Circulated to journalists, editors, and columnists of Novaya gazeta.
The Editorial Team of Novaya gazeta
February 28, 2002
As special operations go, this was a pretty dismal effort. For technical competence we award the Chekists three points, but for artistic merit, alas, zero.*
A statement issued by FSB representative Ilya Shabalkin claims that Novaya gazeta and its special correspondent Anna Politkovskaya are trying to exploit her assignments in Chechnya to “resolve their financial problems and disagreements with certain foundations.” Shabalkin has declared that Politkovskaya’s assignments are characterised by undesirable sensationalism and are hindering the counter-terrorist operation in Chechnya. He also baldly asserts that these sensations are part of an attempt to persuade the Soros Foundation to write off a grant of $14,000 which Novaya gazeta received for work in political hotspots.
Shabalkin claims that our newspaper has failed to provide the Foundation’s Open Society Institute with an interim report, and that the Foundation has informed us in writing that it proposes to cease its financial support. Chekist Shabalkin additionally makes a particular point of claiming that Anna Politkovskaya lacked accreditation to work as a journalist in Chechnya.
All the pointers to a monstrous conspiracy are there: the link to American money, spreading disaffection among Russian troops on the orders of transatlantic fat cats, and absence of official permission to be operating in Chechnya at all.
The discovery of this plot against the Russian Federation was announced on all the main TV channels, distributed over the Interfax newswire, and gleefully published on the websites of the Effective Politics Foundation. It’s a chore, but we have to respond. Novaya gazeta, like hundreds of other organizations, was awarded a grant, of $55,000, by the Soros Foundation for the purposes of establishing a database of individuals who have disappeared without trace in Chechnya; to facilitate the release of prisoners and hostages; and to provide support to an orphanage and old people’s home. It is worth remarking that, although the grant was awarded last year, we have been doing all this work since 1994.
Our colleague Vyacheslav Izmailov succeeded in freeing more than 170 kidnap victims. Through the efforts of Novaya gazeta, and particularly those of our columnist Anna Politkovskaya, dozens of old people survived two winters in an old people’s home in Grozny. With the aid of the Interior Ministry we moved the old people, who had completely lost hope, back to their relatives. The Soros Foundation appreciated these efforts and offered financial support, which we were glad to accept.
Of the $55,000 awarded, we have so far received only a first payment of less than $14,000. The reason is quite simply that for three months we had to hide Anna Politkovskaya outside the borders of Russia. When it was confirmed that an assassination attempt was being prepared against her, the law “On Protection by the State” was invoked until the suspect was arrested. She was granted a special status which we are not at liberty to write about.
For these reasons our report was submitted in February this year. The Soros Foundation has no complaint against Novaya gazeta, and in the coming 12 months we will be receiving the remaining $41,000, and will continue our work.
In the allegations of hype surrounding Politkovskaya’s assignments, Chekist Shabalkin has excelled himself. It was not we, or Politkovskaya, but the Press Office of the Joint Military Command which on February 9–10 issued a statement claiming that Politkovskaya had left the Commandant’s Office in Shatoy without informing the military. Politkovskaya had good reason to leave. The facts communicated to her by the Military Prosecutors were too serious not to.
We repeat that we issued no statements, generated no hype. That was entirely the work of the FSB using the Army as its mouthpiece. So who set the ball rolling?
The answer as to why the FSB got so exercised is to be found in Novaya gazeta, Nos. 11 and 12. Using evidence from the criminal case and interviews with Military Prosecutors, Politkovskaya proved with facts and documents to hand that the shooting of six civilians, including a pregnant woman, and the subsequent burning of their bodies had been perpetrated by special operations troops of Military Intelligence. It is a unique case. Thanks to the courage of the Prosecutors and the public naming of the suspects, 10 military personnel have been arrested.
The FSB makes no attempt to refute these facts in its statement: it simply ignores them. The FSB is not concerned that this crime inflames and aggravates the war. The FSB is merely concerned that Politkovskaya did not have the requisite accreditation.
