Monday 07 October 2024
This time last year, I was planning to blog about Anna Politkovskaya. My intention was to inaugurate the release of my blogsite with a big, important—at least to me—written piece. In vain, I was trying to finish constructing the website, aiming for an unreasonable and rushed release. It didn’t happen. The website wasn’t ready until the following month, November 2023. And I didn’t write that Politkovskaya blog. I felt too hectic. I needed to be profoundly reflective, even philosophical; moreover, I needed to be introspective and sensitive. Next to my eulogy series for Steve, I imagined my proposed blog on Anna Politkovskaya to be the most important piece I should ever write for my blogsite. Therefore, my task was paramount. She was a central member of my personal hall of heroes. The writing needed to be perfect. I mustn’t screw it up. I decided to wait for next year. And next year has arrived.
When I eventually launched the website, I promised myself I would, no, that I must, write that Politkovskaya blog the following year, to commemorate her murder on 07 October 2006. Today, Monday 07 October 2024 is the anniversary of her killing, and today, Monday 07 October 2024 is the release of my homage to Anna Politkovskaya.
How do I convey to you, Reader, my admiration for Anna Politkovskaya, the murdered Russian investigative journalist writing for one of the few independent Russian newspapers, Novaya Gazeta? Before you reasonably but skeptically raise your objection, saying: “But Daniel… Politkovskaya is dead since October 2006. Her time has gone. Other Russian political prisoners— (if I can interrupt your criticism for a moment, you really mean to add also, still ‘living’) —and democratic freedom fighters need our support now. Sadly, but realistically, she doesn’t need it. I vaguely recall her murder trials… the shams that they were. What’s the point of you trying to raise the dead, so to speak, and insist that I not only read your blog on Politkovskaya… and from the passionate plea you have used to begin your blog, this blog likely will also be a long blog, maybe even two blogs… why should I be convinced that she is more than just another silenced critic on Putin’s hitlist or that she is more than just a historical footnote in modern Russian politics?’
And before you, Reader, add: ‘there’s a movie coming out, Words of War, sometime next year, I’ll eventually see the film, and say to myself: ‘oh, yeah. She did fight like hell against Putin’s gangsterism… you, Daniel, should tread carefully on this most dangerous terrain, Putin’s vindictiveness,’ now I must cut in on your well-intentioned concern for me, and say, Politkovskaya was, quite possibly, the first internationally known twenty-first century Russian oppositional figure in Putin’s Russia who no matter how much her fellow Russian people disappointed her, who still believed that once they awaken from their political stupor, Russia will finally rid itself of Putin and limp but nonetheless head toward a free, democratic society. The Russians themselves need to be reminded of whom their true heroes are, and, by extension, we in the West also need to witness what genuine political and moral heroism looks like.
How do I explain to you, Reader, why she is one of my heroes? If I recount her countless acts of courage, would you, Reader, be convinced? This woman, Politkovskaya,… who had risked her life going countless times to then war-torn Chechnya ravaged by Putin; who had been tortured and underwent a mock-execution by Russian military/security forces for reporting from Chechnya; who had convinced herself that the ethos she had established with the Chechen people—after all, as she entered the Chechen terrorist-held theatre at Dubrovka in Moscow, she shouted: “I am Politkovskaya, I am Politkovskaya”[1]—she believed plausibly that she could have persuaded the Moscow theatre hostage takers to release the captives; who had been poisoned likely by Russian security services while on her way to negotiate with the Beslan school Chechen hostage takers; who had become an intolerable and incorruptible oppositional writer, becoming a constant unrelenting and stinging reminder declaring that Putin not only is a scourge to Chechen people but to his own fellow so-called Russian citizens; and who accepted her doomed fate of being murdered eventually… is clearly a principled, courageous, and compassionate humanitarian who should have been better acknowledged and protected by the West, and we in the West should have even bestowed her with a Nobel Peace Prize.
How do I persuade you, Reader, that she still is relevant to us now, even though her killer murdered her on 07 October 2006? And who exactly ordered her execution-style murder? Putin? Kadyrov? Even if Kadyrov—the authoritarian dictator of Chechnya and Putin lackey who also commands soldiers on Putin’s behalf in Ukraine—had orchestrated the hitjob on Politkovskaya, he regardless would have needed Putin’s approval for planning her murder. Yes, yes, innocent until proven guilty; however, maybe if Russia ever becomes a true democratic and open society or Putin inevitably leaves office (he will die soon enough), perhaps we might then discover who killed Politkovskaya.
How do I insist that you, Reader, remember Politkovskaya and honor her importance when some of us may already be forgetting about Alexei Navalny, a more recent dead Putin critic? After all, we should be able to remember him because he mysteriously died on 16 February 2024 in an arctic Russian federal prison, right? We haven’t yet marked his death’s one-year anniversary; we should be then able to remember him. I hope we can still remember him. And as important as he was, I hope we can still remember, too, Anna Politkovskaya. She did prepare the way for Navalny.
