According to WF Hermans, a hero is “someone who has been careless with impunity”. A well-known and catchy quote, but that doesn’t make it correct, let alone just.
History knows many heroes who paid for their lives by carelessly serving the truth. One of them was the Russian journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in 2006 in the elevator of her home in Moscow.
I read about Anna’s life and fate in the newly published book My mother would call it war by her daughter Vera. She wrote it together with the journalist Sara Giudice from Italy, the country to which Vera has fled since the outbreak of war in Ukraine. (The book will be published by Balans in a translation by Jan Robert Braat.)
The book does not read as a literary tour de force, but as a chilling account of facts about a woman who recklessly – ‘careless’ is too weak a word – went through the rows and windows of the silently watching Russian society. Vera describes her mother as a difficult woman – difficult for her family and her colleagues, and especially for herself.
As a young investigative journalist, among others for Obshchaya Gazeta, Anna soon ran afoul of a powerful oligarch, who responded by showing her an incriminating file on her family. “I only know that my mother came home shocked and dismayed, after which it was not talked about anymore,” writes Vera.
Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Anna and her husband were so critical of the political system that they were in danger. When Putin came to power in 1999, their situation became even more precarious. It did not stop Anna from continuing to write as candidly as possible about the war in Chechnya continued by Putin.
Anna published under the title A corner of hell a book about. In her foreword, she referred to the reproachful letters (“Why do you want to frighten us?”) she received. “I am sure that my task is useful,” she wrote, “for one simple reason: as contemporaries of this war, we will be held accountable for it. The classic Soviet excuse: ‘We were not there and did not personally participate in the conflict’ will not work this time.”
I’m not so sure about the latter: the classic Soviet excuse will still soothe many a Russian conscience after the war in Ukraine. Vera writes that her mother was also disbelieved by many of her relatives and friends. “Aren’t you exaggerating?” they asked. Bitter writes Vera: “In Russia, ordinary people and even my mother’s readers never realized that she would not have been killed if society had been willing to protect her […].”
People didn’t want to know, even after a half-failed attempt in 2004 to poison Anna. Then the bullet: on October 7, 2006, she was shot dead as she entered the elevator to her apartment. The perpetrators were later punished, the clients were not. “She was well known to journalists, to human rights activists and in the West,” Putin said hours after the assassination. “Nevertheless, her influence on Russian politics was minimal.” That was also true. Most people prefer to remain cautious with impunity.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of April 12, 2023.