PUTIN'S DEEPEST DREAM

In memory of Anna Politkovskaya, murdered in Moscow on 7 October 2006, President Putin's birthday.

When I met Anna Politkovskaya in 2001, I was afraid to call myself a journalist. How can a raindrop and the sea both be called 'water', I thought, or a child's scrabble and a Rembrandt both be called 'art'? In fact, I believe Politkovskaya thought I was still a child. And yet, from the moment I sat next to her I knew we were both journalists. So important was everything she was sharing with me and so respectful she was to my attempt to add my pitiful contribution to her titanic struggle.

Below I am including the interview I recorded with her several days after she had been arrested and kept in a bunker by the Russian security forces FSB without food. Almost six years have passed since that interview. Contrary to what President Putin said on the day of her funeral about Politkovskaya's role in the Russian society being "minimal", six years ago she was already receiving piles of letters with pleas for help from common civilians. It was to check whether the atrocities described in those letters were true that she went on her multiple trips to Chechnya. And as she told me, most had turned out to be true.

Despite the fear that the nightmare of her arrest would repeat itself, in the past six years Politkovskaya went back to the Northern Caucasus several times. During the Beslan tragedy she was poisoned. On another occasion, her execution by gunfire was staged. I have always kept asking myself whether what she was doing was in fact a Don Quixote's battle against the grindstone of contemporary Russian mentality, of the "no demand for the truth about Chechnya in the Russian society". For it was that grindstone that crushed Politkovskaya, it was her own society that killed her, preferring to believe Putin for the sake of convenience. Just the same as the inhabitants of medieval Rome believed the Pope that the Earth was standing still, and did not believe Giordano Bruno. "Deep down, Putin even wishes for more international pressure to get rid of this war", Politkovskaya told me six years ago. In memory of Anna, why aren't the President's dreams fulfilling? Or are they?

Be Afraid of Everyone: Interview with Anna Politkovskaya

by Sophia Kornienko

Transitions On Line, 15 March 2001

A controversial journalist recently detained in Chechnya talks to TOL about her view from the ground in the war-torn province.

After two days' captivity near the Chechen village of Khottuni, journalist Anna Politkovskaya of Novaya Gazeta arrived in Moscow on 23 February claiming that innocent Chechens were being kept in filtration camps waiting to be freed by ransom. One week later, on 2 March, all of the country's television channels reported that her allegations were groundless. The same day in St. Petersburg, at a press conference organized by the Freedom Forum , Politkovskaya told TOL's correspondent in St. Petersburg, Sophia Kornienko, about her experiences in Chechnya.

TOL: Do you think people actually want the truth at all? Is there a demand for it?

Politkovskaya: I know that the anti-Chechen attitude is unbelievably strong among [Russians]. Society refuses to realize that, most often, it isn't the guerrilla fighters and terrorists who are held responsible in Chechnya today. ... It is the common civilians who are made prisoners in their own villages. Grozny is full of old people--Chechens, Russians, Ukrainians--left behind while their children live among us. An old man goes out to get some water and never comes back home to his wife. We never read such stories in our morning papers. Novaya Gazeta is pushing the Interior Ministry to publish at least some of the names of those killed or missing after the siege of Grozny. Society needs the truth.

TOL: How many letters do you receive from Chechen civilians every day?

Politkovskaya: I have not counted. They do not come every day, but I receive many. That is why I had to go down there, to verify the information, because, you know, one could write whatever... In most cases, the letters turned out to be true. However, I faced a lot of antagonism on behalf of the federal forces. They were annoyed by the fact that I wished to go farther than the main press center in Khankala and actually talk to the civilians. They could not understand why I would want to do that in the first place. They
would have much preferred that I limit myself to inquiring about their official opinion on what the letters said. It is hardly possible to do my work in such conditions. And if the journalists stop working, that will be the end.

TOL: How did it happen that Colonel Alexei Romanov, who heads the 45th Regiment, allowed you to see the concentration camp, telling you it was on Chief Commander Valeri Baranov's orders?

Politkovskaya: He said he was fed up with it all, so he showed the camp to me.

TOL: Did the camp resemble the one in the village of Chernokozovo, where Andrei Babitsky of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was held for several days a year ago?