Actually, she did, and we print it here. Come on, Chekists! You will need to do better than this when preparing your disinformation.
In order to implement their highly intelligent campaign, the Chekists used some of our journalist colleagues as stooges. First the ultra-respectable Vedomosti carried an item to the effect that we had failed to provide a report to the Soros Foundation and that payment of our grant might be stopped. Why a serious business newspaper should suddenly start counting what by their standards is the small change in somebody else’s pocket was baffling – until Shabalkin issued his announcement.
Statements were also distributed through Interfax, by then with our comments. At no point, alas, did our colleagues have qualms about printing private correspondence between Novaya gazeta and the Soros Foundation. You would think we were squandering taxpayers’ money or the state budget.
How the correspondence was leaked is, however, a separate issue. One copy is in the possession of the Soros Foundation, and the original was received by Novaya gazeta’s editor through the post.
Neither the Foundation nor the editor of Novaya gazeta, needless to say, passed this to the press; so somebody has been intercepting our post, opening our correspondence, trying to monitor the newspaper’s activity, and perhaps, also, the activity of the Foundation. It is gratifying to report that they found nothing more substantial than a delayed report.
As in our case, only the FSB’s failures enable us to see what they are getting up to on taxpayers’ money. As usual, they are trying to suggest a link between articles which tell the truth about the Chechen War and Western intelligence services, Western money, and so on.
The FSB likes to show how well informed it is about other people’s affairs, especially when they are none of its business and not within its remit. So it is far easier for them publicly to point out problems in Russia which don’t exist, than to find terrorists like Khattab or Basayev. Or perhaps it is Politkovskaya and our delayed reports which are preventing them from being able to do that. Perhaps this is how they justify their professional incompetence. The replies to these and other questions will no doubt be obtained in court. Our lawyers are preparing to sue.
Don’t be in too much of a hurry, Mr Shabalkin, to spoil your jacket by making a hole in it for that medal you hope to receive.
March 4, 2002
First the Editor of Novaya gazeta requested that I, Special Correspondent Politkovskaya, should write an irate open letter to Mr Shabalkin. I thought about it and declined. Just too boring. Then the Editor said we needed to write an irate open letter to Shabalkin’s boss, Mr Patrushev, who runs the FSB. I thought seriously about this but again declined. Someone who can’t catch Basayev and Khattab with a team of many thousands is not of the slightest interest to me. He can’t even make me irate.
Then write to Putin! But instead I wrote a letter to Major Nevmerzhitsky, Commander of Reconnaissance of the Shatoy District Military Commandant’s Office.
Major Nevmerzhitsky was a witness of the Shatoy tragedy – the murder and burning of the bodies of six civilians by soldiers of the Central Intelligence Directorate (GRU), which occurred on January 11, 2002 and was officially described by Khankala as an operation to capture the injured resistance leader, Khattab. It was this atrocity I was investigating during my February assignment in Chechnya. This so irritated the FSB that they embarked on the campaign of disinformation described above. Why did I address my letter to him? Because I felt like it.
See what they have been getting up to while we were trudging the tracks of Shatoy! They are saying we did it for money. Army Headquarters in Khankala claimed as much, and it doesn’t really matter whose vocal cords they used. You were running around in the mountains; gazing down on the murder scene in horror from a cliff, trying not to fall off; discussing for days who had killed whom and burned their bodies; having to face 28 orphans. That kind of work, according to Officer Shabalkin, has a dollar value.
Of course we have nothing to prove to each other, and could now just keep quiet. But you actually saw what happened at Dai and Nokhchi-Keloy, and on the road to Barzoy where the bodies of two soldiers and an officer whom the Shabalkins of this world have no interest in have been lying in the river for over two months. You know that this is not about dollars.
