Anna Politkovskaya is dead. Murdered by the same cruelty and brutality that she herself dedicated her life to fight. For a moment the world has come to a standstill. Political leaders and common people alike react with sorrow and abhorrence as a mighty voice of freedom and tolerance is silenced. As darkness falls over Moscow, Russia is engulfed by dumb gloom as the walls of the Kremlin stay silent, when even the stones should scream out: "Так нельзя жить!" - We cannot live like this!The fact remains: When Russia's "first journalist" is silenced, Russia's "first person" stays silent. No word from Putin, no word from the Kremlin when the freedom of the press is trampled on by brutal suppression. The tacit message thus sent, resounds with piercing echo: Freedom of speech has no place in Putin's Russia. "Qui tacet, consentit" - silence implies consent - is regrettably the conclusion drawn from Kremlin reticence, thereby making power implicitly complicit to a crime against the inalienable rights of the Russian people. That the Kremlin most probably bears no direct guilt in Politkovskaya's assasination, is thus obscured by its unwillingness to react with vehemence and call out for the guilty to be brought to justice.
The silence of the Kremlin is no surprise. The Russian administration has actively ignored Politkovskaya and the charges she has brought against the Putinist poles of power. She published three international bestsellers on the war in Chechnya and the state of Russia. None was ever published in Russia. Dead or alive, Putin shuns Politkovskaya like the plague.
During the last year, the Kremlin has poured millions of dollar on PR consultants to improve the international image of the country. How the world looks on Russia, is partly the way Russia looks at itself. Putin and his political technologists know this, and still they do not react, when the world must think fundamental freedoms has no place in Russia. All prejudice is thus confirmed and Russia risks returning to the dark ages of dehumanising authoritarian power.
Still, it would be so easy to go the other way, to acknowledge one's greatest critic, to speak out loud for liberty and dignity. Regardless of the sincerity of such an act, Putin would stand out as a statesman, truly concerned with the destiny of free speech in his country. That he does not, may have a simple logic: For Putin, Politkovskaya was a traitor who betrayed her country on Russia's road to resurrection as a great power among nations. She was the one who told the truth about an unpleasant reality that the Kremlin would rather ignore. She showed the Russians the vanity of "greatness" and the price the people had to pay to suffer and sacrifice for the sake of their leaders deluded ambitions. In her last book, Politkovskaya is asked: "things surely cannot be that bad"? Now, turning the last page of Anna Politkovskaya's life, one can only agree with her reply: "It is much worse."
Anna Politkovskaya lived in the present and jotted down her emotional reactions "in the margins of life as it is lived in Russia today." What she saw was not pleasant, but someone had to say out loud what many knew and thought. This proved her destiny in life and tragically destined her to the fatal fate she suffered. Her clear and frank voice may have gone silent, but the values she fought for are revived by her final sacrifice.