Politkovskaya: No, the camp in Chernokozovo is, so to speak, the "model camp" in the republic. The one I saw in Romanov's regiment was just several holes, each approximately 6 meters deep. Such camps are considered a common thing and many regiments have them. Frankly, I can't even understand why this was made into such breaking news.

TOL: How many people were held captive in those holes, when you were there?

Politkovskaya: I can only say how many I met who had been to that camp in total, and that was 11. It took time, you know, to have them speak out.

TOL: Were they all ethnic Chechens?

Politkovskaya: Yes, but they spoke some Russian.

TOL: Who were they?

Politkovskaya: I don't want to give you the names. I don't think it would be correct to have their names appear in the press.

TOL: Were there any women among them?

Politkovskaya: Yes. There was one old woman. She said they had just come to her home and taken her. There was also a child of 13. All the people [in the camp] are waiting to be traded in for ransom.

TOL: Were any people at the regiment drunk? Was Romanov drunk when he was showing the holes with the people in them to you?

Politkovskaya: Oh, no, he was sober. He said he was simply so fed up with the lies that he could not bear it any longer. He was actually very friendly and talkative with me. He ordered a car to take me to the village of Khottuni and provided a soldier to accompany me in that car. Khottuni is very close to their location, so it shouldn't have been a long ride. We stopped at the block-post at the exit from the regiment to have our papers checked--the same block-post I had passed on the way in.

TOL: Was it Romanov's people who arrested you?

Politkovskaya: No. The military is responsible for guarding the site from the inside. It was the FSB [the Russian Security Services] who stopped me. They guard every regiment's outer borders and let you in and out. They then took me back into the regiment and locked me inside a small bunker. They said that Romanov had left the site by then, which was probably true, because I didn't see or hear from him after that.

"I SPENT SIX HOURS WEEPING"

TOL: Is it true that it was only after you went on hunger strike and Moscow stepped in that they set you free?

Politkovskaya: I have no idea who invented the hunger strike thing! I didn't do anything like that. I was scared. I was shaking all over. I spent six hours weeping. I am not holding this back because I think it is a natural reaction that any human would have. They would not give me any food, and I could not eat anything anyway. Once, they brought me something resembling tea, which I drank and then threw up. I was scared. They let me out once, so that I could stand up straight, because my back hurt from curling up under the bunker's low ceiling. Otherwise they did not even let me go to the bathroom. The one time they allowed me to breathe some fresh air, they ordered that I face the bunker the whole time and not turn around.

I think what saved me was that my colleagues knew exactly where to find me when they filed a complaint in Moscow and came for me. After two days, one of the guards opened the door, laughed, and said: "Boy, are you famous, I hear! Come out."

TOL: Are you planning to go back to Chechnya in the near future, or do you think it would be sensible to wait for a while?

Politkovskaya: I don't really have any particular plans for that at the moment. I don't know yet.

TOL: Do you believe the current Chechen campaign is about political image-making, set up on purpose?

Politkovskaya: Yes, definitely. It is also clear that Putin is now dreaming of getting rid of this war, which has spiralled out of control. I think, deep down, he even wishes for more international pressure.

TOL: While there, where did you expect the feedback to arrive from: the Russians or the international community?

Politkovskaya: Oh, I didn't think about that. I just do my work. Simple as that.

TOL: Why do you think [independent television station] NTV's Yevgeny Kirichenko denied all your allegations in his follow-up report on 25 February?

Politkovskaya: Well, it wasn't really a follow-up report. We had actually taken the same flight. You see, he is a professional war reporter. I am definitely not. I look at everything with "civilian eyes." It could be simply that he was not shown the same things that I was.

TOL: Yes, but he said he witnessed no atrocities whatsoever and that the villages were never fired upon. Are the villages being fired upon by federal troops?

Politkovskaya: They were shelled several times while I was there, that much I can say. Regarding my reports, I have brought a lot of documented proof, which can be easily accessed at Novaya Gazeta's office in Moscow. However, none of the parties denying [my reports] have demanded any of it yet.

TOL: Why then did Kirichenko deny your report? Why was his talk with Romanov so different from yours?

Politkovskaya: I really don't know. We all make our own choices, right? It would be great if they had actually gotten rid of the holes to hush it up.