Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [213]
In her teens qualities became evident which were to be fundamental to her personality. She was physically incapable of condoning unfairness. She acknowledged no absolute authorities, and always told the truth to people’s faces, whatever the consequences. Anna was perfectly capable of throwing down her exercise book on the teacher’s desk if she considered he had marked her unfairly. She even stood up to the headmaster, who the teachers themselves were afraid of, if she felt another pupil had been treated unfairly. She was a maximalist. When she argued her cheeks would become livid, and she could be very abrupt. “Ostap has got the bit between his teeth,” we would joke, remembering the manic hero of Ilf and Petrov’s Twelve Chairs. At first we found her unyielding nature difficult, but later learned to ignore it and tried not to bring her to boiling point, either giving way in arguments or changing the subject. We kept that habit going in later life.
Soon our friend’s civic activism moved up a gear. Anna began doubting the fairness of “developed socialism,” which is how society in the Brezhnev years was characterised. She was extremely sensitive to the sham values underlying it. We were baffled as to why she wanted to change the rules, and not just live in accordance with them like other people. It was obviously a lost cause, but she genuinely could not understand our indifference and lack of desire to improve society. Her first newspaper reporting was challenging and topical. She saw the main reason for working as a journalist as being to put right the situation she was describing, to identify and excoriate those responsible.
We grew up. Anna was the first to marry and the first to become a mother, while she was still very young. Her parents were upset that she had encumbered herself with all the trials of family life at such an early age. I will never forget her coming for a break at my dacha, holding her three-year-old son by the hand, with her year-old daughter in her arms, and simultaneously managing a folding pushchair, a potty, changes of clothing, baby food and books. All this she coped with without a car, travelling first by Metro and bus, then on the suburban train, and finally making it to the dacha on foot. It was not something every young mother could have undertaken, but Anna was never afraid of difficulties. In order to save up to buy a piano for the children, she took a second job as a cleaner at a studio on the ground floor of her apartment block. Soon a vintage instrument was bought which served not only for making music, but also as a bookshelf, a writing desk, an ironing board, and as a stand for the parrot’s cage. In those days beginning journalists lived very modestly indeed. Preparing endless breakfasts, lunches and dinners; doing the laundry and tidying up; teaching the children music, drawing and general knowledge, Anna would periodically exclaim, “I am an independent creative unit.” In fact, there was very little time for creativity, and she was able to write only at night after the children had been put to bed and the housework done.
We always joked that the more difficult her life became, the better she looked. She was naturally good-looking, and seemed to confirm the male chauvinist maxim that “hardship makes women prettier.” She was