At first I was very angry and thought that if Shabalkin had been in our shoes he would have had a different tale to tell. Then I calmed down and started to feel sorry for the man. “They” in Khankala have a hard life: they have to run around like servants whose masters are in a bad mood in the morning because their boots haven’t been properly polished. It’s really not that easy to talk about places you have never been to and things you have never seen, and to make it look as if you are doing a great job and do know everything that’s going on. You and I would blow our brains out rather than jump through hoops like those but Shabalkin, poor sod, plods on. So we are more fortunate, having seen everything with our own eyes and not having to pretend. Although we are not happier when we think about what it is we have seen.
How are things in Shatoy? Have they given up sending helicopters from Khankala to catch wounded Khattabs? How is Victor Malchukov getting on, the Shatoy Military Commandant who long ago saw the reality of what is going on around him, a man with haunted eyes? It must be difficult for you. I have an easier time here in Moscow, deflecting the attacks of idiots. It’s a piece of cake by comparison with the mountains.
Anna Politkovskaya
Around me my family are grim-faced. I am flying out to Chechnya again, only I won’t be meeting up with Vitaliy. I have other plans.
February 14, 2002
On January, 11 2002, in what Army Headquarters officially described as an operation to capture the Chechen resistance leader, Khattab, soldiers of the Central Intelligence Directorate (GRU) murdered and burned the bodies of six civilians. Anna went to investigate.
I take out the tape of my last assignment in Chechnya, and at the same time read through the newspapers and the news agency tapes.
Well, well. My colleagues seem to have been competing to see who could come up with the most unfounded stories. According to our esteemed Interfax news agency, I was detained on February 9, by the Shatoy District Military Commandant’s Office during a special operation there because I did not have the necessary documents. It seems to concern nobody that there was no special operation in Shatoy, either immediately before, on, or after February 9.
As I read on, the tone gets more caustic. It seems I escaped from the Commandant’s Office and disappeared, thereby discrediting … I should be punished just where it hurts … The Press Office of the Joint Military Command in Chechnya fulminates that by my misconduct I have brought disgrace upon all journalists.
What actually happened was that on February 8, the second day of my assignment, having made my way from Grozny to Shatoy, my first act, making no attempt at concealment, was to go directly to Sultan Mahomadov, the Director of the District Interior Affairs Office, and inform him of the purpose of my assignment: to investigate one of the most scandalous and tragic recent events in Chechnya, the extra-judicial execution and burning of the bodies of six civilians who were returning from Shatoy to their homes in the hill village of Nokhchi-Keloy on January 10, 2002. From the militia I went to the office of the District Administration and, as required, asked them to put a stamp confirming my arrival on my assignment papers. They duly did so.
From the District Administration I set off to the District Military Commandant’s Office, to see the Commandant, Colonel Victor Malchukov. Why did I go to see him? Because, quite simply, I have known him for a long time, and respect his ability to talk to people in the villages, thereby resolving innumerable conflicts which arise between the Army and the civilian population.
We sat together and worked out a plan of how I could best do the job my newspaper had entrusted me with. The Colonel said that he had to fly to a meeting in Khankala the next morning, so alas there was a limit to the help he could give me.
My journalistic colleagues reported that I had been “detained,” and had “escaped.” This was complete nonsense, although admittedly only in respect of February 8, before the FSB piled in. By February 9, it was already clear that the massacre near the village of Dai in Shatoy District by soldiers of the elite special division of the Central Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence had its roots, as people in Chechnya say, in Army Headquarters in Khankala.
At 11:00 a.m. on February 9, I had arranged an interview with Colonel Andrey Vershinin, the Military Prosecutor for Shatoy District, who is presently conducting a criminal investigation into the executions, and whose office is located within the headquarters of 291 Regiment, near the village of Barzoy, a few kilometres from Shatoy. The Military Prosecutor quite properly scrupulously checked all my documents, and then gave me a long interview in which he was as frank as it is possible to be while a case has yet to come before the courts. My sincere thanks to Colonel Vershinin. He is a terrific person to have in that job. We parted on friendly terms.
