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By Root 983 0

Known by many as “Russia’s lost moral conscience” and hailed by the New York Times as “the bravest of journalists,” ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA (born 1958 in New York City) was a special correspondent for the Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta. She received honors from many Russian and international groups, including Amnesty International and the Index on Censorship. In 2000 she received Russia’s prestigious Golden Pen Award for her coverage of the war in Chechnya, and in 2005 she was awarded the Civil Courage Prize. She is the author of A Dirty War; A Small Corner of Hell; Putin’s Russia; and A Russian Diary. She was murdered in Moscow on October 7, 2006.

ARCH TAIT translates from the Russian. His translation of Ludmila Ulitskaya’s Sonechka: A Novella and Stories was shortlisted for the Rossica Translation Prize in 2007.

Also by Anna Politkovskaya

A Russian Diary

Putin’s Russia

A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya

A Dirty War: a Russian Reporter in Chechnya

IS JOURNALISM WORTH DYING FOR?

Originally published in Russian as Za chto?

by Novaya gazeta, Moscow, 2007

© 2007 Anna Politkovskaya

© 2007 Novaya gazeta

Translation © 2010 by Arch Tait

First Melville House printing: March 2011

Melville House Publishing

145 Plymouth Street

Brooklyn, NY 11201

www.mhpbooks.com

eISBN: 978-1-935554-70-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011922469

v3.1

This book was first published in Russian as Za chto—What For?—by Novaya gazeta, the newspaper to which Anna Politkovskaya contributed from June 1999 until her murder in October 2006. Her colleagues at the paper assembled the collection, and their reminiscences of Politkovskaya and investigation of her murder (including Vyacheslav Izmailov’s “Who Killed Anna and Why?”) are also included. Politkovskaya is one of four Novaya gazeta journalists murdered between 2001 and 2009.

CONTENTS

Cover

About the Author

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

So What am I Guilty Of?

1. Should Lives Be Sacrificed to Journalism

2. The War in Chechnya

Part I: Dispatches from the Frontline

Part II: The Protagonists

Part III: The Kadyrovs

3. The Cadet

4. Nord-Ost

Photo Insert

5. Beslan

6. Russia: A Country at Peace

7. Planet Earth: The World Beyond Russia

8. The Other Anna

9. The Last Pieces

10. After October 7

Glossary

She represented the honor and conscience of Russia, and probably nobody will ever know the source of her fanatical courage and love of the work she was doing.

Liza Umarova, Chechen singer

Anna rang me at the hospital in the morning, before 10 o’clock. She was supposed to be coming to visit, this was her day, but something had come up at home. Anna said my second daughter, Lena, would come instead, and promised that we would definitely meet on Sunday. She sounded in a good mood, her voice was cheerful. She asked how I was feeling and whether I was reading a book. She knew I love historical literature and had brought me Alexander Manko’s The Most August Court under the Sign of Hymenaeus. She had not read it herself. I said, “Anya, it is difficult for me to read. I have to read every page three times because I have Father before my eyes all the time.” [Raisa Mazepa’s husband had died shortly before.] She tried to calm me, “He didn’t suffer. Everything happened very quickly. He was coming to visit you. Let’s talk about the book instead.” I said, “Anya there is an epigraph on page 179 which really moves me. It is so much a part of us, so Russian.” I read it to her: “There are drunken years in the history of peoples. You have to live through them, but you can never truly live in them.”

“Oh, Mum,” she replied, “put a bookmark there, don’t forget.” I asked my daughter who the author of the epigraph was, and she told me about Nadezhda Teffi, a famous Russian poetess. Then she said, “Speak to you tomorrow, Mum.” She was in a very good mood. Or perhaps she was in a bad mood and just pretending everything was fine in order not to upset me.

I was always very worried about her. Shortly before I went into