On Oct. 7, journalist Anna Politkovskaya was found shot dead in the elevator of her Moscow home. One of Russia's most courageous and respected reporters had been silenced by four bullets. As a correspondent for the semiweekly Novaya Gazeta, Politkovskaya was an unflinching observer of the war in Chechnya, dedicated to telling the stories of those caught in the long and vicious conflict, and fiercely critical of the Kremlin's policies on it.Politkovskaya's dogged search for truth made her a formidable journalist, but her compassion made her even more than that. The war-battered Chechens came to trust Politkovskaya for the same reason the Kremlin did not: she spent more time in the field than in Moscow, and she was a hard sell. She also did all she could to help the people she met, going beyond her duties to look for a family's missing members or organizing assistance for Grozny's homeless elderly.
There were times when Politkovskaya went to report a story and ended up becoming part of it. When Chechen terrorists took over 900 people hostage in a Moscow theater in October 2002, Russian authorities tried to send in negotiators. The terrorists refused to deal with most of them, but heeded the hostages' plea to allow in a handful of liberal politicians and Politkovskaya. Through her, the hostages were given the chance to express to the world their frustration and despair. Two days later, Russian special forces stormed the theater, killing 41 rebels and 129 hostages.
It seemed she would serve as mediator again in September 2004, when terrorists from Chechnya laid siege to a school in Beslan. Upon hearing the news, Politkovskaya called London and woke up the Chechen separatists' envoy to suggest he urge the then separatist President Aslan Maskhadov to employ his influence to secure the release of the children. She then took the next plane to the Beslan area to offer her help. But during the flight, she became severely ill, the result, she claimed, of someone slipping poison into her tea. Medical help arrived with only minutes to spare. "They neutralized me because they knew I was going there not just as a journalist, but as someone who tried to set up talks," she said to me as she lay in her hospital bed.
The siege ended when Russian forces launched an assault on the school, killing 333, most of them children. The failure to save the hostages burdened Politkovskaya with enormous sadness, but the attempt on her life left her undaunted. Just before her death, she had written a detailed unfinished article part of which Novaya Gazeta has since published on torture in Chechnya.
"Her political influence in Russia was extremely insignificant," said Russian President Vladimir Putin the day before Politkovskaya's funeral. But the thousands who came out in cities all over Russia to pay homage to her told a different truth.