The surprises began immediately after this. During the interview, I discovered, my militia security officers had been questioned by FSB agents about me. What were they after? Why? Who gave them permission? Officers I did not know approached me, said they were well-wishers, and quietly advised me to get out of the regiment quickly, warning that preparations were being made to detain me, and that the FSB was categorically opposed to journalists sticking their noses into this case, which involved military commanders right at the top.
This was the moment when my “disappearance” began; a change of cars, covering my tracks, searching for a place to sleep where no one would find me. There were many signs that this was far from a joke, and that it was vitally important to behave in just this manner. I very much wanted to stay alive and to get back home, in the face of a manhunt mounted by men armed to the teeth and with malice in their hearts. For this reason I had to dissolve in time and space, and not, as my press colleagues and the Khankala ideologists were shortly to write, in order to create a fuss and draw attention to myself.
Early in the morning of February 10, I slipped on foot into Starye Atagi, heavily disguised, avoiding checkpoints and the security sweep which was beginning in the neighbouring village of Chiri-Yurt. Moving very quietly, almost crawling on the ground, my main concern was not to attract any attention in order not to be killed. Escaping from Shatoy and from rabid FSB agents was only half the problem. Getting into Starye Atagi, which is now in the hands of the Wahhabis, was the next challenge. No federal soldiers or representatives of the new Chechen government walk the streets. They are very, very afraid of being killed. It’s only journalists and human rights activists covertly collecting information who creep about like this, because journalists like me have no option, given how things have worked out in Chechnya, other than to keep a very low profile.
Perhaps you will think that this is playing at spies, that it amounts to militaristic thrill-seeking. Nothing of the sort. I hate this way of life. The situation created by the security agencies in Chechnya, and primarily by members of the FSB and Ministry of Defence, is so disgusting it makes me sick; a situation where a journalist’s legitimate wish to be in possession of the full facts about an event results in direct threats to her life. What was I doing during those two days in Shatoy? My work, for heaven’s sake, no more than that. Believe me, there is nothing more hateful than, in your own country, to feel that you are a target for shooting practice for parasites living it up, eating and drinking at your – a taxpayer’s – expense. And then they have the gall to denigrate you.
Traditionally journalists do not write about how they get their facts. The reader’s attention should be focused only on those facts themselves. That is entirely proper. Forgive me that today I have had to deviate from that ideal, reluctantly finding myself on the receiving end of a barrage of lies and conjecture.
A detailed report of my assignment in Shatoy will appear in the next issue. This will be the result of an investigation into the brutal murder of six civilians in Shatoy District, and I shall say no more about how I came by the facts. Only today, before I bring down the curtain, I will allow myself a few conclusions about the events which surrounded this inquiry.
In the first place, conditions for journalists working in Chechnya have been made completely impossible. I mean in terms of obtaining comprehensive information about an event.
In the second place, the unjustified, barefaced lies of the Army Command, passed on by most of the media without any attempt to check them out, are at the core of the world we now live in. More and more we are allowing ourselves to be brainwashed. It is a world where the Russian Army is encouraged to hunt civilians, including journalists, but not the terrorist leader Khattab.
And in the third place, many of my journalist colleagues, dancing to the tune of the state authorities and the Army top brass, are today prepared to do anything required of them, to report interviews without worrying about the truth, to write about scandals even when there are none, and all in order to avoid having to confront directly the fratricidal tragedy being perpetrated in Chechnya. That is what really matters about the mishaps which befell me on my last assignment, and which ended on February 12.
Anna Politkovskaya
Novaya gazeta thanks General Victor Kazantsev, Plenipotentiary Presidential Representative in the Southern Federal Region, and many others for responding to our request to assist in the search for our special correspondent, Anna Politkovskaya.
We thank the Directorate of Personal Security of the Interior Ministry of the Russian Federation, and also the Secretariat of Presidential Aide Sergey Yastrzhembsky for helping to establish the whereabouts of our special correspondent after the incident in the Shatoy district of Chechnya.
