Politkovskaya refuses to follow obsequious cultural protocol. There is a certain way of speaking to figures in authority that is taken as read. At a meeting of human-rights campaigners with Putin, a pediatrician addresses the president with a question about the oligarch Khodorkovsky (then facing trial). For the question even to be entertained, it must have a preamble: "Vladimir Vladimirovich, I like you so much," the pediatrician simpers. You can imagine Putin nodding and smiling (Politkovskaya points out in her account that this sentiment has already been expressed repeatedly during the meeting). "And I do not like Khodorkovsky." Now the doctor can say what he wants. "Although I like you and do not like Khodorkovsky, I am not prepared to see Khodorkovsky under arrest." And so it goes on, pointlessly and endlessly.
Politkovskaya cannot be bothered to speak to anyone in this ridiculous way: she asks straight questions without buttering anyone up. This is why she was so unpopular, not only with figures of authority in Russia, but also with ordinary people. Many Russians are unaware of her work. Those who have heard of her often react surprisingly violently to the mention of her name.
She had, say many, an axe to grind (although they never quite explain her motives). She was more of an activist than a journalist, they say: in Chechnya, she got in over her head. In the eyes of her critics, much of what Politkovskaya reported from Chechnya could not be proven; it was based on what people have told her, not what she had seen. But that was the whole point of Politkovskaya's work: if she did not write about it, it would be written out of history completely. She was a conduit for stories people wished never happened. But as she was only ever as credible as her witnesses, to many in Russia, she was not credible at all.
It is as important to understand this as it is to read what Politkovskaya had to say. Very few were telling a similar truth in her lifetime and even fewer will tell it now she is dead. Politkovskaya is Solzhenitsyn for the 21st century, but without the samizdat readership at home. Her version of history will always have an audience in the West, but Russia, one suspects, will continue to ignore her. She herself knew why: "Our society isn't a society any more. It is a collection of windowless, isolated concrete cells. There are thousands who together might add up to be the Russian people, but the walls of our cells are impermeable."
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