Her subjects were the forsaken

History, sadly, is on Anna Politkovskaya’s side. Last Oct. 7, Politkovskaya, a reporter for Novaya Gazeta, one of Moscow’s smallest but most daring newspapers, was murdered. A 48-year-old who was about to become a grandmother, she had gained fame in the West, and infamy at home, for her writings on the war in Chechnya. Politkovskaya fell in an all-too-common post-Soviet fashion: three bullets to the chest, one “control shot” to the head. Within days, Vladimir Putin reassured the West that Politkovskaya, the 13th journalist killed during his reign, had “minimal” influence. She was, he said, “known among journalists and in human rights circles and in the West, but I repeat that she had no influence on political life. Her murder causes much more harm than her publications did.”

Putin was callous, but right.

more from the NY Times Book Review here.