November 10, 2003
Is journalism worth dying for? Every time something like the events on the evening of November 3 in Ryazan happen – and in Russia attempts to kill journalists are no rarity – we, the servants and slaves of information, ask ourselves this question. If the price of truth is so high, perhaps we should just stop, and find a profession with less risk of “major unpleasantness”? How much would society, for whose sake we are doing this work, care? In the face of that, each of us makes his or her own choice.
On November 3, 2003, at approximately 2104 hours, at the entrance to residential block No. 26, Zubkova Street in Ryazan, an attempt was made on the life of 30-year-old Mikhail Komarov, Deputy Editor of the Ryazan edition of Novaya gazeta. As he was returning home he was struck from behind on the head with a heavy blunt instrument. Komarov’s reporting is well known in Ryazan, and in recent years he has specialised in investigative journalism, some of it delving into the commercial activities of the local oligarchs.
At night all the dormitory districts of Russian towns are as alike as identical twins. Their kinship is in the darkness which descends on them, in which you can kill a person, unseen and unhindered, and then escape without repercussions.
It is not yet late on November 4, the day after the assassination attempt, but as usual you can’t see a thing in the Ryazan suburb of Dashkovo-Pesochnoye. The district itself does not really seem to exist. Zubkova Street, “Broadway,” can only be sensed, immersed in the darkness of non-being. You can only feel that somewhere nearby is habitation. All the conditions for a successful hit are there. We grope our way along, guided by Valentina Komarova, Mikhail’s mother, who is shocked by what has happened. She has two sons. The younger, Dima, is 20 years old and a promising footballer. Her elder, Mikhail, “has turned out like his grandmother,” Valentina explains, with a mixture of pride and fear. “She was a truth-teller too. She survived the war and is still fighting to this day, although she is 80. She doesn’t give in, and she’s penniless. Misha is the same. How many times have I begged him, ‘Don’t, son. Let them live their lives, and we will live ours.’ At work people kept telling me, ‘This is going to end badly.’ There, we’ve arrived. This is our entrance, No. 14.”
It was on these steps that two people in black woollen hats and leather jackets, the uniform of Russian hitmen, were waiting for Mikhail. The neighbours spotted them but, as is the way, thought nothing of it. “As long as I’m all right, as long as it’s not me they’re beating up, everything is fine.” Here is the staircase the journalist crawled up, leaving a trail of blood, in order to escape his would-be killers. Today, just like yesterday, all the doors are firmly shut. The entrance is well adapted for murder, with dark corners in which you are your own rescue service, your own pyramid of power, prosecutor and militia.
Incidentally, the October District militia station is just round the corner. Actually, it is world famous because it was near here that, also in the darkness which is a friend not only of hitmen but also of the FSB, in the autumn of 1999 the Ryazan Directorate of the Federal Security Bureau was caught red-handed planting explosives in an apartment block just before the resumption of the Chechen War, the so-called hexogen “sugar” training exercise.*
“Have you heard that somebody made an attempt on the life of the journalist Mikhail Komarov in your district yesterday?” I ask some young militiamen anxiously peeping out of the door.
“Yes. We’ve just seen it on television.”
“This kind of thing must often happen here, since you’re taking it so calmly?”
“No, this is the first time,” Vitaliy Vyazkov, duty officer at the station, says, not turning a hair.
Early morning on November 5. On Wednesdays the October District Militia have an inspection parade. Some of the militiamen have not bothered to go to it and are smoking by the door, discussing the attempt to kill Komarov. “He should have kept his head down,” a woman smoking a cigarette mutters. The others agree.
Their superiors arrive, the Acting Head of the District Militia, Alexander Naidyonov, and his deputy Yevgeny Popkov. “We have nothing to say,” is their curt joint communiqué.
“Can you at least tell me whether you are instigating a criminal investigation? It is already November 5.”
Colonel Naidyonov almost runs away from me, his eyes darting all over the place.
