“Human life is worth nothing, until it happens to you personally” — Anna Politkovskaya

“Human life is a worthless thing, until it happens to you personally” — Anna Politkovskaya

On October 7, the BBC published one of the last interviews with the famous Russian journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya. Known for investigating human rights violations in Chechnya and openly criticizing the Russian government, Politkovskaya became the victim of an assassination on this exact date 20 years ago. The interview was broadcast in English on BBC television channels in November 2006, after Politkovskaya's death. Its original Russian version was published recently. Gazeta presents the text of the BBC interview.

Anna Politkovskaya began her journalistic career in the "Izvestia" and "Obshchaya Gazeta" publications. From 1999 until the end of her life, she worked as a special correspondent and columnist for "Novaya Gazeta". Her main investigative topic was the Second Chechen War. The journalist traveled to the war zone several times, writing about violence against civilians, torture, filtration camps, and missing persons. In short, she tried to reveal to the public the truth hidden by official sources. Thus, Politkovskaya became a symbol of independent press in Russia.

These activities, of course, did not go unanswered: the journalist was arrested, threatened with execution, and poisoned. On October 7, 2006, Politkovskaya was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow. Those who carried out the murder were tried and held accountable. Nevertheless, the person who ordered the hit has still not been officially identified.

In 2006, shortly before Politkovskaya's death, when this interview was recorded, Vladimir Putin had been in power for six years. Although the peak of the war in Chechnya was over, the war was still ongoing. It was a period when Russia continued to be shaken by terrorist attacks following the 1999 apartment bombings, the Nord-Ost and Beslan hostage crises, and explosions on passenger planes and the subway. Back then, there were still two years left until the end of Putin's second term, and there was an assumption that, according to the Constitution, this would be his last term.

Evaluating Putin's policies of that period, Politkovskaya said that this policy was "killing" the democracy that was just beginning to take shape in the country, and that future generations would only be able to overcome the problems he created by expending immense effort.

“Democracy was being born. But he is killing democracy. His years in the Kremlin will lead to the fact that the next generation of citizens of our state will have to carry out a vast amount of work to get rid of these problems. Look, he is the father of a family. What is he leaving to his children? If he is leaving this state of affairs, he is a bad father. If he leaves behind strong moral foundations and a good base for the material well-being of his family, he is a good person. Right now, there is nothing that can be considered positive,” says Politkovskaya.

She noted that although there are many people in the country who sympathize with Putin, she doubts that the 2004 elections were not rigged.

“The remnants of Stalinist thinking are still very strong in many people. Thinking like a great power, thinking like an empire. These people, of course, voted for Putin. But, I think, the elections were rigged anyway,” the journalist emphasizes.

The Second Chechen War began in August 1999. From its very first days, Politkovskaya headed to the North Caucasus. In the following years, she visited the war zone in Chechnya and wrote dozens of articles about the suffering civilians, the wounded, refugees, and the echoes of the war outside the republic. Chechens respected her greatly for her candid and objective articles. As the journalist stated in the interview, Putin did not want peace in Chechnya when he came to power.

September 3, 2004. Storming of School No. 1 in the city of Beslan.

“Yeltsin, despite his terrible, sometimes very grave mistakes, listened to the press at a certain stage, and the war ended with a peace agreement. True, problems later arose regarding the implementation of this agreement. I agree with that. But none of this can be compared to Putin's actions. He started the Second Chechen War and declared from the beginning that there would be no peace. No matter how anyone acted, no matter what arguments they brought, he relied only on force. On nothing else,” she says.

According to Politkovskaya, the logic of Putin's decisions regarding the war in Chechnya was based on not bowing down to anyone and not taking any sacrifices into account along this path. “Casualties among the civilian population were not taken into account at all. With these principles, they view it as an absolutely legitimate war.”

1995, Grozny.

According to the BBC, one of the first striking events of Putin's rule was the raid on NTV. The television channel frequently criticized Putin's stance on the Chechen war and his response to the sinking of the Kursk submarine. Leading politicians were parodied on the channel's weekend puppet show programs.

“NTV was a private television channel. It was owned by oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky. Just four days after Putin's first inauguration, the NTV offices were stormed by the FSB, the prosecutor's office, and tax authorities. Journalists were summoned for questioning. Despite protests from journalists and the public, NTV passed into the hands of the state-owned company Gazprom in 2001. By the end of Putin's first term, there were no major private television channels left in Russia,” the BBC relates.

According to Politkovskaya, after coming to power without a political platform, Putin destroyed the open and independent press that could expose him.

“He became president without any program. Without any promises. If there had been independent television, it would have crushed Putin. That is clear as day,” says Politkovskaya. “He did not participate in any debates because he is incapable of it. He has no program to debate. The democratic and independent press exposed his chauvinistic and imperialist inclinations. These are perhaps his own ideas or those of his closest political advisors. He set out to eliminate any obstacle and succeeded. Critics disappeared, and sycophants multiplied. Whatever he did was applauded. And television became just like it was during the Soviet Union era.”

