Crusader to the end

Selected dispatches from her articles for Novaya Gazeta reveal Politkovskaya's approach to journalism. She sees things in black and white. She does not shy away from judgments. She preaches rather than analyses. It is analysis that is regrettably absent in this book, published four years after Politkovskaya was gunned down. Without it, all the passion and the loathing and the wishing for a better, more democratic Russia and for a Chechnya without war seems wasted.

Why did she die, why is Chechnya still racked with violence, why is post-Soviet Russia corrupt and undemocratic? This collection of essays needed a cool-headed introduction to balance the zeal, to explain what aroused it and what it unleashed.

Politkovskaya's murder has not been solved. Many see the hand of Vladimir Putin in the case. At the time, Putin described it as "a crime of vile brutality" but chillingly added, "I repeat, her influence on political life in Russia was minimal". Sometimes, Politkovskaya knew this herself. Lauded and feted by human rights groups in the West and by Russian dissidents, she had few wins in her fight against injustice.

One concerned the Cadet, the code name of a Federal Security Service agent involved in the disappearance of at least 1000 people in Chechnya. The section devoted to the Cadet reveals Politkovskaya and her newspaper as campaigners, not observers of the story. The Cadet threatened her after she revealed his existence. She went abroad briefly to keep safe but the newspaper continued its stories. Eventually the Cadet was convicted for abduction and torture.

Politkovskaya was less successful in her role as a negotiator during the 2002 siege of the Nord Ost theatre in Moscow. The Chechen hostage takers were prepared to talk to her, but the incident ended tragically. Her subsequent investigations led her to blame the disaster on the Putin regime; in the immediate aftermath, her writings were full of grief, and anger directed at the Chechen diaspora:

They were cowards. Faced with their own younger generation who have turned into uncompromising radicals . . . they slunk away . . . The myth of the incomparable fearlessness of the Chechen nation has been relegated to history.

This is revealing about what mattered to Politkovskaya: courage. But is courage always to be admired? Isn't a dose of trepidation a good thing, especially in a war correspondent? Moreover, it needs to be remembered that Chechen fearlessness is born out of an instinct for violence. That is another ingredient, along with Russian imperialism, in the wars that have plagued the Caucasus for centuries. The Chechens have been victims, but not passive ones.

Politkovskaya did not like all Chechens. She was particularly scathing about Akhmat Kadyrov and his son, Ramzan. These pro-Russian Chechen leaders aroused her wrath, she used her pen to attack them, and they retaliated in unconscionable ways. One has to wonder if her choice of words took courage too far: "Akhmat-hadji Kadyrov controls his own illegal armed group . . . His bodyguards abduct and torture people, his obnoxious son . . . judges them, and then they simply disappear."

Chechnya was never far from Politkovskaya's mind but this collection does offer writings on other subjects. The best of these is "The Secret of Claridges", an account of the 2001 annual lunch of the London Press Club, at which Tony Blair spoke. Politkovskaya's power of observation is acute; the vignette unfolds with the reader able almost to taste the rather ordinary duck in aspic and see it slide across the plate in its milk sauce. Politkovskaya grabs a moment to mount her attack on Blair. She skirts around his minder, Alastair Campbell, who is tucking into the salmon. She asks her question: "Why do you like President Putin?" The reply, she says, is as British as can be: "It's my job as prime minister to like Mr Putin."

What stands out here is the power of good storytelling. Would that Politkovskaya had been able to suppress her anger and indignation to just tell the extraordinary stories she ferreted out. Like those of the plight of old Russian women: hers are from Chechnya but their suffering is the same as that of many others who survived Stalin and World War II and communism, only to be subjected to the cruelty of market forces.

But then she would not have been the same woman, the one who could not help gravitating to the side of the oppressed. That inclination is revealed even in her account of a visit to the Sydney Writers Festival. She starts by saying she could not resist a bit of tourism, but soon Politkovskaya is recounting the plight of the Aborigines.

The private Politkovskaya doesn't feature much in her own writing. At the end of the book there are tributes from dignitaries, campaigners, friends and even from her husband, who had separated from her but says: "We found it just as difficult to get unused to each other as to put up with each other in the same flat."

One article tells of the death of the family's doberman, Martyn, the pet privy to quarrels and reconciliations. Martyn was replaced by van Gogh, the "nonstop urination machine" that, it turned out, had been dumped on them by the breeder: Politkovskaya cannot resist showing up a charlatan.

The tributes end with a piece by one of her children telling us that van Gogh is doing fine. One can't help wishing that Politkovskaya had seen the virtue in a more tempered use of language. Then she, too, might still have been doing fine and carrying on with that crucial job of scrutinising the Russian state.

Francesca Beddie was a diplomat in Moscow in the 1990s and a member of the Australian Press Council, 2003-07.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/crusader-to-the-end/story-e6frg8nf-1225850839646