What’s the problem? Isn’t it straightforward: if there has been an attack on someone it should be investigated? Or might the militia’s skittishness relate to the fact that in his statement Komarov named as his own prime suspect the Ryazan oligarch, Sergey Kuznetsov, one of the ten wealthiest locals, the owner of a large shopping center and much else besides, about whose business methods Komarov frequently wrote?
This explanation seems to be confirmed when Investigator Mikhail Zotov, accompanied by Colonel Naidyonov, arrives to question the victim for the first time in the provincial neurological clinic. He is persistently curious to know why Komarov wrote so much about Kuznetsov. Was it, perhaps, Zotov suggests insistently, because he had been taking bribes to write “good” articles about him and then, when Kuznetsov stopped paying, he started writing critically about him? This is what Kuznetsov is saying. No doubt everybody judges by their own standards. “Give us what we want and we’re on your side. Don’t, and we’re against you.” That is the sickening creed of the militia.
It is almost noon but the enforcers of law and order are in no hurry to get on with their work, and are plainly not on Komarov’s side. We rush around Ryazan, putting together a criminal case: from the October District Prosecutor’s Office to the Ryazan Provincial Prosecutor’s Office, from there to the October District Militia on Yesenin Street and finally, forcing our way into the office of the indignant Colonel Naidyonov, encounter a very amiable Georgian who will subsequently tell us, “I am a Georgian, and accordingly the man has not yet been born who can bribe me.”
This is the Head of the Provincial Criminal Investigation Department, Militia Colonel Dzhansug Mzhavanadze, and he informs us with some ceremony that a criminal investigation was opened on November 5 at 11:30 a.m.
“What work is being done on the main line of inquiry, involving Kuznetsov? Are Komarov’s articles being attached to the file, and his statement to the FSB two weeks ago that he was being threatened?”
“I am not at liberty to tell you about the means and methods we are employing to solve the crime.”
We fully understand, and carry on crisscrossing Ryazan to try to ensure that these do not turn into means and methods of covering up a crime. Oligarch Kuznetsov is everybody’s daddy.
The oligarch is unflustered, and very democratic in his ways, as you would expect of a major financial supporter of the Governor of Ryazan.
“What sort of an oligarch am I?” Sergey Kuznetsov asks coyly. In an earlier life he was the Secretary of the District Committee of the Young Communist League. He radiates civilised behaviour, bonhomie and modesty. “I borrowed $5,000 from my mother-in-law yesterday. I have invested my last copeck in my business. I don’t have a home of my own. I should have emigrated to Israel long ago. My mother, Galina Abramovna, is there and here I am struggling for a better life. I am a builder. By nature I am a creator. On the old rat-infested city rubbish tip I built a retail center with 600 shops. I opened the best beauty parlour in Ryazan, which has an excellent surgeon. He gave my wife’s breasts a lift, and removed my moles. Everybody without exception is pleased. Only Misha Komarov is dissatisfied. He writes endlessly that the plastic surgery operations are performed without a licence. He’s just trying to settle personal scores with me. I am getting tired of his articles. I decided to teach him a lesson.”
“To teach him a lesson? Do you know that on November 3 someone tried to kill him? Just after he had left another court hearing against you?”
“You won’t believe me but I’ve only just heard about it, immediately before our meeting.” The oligarch calls in the head of his security service, a large fellow in a black leather jacket. “Have you been to the hospital?” he asks him.
The bodyguard relays in detail what the doctor told him about Komarov’s state of health.
“Isn’t it strange that the doctor has passed all this information – confidential medical details – to your Viking?”
Kuznetsov is pleased with the effect he is having and smiles masterfully.
“What confidential details are you talking about? I was treated in that very same neurosurgery department after somebody lobbed a grenade at me. But Misha never seems to learn.”
“What right do you think you have to ‘educate’ Komarov as if you were his father?”
“In Ryazan I am everybody’s father, and it seems to me I am having some success. Komarov thinks more carefully about what he writes, he weighs his words now. Personally I think Novaya gazeta is great. And don’t be afraid for Misha; he has been hit on the head many times before because he doesn’t know when to give way.”
We part, having got nowhere.