I have taught Politkovskaya’s journalism since my West Point days…. So, a very long time. Nonetheless, I always struggled teaching her significance and relevancy. Convincing my West Point cadets of her stature was easy because her murder was contemporary to them; she had died just a year or two before they started attending the Academy and began taking my classes. Writing about her journalism or murder made my cadets feel intellectually hip and politically sophisticated; in my cadets’ eyes (and mine, too), their essays on Politkovskaya were cutting edge.
When I transitioned back to teaching at civilian colleges, I struggled persuading my undergraduate students of the urgency to know of Anna Politkovskaya. I assigned the same Politkovskaya articles and excerpts as I had done while at West Point, but few if any of my civilian undergraduates connected with her writing. At times, I felt as if I were wasting their time with Politkovskaya, not enhancing their education with Politkovskaya.
Occasionally, I would leave out Politkovskaya from my curriculum, despairing because I felt I had failed Politkovskaya and let down my past students. At that point, not one student ever chose Politkovskaya as a possible topic for their Paper Two Assignment, the so-called Researched Argument Essay
Since Politkovskaya’s murder in 2006, many other outspoken Kremlin critics, including other Russian journalists, have been harassed, persecuted, arrested, imprisoned, and yes, murdered. Perhaps my civilian students were too consumed with more recent Russian dissidents being targeted, too preoccupied with other international political prisoners being crushed, or too overwhelmed with our own American, domestic problems to view Politkovskaya important enough to ponder her relevance. Was she important at all?
Recently in March 2023, Soviet-born but American citizen and journalist for The Wall Street Journal Evan Gershkovich was arrested by the Russian FSB on charges of espionage, being found guilty and then imprisoned to serve a 16-year jail sentence; fortunately, Gershkovich was released on 01 August 2024 in a prisoner exchange.
Nonetheless, I couldn’t shake off the guilt of not teaching Politkovskaya. When in my war class I stopped teaching Daniel Defoe’s Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720), a fictional “autobiography” set during the Thirty Years’ War and English Civil Wars, no matter how much I enjoyed teaching it, I realized that if students aren’t choosing certain books for their written assignments, there probably is a reason (or two) why they’re not choosing it. If no one was choosing Defoe… and now if no one was choosing Politkovskaya to write about, I needed to revise my class reading list by removing my hero’s written work from it.
Therefore, I initially felt slightly less guilty for editing out Politkovskaya from my classes because no one was writing about her; however, keeping Politkovskaya away from my war class especially felt wrong. In my opinion at least, Politkovskaya was more important than Defoe. Defoe did play a significant role in the creation of the “novel” as a literary form and wrote insightfully about war and war crimes in Memoirs of a Cavalier; however, his world and time are so, so far removed from ours today. Politkovskaya is closer to our times, and her journalism can and does help to explain Putin. Her work still does. Again, before Natalya Estemirova, Anastasia Baburova, Boris Nemtsov, and Alexei Navalny, there was Anna Politkovskaya. Within her work, answers lay there, waiting for us to uncover them, perhaps aiding us with knowledge to confront finally Putin’s tyranny.
Convincing myself I could always bring back Politkovskaya’s written work in future versions of my war class, I felt less disappointed with myself for placing Politkovskaya in my teacher’s limbo. Moreover, other equally pressing intellectual, social, and political dilemmas, which I could more easily incorporate in my classrooms captured my attention. I didn’t clearly foresee when or how I would resurrect Politkovskaya. I wasn’t sure whether I was only fantasizing doing so, or if I would ever find a redeeming moment when she could return to my classroom.
And then the signs came:
- Along with Maria Ressa of the Philippines (another journalist who risks her life to expose authoritarian human rights abuses), Dmitry Muratov, the co-founder and editor of Novaya Gazeta—one of very few independent Russian newspapers and the one Politkovskaya worked for—won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.
- On 24 February 2022, Putin declared a full-on war with Ukraine, or as he likes to call it, a “special military operation” to “denazify” Ukraine and to safeguard oppressed Russian citizens living in there.
- Along with the Russian non-governmental organization Memorial that studies and releases information about the human rights abuses perpetrated by Joseph Stalin and by other Soviet dictators, the Belarusian pro-democracy activist and prisoner of conscience Ales Bialiatski, and the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.
I saw these events as the universe telling me (or was Politkovskaya’s spirit calling out to me?) that I needed to bring back Politkovskaya to my war classes. And quickly. Politkovskaya’s relevance for my next semester’s war class suddenly became viable. I felt reinvigorated. Immediately, I re-evaluated my entire teaching approach for Politkovskaya.
