She also chronicled human rights abuses and policy failures elsewhere in theNorth Caucasus. In one characteristic instance in 1999, she not only wrote about the plight of an ethnically-mixed old peoples' home under bombardment inGrozny, but helped to secure the safe evacuation of its elderly inhabitants with the aid of her newspaper and public support. Her articles, many of which form the basis ofA Dirty War (2001) andA Small Corner of Hell (2003), depict a conflict that brutalized both Chechen fighters and conscript soldiers in the federal army, and created hell for the civilians caught between them.
As Politkovskaya reported, the order supposedly restored under the Kadyrovs became a regime of endemic torture, abduction, and murder, by either the new Chechen authorities or the various federal forces based in Chechnya.[38] One of her last investigations was into the alleged mass poisoning of Chechen schoolchildren by a strong and unknown chemical substance which incapacitated them for many months.[42]
After Politkovskaya became widely known in the West, she was commissioned to writePutin's Russia (later subtitledLife in a Failing Democracy), a broader account of her views and experiences after formerKGB lieutenant colonelVladimir Putin becameBoris Yeltsin's Prime Minister, and then succeeded him as President of Russia. This included Putin's pursuit of theSecond Chechen War. In the book, she accused the RussianFederal Security Service (FSB) of stifling all civil liberties to establish a Soviet-style dictatorship, but admitted:
[It] is we who are responsible for Putin's policies ... [s]ociety has shown limitless apathy ... [a]s theChekists have become entrenched in power, we have let them see our fear, and thereby have only intensified their urge to treat us like cattle. The KGB respects only the strong. The weak it devours. We of all people ought to know that.
She also wrote:
We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial—whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit.[43]
"People often tell me that I am a pessimist, that I don't believe in the strength of the Russian people, that I am obsessive in my opposition to Putin and see nothing beyond that", she opens an essay titled "Am I Afraid?", finishing it—and the book—with the words "If anybody thinks they can take comfort from the 'optimistic' forecast, let them do so. It is certainly the easier way, but it is the death sentence for our grandchildren."[44][45][46][47][48][49]
In May 2007,Random House posthumously published Politkovskaya'sA Russian Diary, containing extracts from her notebook and other writings. SubtitledA Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia, the book gives her account of the period from December 2003 to August 2005, including what she described as "the death of Russian parliamentary democracy", theBeslan school hostage crisis, and the "winter and summer of discontent" from January to August 2005.[50] Because she was murdered "while translation was being completed, final editing had to go ahead without her help", wrote translator Arch Tait in a note to the book.[51]
"Who killed Anna and who lay beyond her killer remains unknown", wroteJon Snow, the main news anchor for the United Kingdom'sChannel 4 in his foreword to the book's UK edition. "Her murder robbed too many of us of absolutely vital sources of information and contact", he concluded, "Yet it may, ultimately, be seen to have at least helped prepare the way for the unmasking of the dark forces at the heart of Russia's current being. I must confess that I finished readingA Russian Diary feeling that it should be taken up and dropped from the air in vast quantities throughout the length and breadth of Mother Russia, for all her people to read."[52]
In Moscow, Politkovskaya was not invited to press conferences or gatherings thatKremlin officials might attend, in case the organizers were suspected of harboring sympathies toward her. Despite this, many top officials allegedly talked to her when she was writing articles or conducting investigations. According to one of her articles, they did talk to her, "but only when they weren't likely to be observed: outside in crowds, or in houses that they approached by different routes, like spies".[38] She also claimed that the Kremlin tried to block her access to information and discredit her:
I will not go into the other joys of the path I have chosen, the poisoning, the arrests, the threats in letters and over the Internet, the telephoned death threats, the weekly summons to the prosecutor general's office to sign statements about practically every article I write (the first question being, "How and where did you obtain this information?"). Of course I don't like the constant derisive articles about me that appear in other newspapers and on Internet sites presenting me as the madwoman of Moscow. I find it disgusting to live this way. I would like a bit more understanding.[38]
After Politkovskaya's murder, Vyacheslav Izmailov, her colleague atNovaya Gazeta – a military man who had helped negotiate the release of dozens of hostages in Chechnya before 1999 – said that he knew of at least nine previous occasions when Politkovskaya had faced death, commenting "Frontline-soldiers do not usually go into battle so often and survive".[55]
