Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches [NOOK Book]

Kirkus Reviews

"It is generally accepted that we Russians do not like ourselves much." So wrote the late Politkovskaya (1958–2006) (Putin's Russia, 2006, etc.), who paid with her life for her daring critiques of post-Soviet society.

This spirited collection, originally published by the journalNovaya Gazetain 2007, opens with a self-interview taken from the journalist's laptop after her death. In it, she accuses most of her journalistic colleagues in Russia with beingkoverny, or clowns, "whose job it is to keep the public entertained and, if they do have to write about anything serious, then merely to tell everyone how wonderful the Pyramid of Power is in all its manifestations." The big-shoe phenomenon spreads far beyond Russia, of course, and Politkovskaya is not alone when she asks what the fate of those who refuse to play in the Big Top is—"They become pariahs," she answers, though in her case it was worse still. Much of the collection concerns Russia's war in Chechnya, which has quieted down since, but, only a few years ago, was raging—no thanks to orchestrated atrocities on the part of the Russian Army that Politkovskaya covered and uncovered. One was the so-called Shatoy Tragedy, in which Russian soldiers under the command of the Central Intelligence Directorate killed six Chechen civilians and burned their bodies. Politkovskaya's reportage is far from objective, in the vaunted Anglo-American sense. Her ledes build around terms such as "massive violation of human rights" and "the racketeering that pervades the Republic," recounting the misdeeds of plutocrats and bureaucrats, and otherwise offering news and commentary from what she called "the furthest end of the Old World." Even the less pointed touches—travel notes from Europe and Australia, a brief memoir of living with an elderly dog—are sharp in their none-too-veiled view of a society that should be better than it is.

An essential book for budding Russia hands, followers of world events and fans of good journalism.

The Barnes & Noble Review

For Anna Politkovskaya, Russia was a grim country -- a "managed democracy" governed by brutal leaders and craven bureaucrats, policed by violent and extortionist security services, and reported on only by "servants of the Presidential Administration." Her crusading, obsessive journalism made her many enemies, not least inside the Kremlin; she endured beatings, poisoning, and a mock execution; but she did not back down. Murdered in 2006, her killers never found, Politkovskaya lives on in Is Journalism Worth Dying For?, a collection of her "final dispatches."

Politkovskaya's greatest and most dangerous work was done in Chechnya, the functionally lawless region which foreign and even Russian journalists refused to enter, but to which she returned more than two dozen times. It is a terrifying place, where anarchic paramilitaries roam the streets with Berettas, politicians hit up citizens for cash, and opponents of the regime are abducted and thrown into jail cells dug into the ground, if they're not killed with impunity. And there is characteristically fearless reporting on the 2002 siege of a Moscow theater by Chechen terrorists, during which Politkovskaya attempted to negotiate with the militants to release hundreds of hostages before Russian authorities gassed the theater, killing at least 130 people. Politkovskaya argues that federal security services abetted the terrorists, a claim backed up with evidence from the former spy Alexander Litvinenko -- who was himself murdered a few months after Politkovskaya, poisoned with polonium at a London sushi joint.

Not all of Politkovskaya's dispatches make such forbidding reading; there are easier reports from Paris and Sydney, and even a long and surprisingly tender essay on her dog. But her enduring importance derives from her refusal to capitulate despite seemingly unbearable pressure -- and, even more basically, her commitment to rigorous on-the-ground reporting when journalists, even when not faced with official intimidation, spend more time with PR flacks than sources and victims. Upon her death, Lech Walesa mourned her as "a sentinel for truth," and Condoleezza Rice called her "a heroine of mine"; for the New York Times, she stood as "a symbol of what Russia has become." Only Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-installed gangster president of Chechnya and a key suspect in her murder, was unmoved. "I was not bothered in the slightest by what she wrote," he insisted, "and I have never lowered myself to trying to settle scores with women."

--Jason Farago