Rest in peace, Anna Politkovskaia
This blog is titled, "Some historical perspective." So it is only fitting that we pay tribute today to someone who wrote the first draft of history, established part of the narrative on which we exchange opinions and comment here. Her name is--was--Anna Politkovskaia, and she lived in Moscow.
Politkovskaia was an inveterate truth-teller. She made her reputation on her reportage from Chechnia-- a region which sought independence from Russia in l991, largely because of l50 years of abuse and one notorious incident of ethnic cleansing, in which the entire Chechen nation was deported by Stalin on flimsy evidence of aiding and abetting the enemy. Russia, naturally, went to war to stop them, expecting a quick victory. Instead, the Chechens fought back, trapping the Russian army in a vicious quagmire. Politkovskaia consistently reported on the human toll of that war, profiling refugees, visiting hospitals to hear accounts of Russian atrocities in Chechen villages, describing the agony of Russian conscripts abused both by their superiors and Chechen warlords. In effect, she declared loudly and often that the Chechen war was a disaster.
Back in Moscow, when the Chechen war inevitably bled over the border into Russia, she was a negotiator during a notorious seizure of a Moscow theater by Chechen extremists. After a violent storming of the theater by Russian security forces, Politkovskaia became an advocate for those who lost family members or saw them injured by the gas released by the police during the siege. She was on the scene during the Beslan school catastrophe. Most recently, she chronicled Vladimir Putin's escalating campaign against civil society in Russia.
She told the truth to power, and no one does that in Russia without paying the price. Someone tried to poison her on an airplane headed for Chechnia. Unknown assailants tried to break into her car while her daughter was driving. She received death threats on a regular basis, which she ignored--she refused to back down. Finally, they--the ubiquitous they--backed HER down and shot her dead in her apartment building, just today. You can't speak the truth there and remain among the living.
As a tribute to her and her impact on the history of our era, please go to your library, or even better to your local book store, and pick up one of her books. I particularly recommend "Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy." I think you will appreciate the scope of her achievements, as well as what the community of civilized people has lost.
Well done, Anna. You were taken far too soon, but you now rest from your labors, and your works do follow you.
Politkovskaia was an inveterate truth-teller. She made her reputation on her reportage from Chechnia-- a region which sought independence from Russia in l991, largely because of l50 years of abuse and one notorious incident of ethnic cleansing, in which the entire Chechen nation was deported by Stalin on flimsy evidence of aiding and abetting the enemy. Russia, naturally, went to war to stop them, expecting a quick victory. Instead, the Chechens fought back, trapping the Russian army in a vicious quagmire. Politkovskaia consistently reported on the human toll of that war, profiling refugees, visiting hospitals to hear accounts of Russian atrocities in Chechen villages, describing the agony of Russian conscripts abused both by their superiors and Chechen warlords. In effect, she declared loudly and often that the Chechen war was a disaster.
Back in Moscow, when the Chechen war inevitably bled over the border into Russia, she was a negotiator during a notorious seizure of a Moscow theater by Chechen extremists. After a violent storming of the theater by Russian security forces, Politkovskaia became an advocate for those who lost family members or saw them injured by the gas released by the police during the siege. She was on the scene during the Beslan school catastrophe. Most recently, she chronicled Vladimir Putin's escalating campaign against civil society in Russia.
She told the truth to power, and no one does that in Russia without paying the price. Someone tried to poison her on an airplane headed for Chechnia. Unknown assailants tried to break into her car while her daughter was driving. She received death threats on a regular basis, which she ignored--she refused to back down. Finally, they--the ubiquitous they--backed HER down and shot her dead in her apartment building, just today. You can't speak the truth there and remain among the living.
As a tribute to her and her impact on the history of our era, please go to your library, or even better to your local book store, and pick up one of her books. I particularly recommend "Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy." I think you will appreciate the scope of her achievements, as well as what the community of civilized people has lost.
Well done, Anna. You were taken far too soon, but you now rest from your labors, and your works do follow you.
posted by buckarooskidoo at 12:20 PM
2 Comments:
Beautifully written. We must honor her legacy.
I agree with Buck,Anna was a working-class heroine,and we will still remember her in the next century,but they will have forgotten Putin,who will finish in the garbage of history,where he belongs.
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