Politkovskaya herself did not deny being afraid, but felt responsible and concerned for her informants. While attending a December 2005 conference on thefreedom of the press in Vienna organized byReporters Without Borders, she said "People sometimes pay with their lives for saying aloud what they think. In fact, one can even get killed for giving me information. I am not the only one in danger. I have examples that prove it."[56] She often received death threats as a result of her work, including being threatened with rape and experiencing amock execution after being arrested by the military in Chechnya.[57][58]
Early in 2001, Politkovskaya was detained by military officials in the southern mountain village ofKhattuni.[59] She was investigating complaints from 90 Chechen families about "punitive raids" by federal forces. She interviewed a Chechen grandmother from the village of Tovzeni, Rosita, who endured 12 days of beatings,electric shocks, and confinement in a pit. The men who arrested Rosita presented themselves as FSB-employees. The torturers requested a ransom from Rosita's relatives, who negotiated a smaller amount that they were able to pay. Another interviewee described killings and rapes of Chechen men in a "concentration camp with a commercial streak" near the village of Khattuni.[60][61][62]
Upon leaving the camp, Politkovskaya was detained, interrogated, beaten, and humiliated: "The young officers tortured me, skillfully hitting my sore-spots. They looked through my children's pictures, making a point of saying what they would like to do to the kids. This went on for about three hours."[63] She was subjected to amock execution using aBM-21 Gradmultiple-launch rocket system, then poisoned with a cup of tea that made her vomit. Her tape-records were confiscated. She described her mock execution:
A lieutenant colonel with a swarthy face and dull dark bulging eyes said in a businesslike tone: "Let's go. I'm going to shoot you." He led me out of the tent into complete darkness. The nights here are impenetrable. After we walked for a while, he said, "Ready or not, here I come." Something burst with pulsating fire around me, screeching, roaring, and growling. The lieutenant colonel was very happy when I crouched in fright. It turned out that he had led me right under the"Grad" rocket launcher at the moment it was fired.[63]
After themock execution, the Russian lieutenant colonel said to her: "Here's thebanya. Take off your clothes." Seeing that his words had no effect, he got very angry: "A real lieutenant colonel is courting you, and you say no, you militant bitch."[63]
In 2001, Politkovskaya fled toVienna, following e-mail threats that a police officer whom she had accused of atrocities against civilians in Chechnya was looking to take revenge. CorporalSergey Lapin was arrested and charged in 2002, but the case against him was closed the following year. In 2005, Lapin was convicted and jailed for the torture and subsequent disappearance of a Chechen civilian detainee, the case exposed by Politkovskaya in her article "Disappearing People".[67][68] A former fellow officer of Lapin's was among the suspects in Politkovskaya's murder, on the theory that the motive might have been revenge for her part in Lapin's conviction.[68]
In 2004, Politkovskaya had a conversation withRamzan Kadyrov, then Prime Minister of Chechnya. One of his assistants said to her, "Someone ought to have shot you back in Moscow, right on the street, like they do in your Moscow". Kadyrov echoed him: "You're an enemy. To be shot...."[69] On the day of her murder, saidNovaya Gazeta's chief editor Dmitry Muratov, Politkovskaya had planned to file a lengthy story on the torture practices believed to be used by the Chechen security detachments known asKadyrovites. In her final interview, she described Kadyrov—now president of Chechnya—as the "ChechenStalin of our days".[70]
Near her apartment, Moscow, 2006Grave of Anna Politkovskaya at theTroyekurovskoye Cemetery in MoscowSome observers alleged thatChechen leaderRamzan Kadyrov or his men were behind the assassination of Politkovskaya.[71]
Politkovskaya was found dead in the lift, in her block of apartments in central Moscow on 7 October 2006, Putin's birthday.[2] She had been shot twice in the chest, once in the shoulder, and once in the head at close range.[72][73][74][75] There was widespreadinternational reaction to the assassination.
The funeral was held on 10 October 2006 at theTroyekurovskoye Cemetery in the outskirts of Moscow. Before Politkovskaya was buried, more than one thousand mourners filed past her coffin to pay their last respects. Dozens of Politkovskaya's colleagues, public figures, and admirers of her work gathered at the cemetery. No high-ranking Russian officials could be seen at the ceremony.[76] Politkovskaya was buried near her father, who had died shortly before her.
In May 2007, a large posthumous collection of her articles entitledWith Good Reason was published byNovaya Gazeta, and launched at theGorbachev Foundation in Moscow.[77] The event came soon after the birth of Anna's namesake grandchild: Vera's daughter was named Anna in honor of her grandmother. A few months later, 10 men were detained on suspicion of various degrees of involvement in Politkovskaya's murder.[78] Four of them were brought before theMoscow District Military Court in October 2008.
