Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [138]
In the immediate future, the likelihood is that Basayev’s followers will fall in with Doku Umarov, who has the same ideas about the terrorist character of the war from now on. The remnants of other detachments are unlikely to follow, so a flood of new recruits, who were deterred by the bloodthirsty presence of Basayev, is more than likely. What the final configuration of the separatists will be is the big question.
Time will tell. One thing, however, is already clear: until relations between Moscow and Chechnya are finally sorted out in a manner acceptable not merely to Kadyrov but to a majority of the population, the situation is unlikely to settle down. Basayev’s having been blown to bits is not the decisive factor, merely part of the process.
* On the night of June 21, 2004, some 300 resistance fighters occupied the city of Nazran; 98 people were killed and more than 100 injured. The resistance fighters seized 1,056 weapons and burned down several administrative buildings, including the offices of the Nazran Interior Affairs District Office.
6. Russia: A Country at Peace
As the following pieces illustrate, a recurrent theme in Anna Politkovskaya’s articles is the regime’s application of state resources to bolster its stranglehold on power rather than to deal with the huge and pressing problems of the population it rules.
THE TUNGUSKA METEORITE LANDED RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF RUSSIA, AND SO DID WE
December 25, 2000
Yielding to the desire to find a contrarian way to start the new century, our newspaper decided to leave its mark somewhere nobody has left a mark before. Apart from the Tunguska Meteorite.
On December 22, the day of the winter solstice, we arrived at the very spot which, since the demise of the USSR, has been the geographical center of the Russian Federation, the Evenki Autonomous Region. There, in the main square of the township of Tura, the capital of Evenkia, we erected a suitable monument designed by the Moscow artist, Dmitriy Krymov.
Admittedly, the square in Tura doesn’t yet have a name, so if you do decide to visit it you will have to ask a passer-by where the monument to the center of Russia is. Anybody will be able to point it out, though, because everybody in Tura, apart from infants and the very ill, came to the opening ceremony. Oh, and also those who went instead to the local Palace of Culture for a concert by Dmitriy Kharatian and Alexey Buldakov. At Novaya gazeta’s invitation they made the more than seven-hour indirect flight from Moscow to provide a top quality celebration of the unveiling of the monument.
Ivan Bakhtin, the Deputy Governor of Evenkia, told us that even half a day before the celebrations in Tura nobody really believed the monument would be erected, or that the visitors from Moscow would arrive, or that there would be a fireworks display, and a concert, and presents.
“Why was that?”
“Because today’s temperature is 48 degrees below zero, which for us is considered warm.”
But now, what our readers really want to know is what the center of Russia is like. There is no escaping the fact that it is highly symbolic. What gives meaning to life here, in all its variety, is the struggle for survival. If you want to live, you need to be focused. Relax, and you die. If you want to eat, make sure you shoot plenty of game in season. If you want felt boots and a fur coat so as not to freeze, barter the pelts of bears, reindeer and sable you have killed for clothing. And never be on your own. If you are alone and you have a fall, you are dead. The world is ordered in a primitive but strict and logical manner, as befits a symbol.
We learned that it is a stone’s throw from the center of Russia to the pole of cold. The snow was not just very abundant,