 A Russian Diary by Anna Politkovskaya
RRP £17.99 • Hardback
Publication date: 20/03/2007 • 336 pages • Royal Octavo • ISBN: 1846551021
About
A Russian Diary is the book that Anna Politkovskaya had recently completed when she was murdered in a contract killing in Moscow. Covering the period from the Russian parliamentary elections of December 2003 to the tragic aftermath of the Beslan school siege in late 2005, A Russian Diary is an unflinching record of the plight of millions of Russians and a pitiless report on the cynicism and corruption of Vladimir Putin’s Presidency.
She interviews people whose lives have been devastated by Putin’s policies, including the mothers of children who died in the Beslan siege, those of Russian soldiers maimed in Chechnya then abandoned by the state, and of ‘disappeared’ young men and women. Elsewhere she meets traumatised and dangerous veterans of the Chechen wars and a notorious Chechen warlord in his heavily fortified lair.
Putin is re-elected as President in farcically undemocratic circumstances and yet Western leaders, reliant on Russia’s oil and gas reserves, continue to pay him homage. Politkovskaya, however, offers a chilling account of his dismantling of the democratic reforms made in the 1990s. Independent television, radio and print media are suppressed, opposition parties are forcibly and illegally marginalised, and electoral law is changed to facilitate ballot-rigging. Yet she also criticises the inability of liberals and democrats to provide a united, effective opposition and a population slow to protest against government legislative outrages.
Clear-sighted, passionate and marked with the humanity that made Anna Politkovskaya a heroine to readers throughout the world, A Russian Diary is a devastating account of contemporary Russia by a great and brave writer.
Harvill Secker • RRP £17.99 • Hardback
EXCERPTS:
 London -- Saturday March 17, 2007 Scroll down for::  'Fascism is in fashion'
Murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya was fearless in her pursuit of truth. In this shocking extract from her final book, she chronicles the death of Russian democracy
December 7 2003
The day of the elections to the Duma, the [same] day Putin began his campaign for re-election as president. In the morning he manifested himself at a polling station. He was cheerful, elated even, and a little nervous. This was unusual: as a rule he is sullen. With a broad smile, he informed those assembled that his beloved labrador, Connie, had had puppies during the night. "Vladimir Vladimirovich was so very worried,' Mme Putina intoned behind her husband. "We are in a hurry to get home," she added, anxious to return to the bitch whose impeccable timing had presented this gift to the United Russia party.
That morning in Yessentuki, a small resort in the North Caucasus, the first 13 victims of a terrorist train attack were being buried. It had been the morning train, known as the student train, and young people were on their way to college. When, after voting, Putin went over to the journalists, it seemed he would express his condolences. Perhaps even apologise for the fact the government had again failed to protect its citizens. Instead he told them how pleased he was about his labrador's puppies.
My friends phoned me. "He's really put his foot in it this time. Russian people are never going to vote for United Russia now." Around midnight, when the results started coming in, many people were in a state of shock. Russia had mutely surrendered herself to Putin.
Reports we received from the regions show how this was done. Outside one of the polling stations in Saratov, a lady was dispensing free vodka at a table with a banner reading "Vote for Tretiak", the United Russia candidate. Tretiak won. One opposition candidate twice had plastic bags containing body parts thrown through his window: somebody's ears and a human heart.
December 8
Were we seeing a crisis of Russian parliamentary democracy in the Putin era? No, we were witnessing its death. In the first place, the legislative and executive branches of government had merged and this had meant the rebirth of the Soviet system. The Duma was purely decorative, a forum for rubber-stamping Putin's decisions.
In the second place the Russian people gave its consent. There were no demonstrations. The electorate agreed to be treated like an idiot. The electorate said let's go back to the USSR - slightly retouched and slicked up, modernised, but the good old Soviet Union, now with bureaucratic capitalism where the state official is the main oligarch, vastly richer than any capitalist. The corollary was that, if we were going back to the USSR, Putin was going to win in March 2004. It was a foregone conclusion.
December 23
Ritual murders are taking place in Moscow. A second severed head has been found in the past 24 hours, this time in the eastern district of Golianovo. It was in a rubbish container. Yesterday evening, a head in a plastic bag was found on a table in the courtyard on Krasnoyarskaya Street.
Both men had been dead for 24 hours. The circumstances are almost identical: the victims are from the Caucasus, aged 30-40 and have dark hair. Their identities are unknown. Such are the results of racist propaganda in the run-up to the parliamentary elections. Our people are very susceptible and react promptly.
December 26
Putin does not simply lack competitors. The whole background is an intellectual desert. The affair has no logic, no reason, no sparkle of genuine, serious thinking. Candidate No 1 knows best and requires no advice. There is nobody to moderate his arrogance. Russia has been humiliated.
December 28
Ivan Rybkin has announced he will stand [against Putin]. He is the creature of Putin's main opponent, Boris Berezovsky, now in exile abroad. Rybkin used to be the speaker of the Duma and chairman of the National Security Council. Who is he today? Time will tell.
