Anna Politkovskaya was fearless and uncompromised. She committed herself fully to the disclosure of the most gruesome war crimes and human rights violations. But her courage was largely unappreciated by her fellow countrymen when she was still alive, and her death is unlikely to change this in the near future. In today's Russia idealism and direct challenges to the government authorities are scarcely regarded as virtues. And since the ruling elite has usurped political power and is fully unaccountable to the public, it can afford to ignore any evidence of its wrongdoing.
It is pointless to analyze different theories of who murdered Politkovskaya. Investigations will, most likely, never validate a single one. The assassination of an investigative reporter and a fierce critic of the government is a political murder, and the investigation is thus a political matter as well. In today’s Russia, this means that it will not be driven by a desire to find the truth. The main goal will be to ensure that the government is unharmed.
Novaya Gazeta, at which Anna Politkovskaya worked until her death, has launched its own investigation, and her colleagues are sure to do their best to solve her murder. But even if they do, the Kremlin’s control over politics and mass media is enough to make any such investigation irrelevant.
Aside from the tragedy and horror of Anna Politkovskaya's assassination, it is sad and depressing, though not unexpected, to witness how little reaction her murder has caused in Russia.
President Putin has not said a single word about Politkovskaya’s death to his countrymen. And since everyone in the political elite is obsequiously looking at the top for guidance, the whole of Russian political officialdom also remained fully silent.
As to the reaction of the public, a rally in Moscow staged the day after the assassination brought together barely 3000 people, mostly coming from the same circle of veteran liberals. Most of those who came were either friends or at least had earlier met at liberal rallies. It was a higher-than-average turnout of the usual liberal suspects, rather than an outburst of public indignation over the death of a moral authority. A few thousand people showed up at the funeral. Of course, no state officials attended save for a couple of third-tier cabinet figures who, of course, remained silent. On day nine after Politkovskaya’s death, a special day of mourning in the Russian tradition, pickets were organized in a number of Russian cities. Dozens showed up. Even so, the rally in the North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia held on October 16, was brutally dissolved by the police. At least one person was injured: a young woman, a human rights activist, was hit in the face.
This small-scale limited reaction is a striking contrast to the effect of the murder of Georgy Gongadze in Ukraine in 2000. The assassination of a relatively little known journalist (Gongadze worked for an online publication, and back in 2000 the Internet access in Ukraine was obviously fairly low) caused a wave of anger that never really subsided. This outrage triggered a broad public movement that four years later led to the toppling of President Leonid Kuchma’s regime.
While he wouldn’t talk about Politkovskaya at home, Putin was forced to answer questions about her murder during his visit to Germany last week. Carefully avoiding to call Politkovskaya by name (he mostly referred to her as ‘she’ and never used her first name), he admitted the tragedy of a lost human life, but not the significance of a forced death of a political journalist. He repeatedly emphasized that her influence on the Russian political life was negligible.
This remark may be outright cynical, but it is generally true. Novaya Gazeta, as well as other media whose editorial lines still remain beyond the Kremlin control, are radically severed from policy-making. They may investigate the doings of government officials, publish incriminating evidence, expose unlawful practices and lies, but they have about as much influence on the Kremlin policies as samizdat Chronicle of Current Events, that registered human rights violations and persecution of dissidents, had on the Politbureau decisions. The reaction of the current Russian policy-makers is also similar to that of their predecessors in the Soviet police state: because Anna Politkovskaya strongly adhered to her principles, the Kremlin regarded her as the enemy of the state. She was marginalized, discredited, intimidated, and harassed.
In the USSR when persuasion or threats did not work, dissidents were imprisoned or sent to psychiatric asylums. Today's Russian political environment may still be more tolerant - after all, Politkovskaya was writing for a publicly distributed newspaper, not an underground leaflet - but it is also more brutal: the current regime can't or wouldn't stop those who don't think twice about killing adversaries who get in their way, whether they are journalists, businessmen, legislators, politicians, or bankers.
Forced to talk about Anna Politkovskaya's assassination during his visit to Germany Putin condemned the "loathsome crime" and added that "whoever the perpetrator was and whatever his motives, he mustn't get away with it", thus conceding, as it were, that, unlike the crime itself, the motives may have been justifiable. And speculating in public about possible perpetrators of the murder he said that “many people who hide from Russian justice have long nurtured the idea of sacrificing somebody in order to create a wave of anti-Russian sentiments in the world”. After that loyalists back home went out of their way theorizing that Politkovskaya was killed by the enemies of Russia who seek to destabilize and weaken it, some pointing directly at exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky as a likely contractor of the murder.
Politkovskaya's work may be broadly acclaimed abroad, but not at home. Memorial events may have been held in Washington, Paris or London, but in Russia, the story is largely over. The evidence of Politkovskaya's international fame, the shock her death caused in the West only makes the Kremlin case stronger: she was a marginal figure who did a disservice to her country – a darling of the West or even a western agent hired by her sponsors to do harm to Russia.
