"The City of Dead Journalists" one Moscow newspaper has dubbed this auto industry capital on the Volga River. Freedom of speech, it seems, is under the gun.
For the second time in 18 months, the staff of the Togliatti Review, a newspaper known for muckraking articles about the deadly post-Soviet intersection of politics, business and organized crime, gathered at a local cemetery to bury an editor in chief.
Since 1995, six men who owned or ran local media outlets have been killed here, 800km southeast of Moscow.
Across Russia, 13 journalists have been killed since 2000, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Reporters Without Borders calls the country the most dangerous place in Europe for journalists.
This time, colleagues came to the cemetery to commemorate Alexei Sidorov, 31, who died after being stabbed outside his apartment building on 13 Communist Street on Oct. 9.
"They can't kill us all," Sidorov had said after his friend and predecessor, Valery Ivanov, the founder of Togliatti Review, was shot dead in April 2002 in a still unsolved murder.
Rimma Mikharyeva, the deputy editor, admitted that the latest funeral will affect reporting. "I can't say we have fear in our hearts," she said in the newspaper's cramped offices on Lenin Street, "but we have a sense of `Who will it be tomorrow?' You begin to think about whether it's worth writing so sharp-ly, maybe some fact shouldn't be used."
Her new boss is Igor Izotov, whose first directive to his staff was to forbid use of sources connected with the criminal world. He refuses to hire a bodyguard -- for now -- but he is certain the newspaper is still a target.
"The authorities here have not been able to root out crime," he said. "There is a big circle of people interested in us not being here, and a big circle of people interested in us being weak."
Togliatti's mayor, Nikolai Utkin, worries that the killings mar the city's reputation, but says: "It would be funny to provide every journalist with a bodyguard. I can't say that every journalist is in danger."
Journalistic peril is not the image this city of 745,000 would like to project as it climbs out from under the rubble of more than a decade of bloody, organized crime wars over Avtovaz, the auto plant, and its lucrative market.
Signs of the new Russia abound here: from a joint venture between GM and Avtovaz, to new churches, a tennis club that appears airlifted out of Bel-Air, modern movie theaters, mobile phones and shopping malls. These riches gleaned from the auto industry even overshadow Soviet-era apartment blocks and the fumes of chemical plants, the city's other main industry.
Yevgeny Novozhilov, the deputy regional prosecutor in charge of investigating Sidorov's murder, points out that the number of contract killings has dropped from about one a week three years ago, to five so far this year.
In a flurry of announcements after Sidorov's death, top Russian officials vowed to find his killers. Boris Gryzlov, Russia's interior minister, said solving the case is a "matter of honor," then announced that the "commonplace crime" had been solved with the arrest of a 29-year-old factory worker.
A regional police official said earlier that Sidorov had provoked his own death by failing to share a drink with his alleged killer.
The editors at Togliatti Review dismiss these statements as attempts to write off a more serious crime.
Commentators have linked the speed of the investigation to parliamentary elections scheduled for Dec. 7. Gryzlov heads the Unified Russia party, which backs President Vladimir Putin.
Reporters at Togliatti Review are investigating the killing. Anastasia Strizhevskaya, the newspaper's crime editor, said the main versions of motives for Sidorov's death relate to a story that ran this summer about mafia control of a gravel quarry and to reported efforts of a regional media holding company to purchase the newspaper.
Other journalists in the city, and even the mayor, say the newspaper had lost much of its bite under Sidorov. There were fewer reports about organized crime, although the city government was angered recently by a story about alleged corruption at an old age home. Shortly before Sidorov's death, a group of journalists had defected to a rival publication.
"Sidorov really was scared," said Valery Shemyakin, the editor of Chronograph, a weekly. Shemyakin survived a brutal beating by unknown assailants in 1995. He thinks Sidorov's killing might simply be "an echo" of Ivanov's, a tying up of loose ends.
Ivanov's sister, Stella, formerly the chief accountant of Togliatti Review, said she understood Sidorov's softer line. "There was no point in making such a sacrifice again," she said in her kitchen, sitting below a portrait of her brother.
Togliatti Review continues the practice, universal in Russian journalism, of printing articles for pay. Izotov said about ten percent of the paper's stories are part of "information contracts" signed with companies to cover corporate news.
Recent issues of the newspaper have featured upbeat stories about Avtovaz, which used to be the target of investigative reports.
"In order for newspapers to survive, they have to sign big information contracts with companies," said Pavel Kaledin, until last month the crime editor of Togliatti Review. "Sidorov was cutting and editing articles because of this recently."
Kaledin said he would like to continue the investigative tradition of Togliatti Review, "but it's very hard because of these information contracts," which his new newspaper, Freedom Square, also signs.
Galina Chevozyorova, a journalism professor whose husband, Andrei Ulanov, was the first newspaper editor to be killed in the city, in 1995, said she warns students never to accept money from politicians.
She suspects her husband's murder may be linked to a former mayor whom they supported and who allocated city money to Ulanov to start a municipal media association.
Ivanov's sister said he accepted support from the same candidate to put out the initial issues of Togliatti Review. Relations soured as the paper turned its pen against the erstwhile benefactor.
Shemyakin said he and his editorial board have decided not to cover the parliamentary election campaign at all, unless there is breaking news on a candidate. Chronograph just received a warning from the regional election commission, which is enforcing the new federal election law that severely restricts news coverage of candidates. Two warnings, and a media outlet can be shut down for the duration of the campaign.
"Formally, we all have freedom of speech," he said.
"But I never know what the reaction will be of the authorities or of the people who come after us with metal rods."
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