Three men were charged with directly aiding Politkovskaya's killer, who was allegedly the brother of two of the suspects. There was insufficient evidence to charge the fourth man—an FSB colonel—with the murder, though he was suspected of a leading role in its organization; he stood trial at the same time for another offence. The case was held before a jury (a rare occurrence in Russia)[79] and, after the jurors insisted, was open to the press and public.[80][81][82]
On 25 November 2008, it was reported that Politkovskaya's murder might have been ordered by a politician inside Russia. Murad Musayev, a lawyer for the men on trial, told journalists that the case notes—as one of the interpretations of the crime—mentioned that a politician, based in Russia (but not named in those notes), was behind her death.[83][84]
On 5 December 2008,Sergei Sokolov, a senior editor ofNovaya Gazeta, testified in court that he had received information (from sources he would not name) that defendant Dzhabrail Makhmudov was an agent of the FSB.[85] He said Makhmudov's uncle Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, who was serving a 12-year jail sentence for the attempted murder of a Ukrainian businessman, also worked for the FSB.[86]
After all three men were acquitted of Politkovskaya's murder in February 2009, her children Vera and Ilya, their lawyersKarinna Moskalenko andAnna Stavitskaya, and seniorNovaya Gazeta editor Sergei Sokolov gave their reaction to the trial at a press conference in Moscow.[87] In his comments on the end of the trial,Andrew McIntosh, Chairman of theParliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe's Sub-Committee on the Media andRapporteur on media freedom, expressed frustration at what he perceived to be a lack of progress in investigating the murder, or the inability of the Russian authorities to find her killers:
Two years ago, in its Resolution 1535 (2007), the Assembly called on the Russian Parliament closely to monitor the progress in the criminal investigations regarding the murder of Anna Politkovskaya and hold the authorities accountable for any failures to investigate or prosecute. The closure of the trial yesterday can only be regarded as a blatant failure. I call on the Russian authorities and Parliament to relaunch a proper investigation and shed light on this murder, which undermines not only freedom of expression in Russia, but also its democratic foundation based on the rule of law. There are no excuses for these flawed investigations into murders of politically critical journalists writing against corruption and crime within government, such as the murders ofGeorgy Gongadze in Ukraine in 2000 andPaul Klebnikov in Moscow in 2004.[88]
Before the trial ended,Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer who had investigated many of the abuses documented by Politkovskaya, was assassinated in Moscow on 19 January 2009.[89] JournalistAnastasia Baburova, who was with Markelov at the time, died later of injuries sustained while trying to intervene.[89]
More closely related to Politkovskaya's work as a journalist was 15 July 2009 murder ofNatalia Estemirova. A board member of theMemorial human rights society and one of Politkovskaya's key informants, guides, and colleagues in Chechnya, Estemirova was abducted in Grozny and found dead, several hours later, in the neighboringRepublic of Ingushetia.[90]
On 5 August 2009, the prosecution service's objection to the acquittals in the Politkovskaya trial was upheld by the Supreme Court, and a new trial was ordered.[91]
In August 2011, Russian prosecutors claimed they were close to solving the murder after detaining Dmitry Pavliuchenkov, a former policeman, who they alleged was the principal organizer.[92] In December 2012, Dmitry Pavliutchenkov was found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in a high security penal colony.[93]
In May 2014, five men were convicted of murdering Politkovskaya, including three defendants who had been acquitted in a previous trial. In June 2014 the men were sentenced to prison, two of them, Lom-Ali Gaitukayev and his nephew Rustam Makhmudov, receiving life sentences. It was unclear who ordered or paid for the contract killing.[10]
In September 2016,Vladimir Markin, official spokesman for the Investigative Committee, included Politkovskaya's killing in a list of theMost Dramatic Crimes in 21st century Russia[94] and claimed that it had been solved. Her colleagues atNovaya Gazeta protested that until the instigator or sponsor of the crime was identified, arrested and prosecuted the case was not closed.
On 7 October 2016,Novaya Gazeta released a video clip of its editors, correspondents, photographers and technical and administrative staff holding text-boards giving details of the case and stating, repeatedly, "The sponsor of Anna's murder has not been found".[95] On the same day deputy chief editor Sergei Sokolov published a damning summary of the official investigation, describing its false turns and shortcomings, and emphasized that it had now effectively been wound up.[96] After the three Makhmudov brothers, Khadjikurbanov and Lom-Ali Gaitukayev were convicted in 2014, wrote Sokolov, the once large team of investigators was reduced to one person and within a year he retired, to be replaced by a lower-ranking investigator. The 2000 killing ofIgor Domnikov, anotherNovaya Gazeta journalist, showed that the perpetrators might be identified (they were convicted in 2008).[97][98]
(TS//SI/REL TOUSA, AUS, CAN, GBR, NZL) Russian Federal Intelligence Services (probablyFSB) are known to have targeted the webmail account of the murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. On 5 December 2005, RFIS initiated an attack against the account annapolitovskaya@US Provider1, by deploying malicious software which is not available in the public domain. It is not known whether the attack is in any way associated with the death of the journalist.[99][100]
2008, documentary byMasha NovikovaAnna, Seven Years on the Frontline; 78 min., the Netherlands.
