Anna Politkovskaya

Next month Melville House will publish Is Journalism Worth Dying For? by Anna Politkovskaya. In many ways this is bittersweet for us. On the one hand, we couldn’t be more thrilled to publish such a brilliant treatise on the role of journalism and the duties of journalists in a free society by a giant of the field. On the other hand, it pains us each time we look at her face on the jacket to know that she is not around to talk about it herself. It simply is what it is:  Her doggedness as a reporter led to a fate that is the most definitive answer that can be given to the question the title poses.

However, that doggedness has led to at least one fortunate outcome. Since her death, Anna’s reputation has only grown, and the cause that she fought for — speaking out against atrocities committed by the Russian government in Chechnya while shielding itself in “War on Terror” rhetoric — continues to be investigated.

Indeed, no less than the former prime minister of Britain, Gordon Brown, penned an incredibly touching essay for the Independent not long ago as a tribute to Anna. The most notable thing about Brown’s piece, though, was not that he was able to say nice things about her (any politician — currently serving or otherwise — knows how good it makes them look to say nice things about the dead), but that he closes with a full-throated endorsement of something that’s likely to cause a great deal of heartburn inside the Kremlin: an international commission to investigate Anna’s murder.

I’ll close by quoting at length the best part of Brown’s essay (which is absolutely worth reading in its entirety — please do so):

Two weeks before his poisoning in 2007, the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko accused the authorities of ordering Anna’s murder. But, in the five years since she died, nobody has been brought to justice. Fundamental questions remain. Why have all investigations into her death and all promises of prosecutions yielded nothing? And does the research she was conducting at the time of her death point to why she was assassinated? Anna’s death raises questions not just about what happened to her but what is happening to Russia.

Anna Politkovskaya’s death in the first decade of the 21st century is a story that could have been foretold, but a tragedy that should be unthinkable in a free world.

Only a few months before her death, Anna told a conference: “People sometimes pay with their lives for saying aloud what they think.” She knew that she might pay the ultimate price for her journalistic integrity and refusal to stop asking the questions that matter. Right up until her final moments, Anna was trying to give a voice to those brutalised in an endless war and ignored by the wider world; on the day of her murder, Novaya Gazeta‘s Chief Editor, Dmitry Muratov, reports that she had planned to file a lengthy story on torture practices believed to be used by Chechen security detachments known as the Kadyrovites [portions of these reports were translated and included in Is Journalism Worth Dying For?].

That fearlessness must never be forgotten, and there must be an international commission to investigate both Anna’s death and the human rights abuses she uncovered. Many people show incredible bravery when they find themselves in grave danger; Anna’s courage lay in constantly seeking danger out in order to speak the truth. The best memorial to her would be to continue to speak it.