First, I stopped using a piecemeal approach. If I were to convince my war class students of Politkovskaya’s importance, then I needed to use one of her full-length books. No single articles. “Enough with scanned excerpts,” I told myself. And I couldn’t any longer just devote one class lecture to teach her journalism and importance. I needed at least three class meetings.
Second, I needed to better contextualize Politkovskaya with the overall state of Russia’s lack of freedom of the press and other civil/human rights abuses. Along with giving a general lesson on global freedoms of speech, I provided an in-depth history of Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper she worked for. Therefore, before launching my three-lesson long examination of Politkovskaya, I taught one class on freedom of speech and Muratov’s Nobel Peace Prize speech. In other words, I was spending four class lessons on Politkovskaya.
Third, I prepared a thorough biography of Politkovskaya. I contextualized the chronology of her life with events happening in Russia and Chechnya. I made sure to lay out the evidence concerning the highly suspect September 1999 Moscow apartment bombings. Many observers believe, correctly, that rather than Chechen terrorists planting the bombs, the culprits actually were Russian FSB agents in an attempt to sway the Russian voting public to elect Putin as leader of the Russian Federation.
Fourth, I emphasized Politkovskaya’s moral courage. She could have chosen to become an émigré, writing from the safety of a Western capital. “Any American or British school of journalism would consider her to be a plum prize, a priceless asset to have on their faculty. Any cable or network TV news channel or newspaper would compete with those very same universities to have her as their international bureau chief, working from London, Berlin, New York, or Washington, D.C. But she didn’t leave Russia; she stayed. Why? If she had left Russia, she would have been seen as a massive betrayer by her Russian readers. If she called for Russians to stand up against Putin, how dare she co-lead the revolution from Paris or Los Angeles? People would have considered her rightly to be a fraud. She would have been seen as choosing comfort in the safe West, not risking her life like they were by living in Putin’s Russia. Equally importantly, she would have considered herself as a phony, too.” I planned to say these remarks in my introduction on Politkovskaya.
Fifth, my presentation slides needed to be detailed but also visually appealing. I learned this powerful lesson while teaching during the first and second waves of COVID-19. Most of my students weren’t present in physical classrooms; only a handful of students chose to be physically present in the classrooms. The majority “zoomed-in.” If I were to keep both my virtual and physically present students engaged, therefore, the slides I would have to create needed images, color, and visual interest. Simply offering an information dump on slides only invited boredom and disconnection. This time, I couldn’t risk losing Politkovskaya again to obscurity.
Sixth, as a scholar and teacher, I needed to resolve my anxiety concerning giving Politkovskaya her due in my classrooms; suppressing my anxiety of no longer disappointing Politkovskaya’s memory and myself needed to be worked out by me. My very first spoken words in my introductory lecture on Politkovskaya were: “I hope I don’t disappoint Politkovskaya ever again,” thus beginning to explain the history of Politkovskaya in my curriculum and the difficulties of persuading past students of her importance.
No longer being starry-eyed and fawning over my idol, I needed to perform teacherly actions that demonstrated, not merely suggested, my admiration for the slain Russian journalist; otherwise, I was just a big talker who dwelled in an irrelevant past, isolated in my own ivory tower. My task was to prove she was relevant to my academic year 2023 undergraduates.
I think I am at my best as a college classroom teacher when I share with my students my vulnerability and uncertainty with teaching certain writers and books, especially the ones I hold dearly, like Politkovskaya. Doing so is a risky endeavor because, for some of my teaching colleagues, this teaching practice isn’t technically “objective” or “scholarly enough.” I know I am treading on emotional and unstable terrain. If I am to persuade my students why they should care about books and importantly the suffering of other people, I need to say and prove why I care, why I give a shit about Politkovskaya. Cynicism cannot win against my classroom students or me. Politkovskaya has taught me that much. Otherwise, in this case, Putin would win.
In my attempt to finish this blog, I quickly realized that I couldn’t sum up everything I need to say about Politkovskaya in one, albeit long blog entry. My unconscious kept alerting me that I wouldn’t finish writing this blog, even though I have been writing it for several days now. On Sunday morning, I tried to override what my unconscious was warning me. I couldn’t.
As a result, my new aim was to find a resting place in the writing where I hoped I had said enough about Politkovskaya to intrigue you, Reader, and keep you curious to read the next installment. I honestly didn’t think I would end up writing a two-part piece on Politkovskaya, but I guess doing so makes sense. It relieves the pressure to complete the piece by rushing like a madman to give you, Reader, a “finished” product. So, I am content to break (again) my impossible rule of insisting on “complete” blogs. Anna Politkovskaya’s heroism is too important to rush to meet an arbitrary and self-imposed deadline, confining her to a single essay. She is worth more than that.
[1] Anna Politkovskaya. “I tried and failed.” 30 October 2002. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/oct/30/russia.terrorism