In 2008, Swiss director Eric Bergkraut made a documentary,Letter to Anna, about Politkovskaya's life and death. It includes interviews with her son Ilya, her daughter Vera, her ex-husband Alexander Politkovsky, and others—such as businessman Boris Berezovsky and filmmakerAndrei Nekrasov.[101][102][103]
In 2011, Russian directorMarina Goldovskaya made the documentaryA Bitter Taste of Freedom, a Swedish-Russian-American co-production. The title refers to an earlier documentary film by the same director,A Taste of freedom (1991) which is about Russian life in the new, post-Soviet reality and features the Politkovsky family.A Bitter Taste of Freedom was shown at the 27thWarsaw International Film Festival where it won the Best Documentary Feature Award. From thefestival's program:[104]
She was brave, she was bold, and she was beautiful. In her fearless quest to uncover the wrongdoings of the Russian State, Anna Politkovskaya inspired awe in some and fear in countless others. An investigative journalist for Moscow's liberalNovaya Gazeta, she was the only spokesperson for victims of Putin's government. Hers was a lonely voice, yet loud enough for the entire country to hear. It was too loud. At age 48 she was assassinated for simply doing her job. A documentary about the bravery of the human spirit. As the director says, it "is especially important now, when the world is so full of cynicism and corruption, when we so desperately need more people with Anna's level of courage and integrity and commitment".
The international human rights organizationRAW in WAR (Reach All Women in War),[121] which focuses on supporting and protecting women human rights defenders working in war and conflict zones, established in 2006 the annualAnna Politkovskaya Award in Politkovskaya's honour. The award recognizes "a woman human rights defender from a conflict zone in the world who, like Anna, stands up for the victims of this conflict, often at great personal risk".[122] Mariana Katzarova, a close friend and a human rights colleague of Politkovskaya, founded RAW in WAR (Reach All Women in WAR) and theAnna Politkovskaya Award in 2006 in London, after working as a journalist and human rights advocate in the war zones of Bosnia, Kosovo and the North Caucasus, including 10 years as the Russia Researcher forAmnesty International.
The award was first given on the first anniversary of Politkovskaya's murder, to her friend and colleague, Chechen activistNatalia Estemirova, who was herself abducted and killed in 2009 in Chechnya.[123][90]
There is also a "Journalism-prize Anna Politkovskaja" ("il premio giornalistico Anna Politkovskaja"), which is annually awarded in Ferrara, Italy, by the magazine L'internationale and the comune of Ferrara.[124]
Winners of the Journalism prize "Anna Politkovskaja"
Politkovs'ka, Anna."Druha chechens'ka." Trans. I. Andrusiak. Kyiv: Diokor, 2004. (In Ukrainian.)
Politkovskaya, Anna (2004)Putin's Russia, Harvill: London.ISBN980293316-3
Politkovskaya, Anna (2007)A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia, Harvill Secker: London.ISBN9781400066827
Политковская, Анна (2007) (With Good Reason), Novaya Gazeta: Moscow; 989 pp.
Includes all Anna Politkovskaya's finished and unfinished articles forNovaya Gazeta
^The State of the World's Human Rights (Internet Archive),Amnesty International 2009, Report on Jan–Dec 2008, p. 272: "In June [2008], the Office of the Prosecutor General announced that it had finished its investigation into the killing of human rights journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in Moscow in October 2006. Three men accused of involvement in her murder went on trial in November; all denied the charges. A fourth detainee, a former member of the Federal Security Services who had initially been detained in connection with the murder, remained in detention on suspicion of another crime. The person suspected of shooting Anna Politkovskaya had not been detained by the end of the year and was believed to be in hiding abroad."
^Death of a Journalist. A new documentary, "Letter to Anna," charts the life and death of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya. It is unlikely to be released in Russia. By Roland Elliott Brown,Moscow Times, 16 May 2008 (accessed 28 February 2015)
Simon, Scott (2007), Foreword,A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia, byPolitkovskaya, Anna, New York:Random House, pp. vii–xv,ISBN9781400066827
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