During the afternoon Victor Ognyov, the Deputy Prosecutor of Ryazan, makes a surprising announcement: he says a criminal investigation was launched yesterday, November 4, at 19:10 hours, rather than at 11:30 on November 5 as Colonel Mzhavanadze was assuring us just a couple of hours ago.
“The militia are saying something quite different. Who should we believe?”
“They simply did not know.” Ognyov imperturbably shuffles the papers in his file, where two separate directives about instigating one and the same case are visible to the naked eye. “We intervened operationally so that everything would move along more effectively. First we appointed Skrynnikov, a junior investigator, but now at my request a more experienced official will investigate the matter (Mikail Zotov, who was defending Kuznetsov against Komarov). We’re about to send a special report on all this to the Prosecutor-General’s Office in Moscow since, as you will agree, this is not a routine case. We are observing all the requirements of the Criminal Procedure Code.”
“But why is the charge merely ‘disturbing the peace’?”
“Because Komarov was neither killed nor robbed. There was no intention of killing him.”
“How can you be so sure? Do you know the person with the intentions?”
“We know if they had meant to they would have killed him, but they were merely giving him a fright. It will be a matter of minor physical injury affecting the victim’s health for a short time.”
“He hasn’t recovered yet!”
“You will forgive my remarking that there is no article in the Criminal Code relating to beating up a journalist.” Ognyov smiles sardonically.
Evening falls once more. Misha is lying in one of the narrow beds typical of an underfunded Russian hospital. His head is bandaged and he looks pale. His mother has brought in all the medicine, bandages and syringes he needs because as usual there are none in the neurosurgical department. No doctors or nurses in the evenings either, but luckily Valentina is a nurse herself. Komarov is holding forth to his neighbours about democracy, the duty of the mass media, and the need to be unflinching in the fight against corruption which spoils life for everyone. His neighbours listen sullenly, either because of their own ailments or because they have little faith in the victory of democracy or in the need to make the effort Misha is describing. Sitting on the edge of the next bed, Valentina lectures her son.
“Yes, I understand what you are saying, and I am not against your being a journalist, but you do need to be more careful.”
“We can’t give in, Mum,” Mikhail answers with the passion of one who will brook no compromise in the fight for good. He is in a state of post-traumatic euphoria, ready for the worst, fearing nothing. “Let them be afraid every week of what we are going to write about them, not we of them!”
“What are you going to do now, Misha?” I ask in parting.
“Carry on writing articles,” Komarov replies unyieldingly.
So, is it worth sacrificing your life for journalism? How does each of us make our choice?
Every successive attack on a journalist in Russia – and by tradition nobody ever gets caught – relentlessly reduces the number of journalists working because they want to fight for justice. The risks are very great and not everyone is up to the unremitting tension which accompanies this kind of work. As the numbers of one kind of journalist fall, so there is an increase in the number of those who prefer undemanding journalism, reporting which doesn’t involve prying where you are not welcome.
Undemanding media cater for an undemanding public, ready to agree with everything it is told. The more there is of the former, the more monolithic the latter becomes, and the less opportunity society has of seeing what is wrong with the circumstances in which it lives.
In the last few months the situation has been deteriorating rapidly. It seems we are at a tipping point, and that soon the Government (the oligarchs, the FSB, the bureaucracy) will no longer be breathing down our necks, because they will have achieved what they want: there will be nobody left prepared to lay down their life in order to get at the truth about other people’s lives. If there is no demand, there will be no supply.
More than three years later, the criminals still have not been caught: neither those who attacked Mikhail Komarov, nor those who paid them to do so.
* The Cheka was a state security service established in 1917. It was the forerunner of the KGB, now the FSB.
* Apartment blocks in Moscow, Buinaksk and Volgodonsk were blown up, apparently by the FSB, with the loss of many Russian lives. The Chechens were blamed as a pretext for re-starting the war in Chechnya. An attempt to do the same in Ryazan was foiled, and was subsequently represented as a “training exercise.”