By the middle of the Second Chechen War, Politkovskaya had become not only a journalist but also a public figure, says the BBC. When hostages were taken at the Dubrovka theater in October 2002, Politkovskaya fearlessly entered the building. The Chechens specifically demanded her participation in the negotiations. She brought water to the hostages and conveyed the demands of the hostage-takers. They asked Putin to promise to end the war in Chechnya.

“We all thought this would be a turning point. It cannot continue this way. I thought decisions would be made at the state level so that such an event would not happen again. But I was deeply mistaken. Because no state decision was issued to prevent people from falling into this situation. On the contrary, in their words, a fight against terrorism began, and it employed completely Stalinist rules—Stalinist repressions—especially for Ingushetia and Chechnya,” she recalls.

According to Politkovskaya, such a policy breeds terrorism. Helpless families whose loved ones were kidnapped or killed had nowhere to turn to find their relatives or to seek justice against their executioners. After that, small terrorist attacks and suicide bombings were already taking place in Chechnya.

The events of Nord-Ost, as she notes, became the logical continuation of these occurrences. The Nord-Ost events could, and even should have, "changed everyone's views, opening the eyes of even those who were slumbering." But that did not happen. According to Politkovskaya, the public outrage that could have forced Putin to make decisions in the interests of the people and for public safety did not materialize.

“What is public safety? It is a policy aimed at eliminating terrorist attacks. There was no such policy. On the contrary, a crackdown began. In Ingushetia, the number of those wanting revenge for this policy grew even more,” the journalist emphasizes.

In Politkovskaya's opinion, the events in Beslan were a direct continuation of Nord-Ost. The journalist explains this by the fact that the highest leadership of the state did not try to understand the causes of the terror attack, who these people were, and why they carried out such an attack, nor did they pass laws aimed at eliminating terrorism. The hostage-taking of children in Beslan, in her view, is also connected to this.

“They said: we do not negotiate with terrorists, we do not engage in rational dialogue. Let people die. Putin did not negotiate with anyone so that they would not realize he was helpless,” she says.

Speaking about what prevented a way out of the situation during the events at Nord-Ost and Beslan, she recalls that Putin is a former KGB officer.

“He does not understand that every human being has the right to live, that a human being is not a grain of sand in some mechanism. Every person who died in Beslan, in Nord-Ost, is valuable in themselves,” Politkovskaya explains. “Putin simply does not understand this. He has his own logic. This is the logic of a Soviet-era KGB officer… He does not understand the people. He is a real Soviet KGB officer. A bit anti-Semitic, a bit fascist, and not very smart… He does not understand that a person has rights.”

“A great many people in our country adhere to such views, a great many,” Politkovskaya says with regret. “That is, human life is a worthless thing, until it happens to you personally. I constantly encounter this in my daily work. I constantly hear these words from mothers of dead soldiers, from parents, brothers, and sisters of people tortured in police custody. Almost always, they would say: yes, we thought everything was being done right, until this misfortune befell us. This Stalinist psychology is still alive.”

In response to the question, "How do you explain the fact that the people gave him another four-year term?", Politkovskaya says that officials, not the people, elected him. In reality, according to her, there is strong popular discontent toward Putin.

“I do not consider that the people elected him. Officials elected him. He feeds the officials very skillfully and creates conditions for corruption to flourish. And officials are a huge class. Together with their families, they make up millions of people. I think discontent with Putin is very strong. At any rate, I interact every day with people who are dissatisfied with him,” she explains.

Furthermore, Politkovskaya stresses that the stability during the Putin era is not directly linked to his policies. She connects the country's stability to high oil prices and says she feels anxious when thinking about a drop in oil prices.

“Stability arose due to high oil prices. We have oil. Oil prices are high, and everything is flourishing because of that… Just thinking about the time when oil prices drop is terrifying for me. Because everything will immediately begin to collapse. We are a resource-dependent country… I interact with people from the business world. They have already taken everything out of the country. Nothing is left. Everyone is preserving their capital by taking it out of the country. As it was before, so it continues now,” says the journalist.

Politkovskaya stresses that any head of state should care about their people.

“First and foremost, I am disappointed in our own president. The West cares about its own people, and rightly so. Any ruler should do that. But I don't understand one thing. Why is our president completely indifferent to his own citizens? He does not comprehend the dignity of his citizens. That is his biggest mistake. He is an officer of the system he served, you understand, there is no concept of the individual there. He is the carrier of a completely different worldview. If there is no individual, then their interests do not exist either. I think he still hasn't been able to free himself from the experience he gained during his time in the KGB.”

At the end of this interview recorded twenty years ago, the journalist asked Politkovskaya what kind of mark Putin would leave in history. Politkovskaya said that thoughts about the consequences of Putin's rule evoke a sense of helplessness in her.

“Right now, very little time is left to change the country. Therefore, he will leave behind a neo-Soviet country where the media has been crushed, strong fascist sentiments exist, capital has been taken out of the country, the resource-based economy is artificially inflated, and industrial production is still in a ruined state. For at least another twenty years, there will be people who want to commit terrorist attacks. Therefore, for example, when I think about the consequences of Putin's rule in Russia, the sense of helplessness that overcomes me is the main, decisive feeling,” says Politkovskaya. “The point is not whether he is a good or bad person. A person who has taken so many steps to bring the country to such a state cannot remain in history with a positive result. It is simply impossible.”