Comment

For Anna Politkovskaya

David Berry

'Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent Russian journalist and critic of the war in Chechnya, has been found shot dead at her apartment block in central Moscow'. So began the news report on aljazeera.net on Saturday October 7th 2006. Anna Politkovskaya was Russia's most prominent 'radical' journalist who published her devastating account of contemporary Russian politics in 2004 called 'Putin's Russia'. The book is not on sale in Russia.

Reporters Without Borders remind us that twenty-one journalists have been killed in Russia since 2000. Politkovskaya's 'radical journalism' was premised on a simple but effective principle: the pursuit of truth. She confronted Russian power and bureaucratic corruption in political, judicial and military circles but she reserved a special place in her criticism for Vladimir Putin who for Politkovskaya was the conduit for which political corruption could flow and is seen as the manifestation of the return of the Soviet mind-set. The opening comments of her book addresses this issue and is straight to the point: 'This book is about Vladimir Putin but not as he is normally viewed in the West. Not through rose-tinted spectacles' and then accusing Putin of failing to 'transcend his origins', which is governed by his association as a 'lieutenant-colonel' in the KGB.

Putin's grip on Russia is increasingly consolidating with the three leading TV stations currently under state control and with Putin's United Russia party dominating the Russian parliament we can begin to see the residues of Russia's Stalinist past haunting the present. In this context, Politkovskaya's book is a must-read for its intellectual contribution toward our understanding of Russian post-communism for it sheds invaluable light on the so-called 'transition' from Soviet Communism to Capitalism.

It's my belief that the main reason that Russia continues to be a mirror reflection in political terms with its Stalinist past is due to the limited revolution that occurred in the 1980s. There was no social revolution, which introduced 'fundamental' changes in Russia. There was no participation of the people either and there were no new 'revolutionary' ideas that were actively produced within Russia that would shake the foundations of Russian society, but rather a bleak acceptance of the move towards Capitalism and borrowing heavily from the West's lead with the structures of the Soviet Union more or less firmly intact.

As in other Central and Eastern European societies that underwent changes in 1989, this was a 'political revolution' where change was partial and at the top and it has allowed elements of the old nomenklatura to take control of proceedings. This meant that in political terms the elitist system was maintained and even though there is, theoretically speaking, a multi-party system, it's clear that this is in name only because Putin's control over the most influential parts of the broadcast media, politics, the judiciary and the economy is enough to ensure that the Russian multi-party system is a sham.

In the absence of any effective political opposition, journalists have courageously attempted to fill the void and offer a critique against State power and political corruption and they have paid a heavy price in doing so and Politkovskaya's death represents the continued assault on freedom of speech in Russia today, a freedom that is necessary to invoke change.

For Anna Politkovskaya one of the defining characteristics of post-communist Russia was the re-emergence of the nomenklatura and here is what she says in an extract from 'Putin's Russia':

'The third change came under Putin, as we embarked upon a new stage of Russian capitalism with obvious neo-Soviet features. The economy in the era of our third President is a curious hybrid of the free market, ideological dogma and various odds and ends. It is a model that puts Soviet ideology at the service of big-time private capital. There are an awful lot of poor, indeed destitute, people. In addition, an old phenomenon is flourishing again: the nomenklatura, a ruling élite: the great bureaucratic class that existed under the Soviet system. The economic system may have changed, but members of this élite have adapted to it. The nomenklatura would like to live the high life like the "New Russian" business élite, only their official salaries are tiny. They have no desire to return to the old Soviet system, but neither does the new system suit them ideally. The problem is that it requires law and order, something Russian society is demanding ever more insistently, and accordingly the nomenklatura has to spend most of its time trying to obviate law and order to promote its own enrichment'.

Similar to the Soviet period 'dissenters' in Russia today are not tolerated and as The Independent's Leader stated (Friday October 13th 2006): 'No one doubts that Politkovskaya was killed for her courageous work as a dissident journalist in Russia' ending with: 'It has taken the murder of perhaps the bravest journalist in modern Russia to get the world to pay attention once again to the vile abuses being perpetrated in this part of the world'.

If you would like to sign the petition organised by Reporters Without Borders calling for an international enquiry to establish the truth behind the murder of Anna Politkovskaya click on the link below:

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=18803