January 6 2004
Those at the top and bottom of our society might as well be living on different planets. I set off to see the most underprivileged of all: Psycho-Neurological Orphanage No. 25 on the outskirts of Moscow. The surroundings here are warm and clean. The patient carers are kind, very tired, overworked women. Everything here is good, except that the children don't cry. They are silent or they howl. There is no laughter.
When he is not grinding his teeth, 15-month-old Danila is silent, peering attentively at the strangers. He does not look at you as you would expect of a 15-month-old baby; he peers straight into your eyes, like an FSB interrogator. He has catastrophically limited experience of human tenderness.
The wave of charitable giving in Russia stopped in 2002 when the Putin administration revoked tax privileges for charities. Until 2002, children in our orphanages were showered with gifts and new year presents. Now the rich no longer give them presents. Pensioners bring them their old, tattered shawls.
Meanwhile, our nouveau riche are skiing this Christmas in Courchevel. More than 2,000 Russians, each earning over half a million roubles [£10,000] a month, congregate for the "Saison russe". The menu offers eight kinds of oysters, the wine list includes bottles at £1,500, and in the retinue of every nouveau riche you can be sure of finding the government officials, our true oligarchs, who deliver these vast incomes to the favoured 2,000. The talk is of success, of the firebird of happiness caught by its tail feathers, of being trusted by the state authorities. The "charity" of officialdom, otherwise known as corruption, is the quickest route to Courchevel.
January 16
The body of Aslam Davletukaev, abducted from his home on January 10, has been found showing signs of torture. He has been shot in the back of the head. Aslan was a well-known Chechen human rights campaigner. Our democracy continues its decline. Nothing in Russia depends on the people; Putin is resuscitating our stereotype: "Let us wait until our feudal lord comes back. He will tell us how everything should be." It has to be admitted that this is how the Russian people likes it, which means that soon Putin will throw away the mask of a defender of human rights. He won't need it anymore.
February 6
8.32am: there has been an explosion in the Moscow metro. The train was heading into the city centre during the rush hour when a bomb exploded beside the first door of the second carriage. Thirty people died at the scene, and another nine died later from their burns. There are 140 injured. There are dozens of tiny, unidentifiable fragments of bodies. More than 700 people emerged from the tunnel, having evacuated themselves without any assistance. In the streets there is chaos and fear, the wailing sirens of the emergency services, millions of people terrorised.
At 10.44 the Volcano-5 Contingency Plan for capturing the culprits was implemented, more than two hours after the explosion. Who do they think they are going to catch? If there were any accomplices they will have fled long ago. At 12.12 the police started searching for a man aged 30-35, "of Caucasian appearance". Very helpful.
February 7
Ivan Rybkin has disappeared. A bit of excitement in the election at last. His wife is going crazy. On February 2, Rybkin harshly criticised Putin and his wife believes that did for him.
February 9
No details have yet been established of the type of bomb used in the metro. Putin keeps repeating, as he did after Nord-Ost [the attack by Chechen militants on a Moscow theatre in 2002, which ended with 130 hostages killed when special forces gassed and stormed the building], that nobody inside Russia was responsible. Everything was planned abroad. A day of mourning has been declared but the television stations barely observe it. Loud pop music and cheerful TV advertisements make you feel ashamed.
Two of those who died are being buried today. One is Alexander Ishunkin, a 25-year-old lieutenant in the armed forces. His Uncle Mikhail identified his body in the mortuary. Seven years ago Alexander's father was killed, and since then Alexander had been the very dependable head of the family. Even in issuing his death certificate the state can't refrain from dishonesty: the box for "Cause of death" has been crossed through. Not a word about terrorism.
February 10
Rybkin has been found. A very strange episode. At midday he announced he was in Kiev. He said he had just been on holiday there with friends and that, after all, a human being has a right to a private life! Kseniya Ponomaryova promptly resigned as leader of his election team. His wife is refusing to talk to him. In late evening he flew into Moscow from Kiev, looking half-dead and not at all like someone who has been having a good time on holiday. He was wearing women's sunglasses and was escorted by an enormous bodyguard. "Who was detaining you?" he was asked, but gave no reply. He also refused to talk to the investigators from the Procurator's Office who had been searching for him. It was later announced he might withdraw his candidacy. In St Petersburg, skinheads have stabbed to death nine-year-old Khursheda Sultanova in the courtyard of the flats where her family lived. Her father, 35-year-old Yusuf Sultanov, a Tadjik, has been working in St Petersburg for many years. That evening he was bringing the children back from the Yusupov Park ice slope when some aggressive youths started following them.
In a dark connecting courtyard leading to their home the youths attacked them. Khursheda suffered 11 stab wounds and died immediately. Yusuf's 11-year-old nephew, Alabir, escaped in the darkness by hiding under a parked car. Alabir says the skinheads kept stabbing Khursheda until they were certain she was dead. They were shouting, "Russia for the Russians!" The Sultanovs are not illegal immigrants. They are officially registered as citizens of St Petersburg, but fascists are not interested in ID cards. When Russia's leaders indulge in soundbites about cracking down on immigrants and guest labourers, they incur the responsibility for tragedies such as this.
Fifteen people were detained shortly afterwards, but released. Many turned out to be the offspring of people employed by the law-enforcement agencies of St Petersburg. Today, 20,000 St Petersburg youths belong to unofficial fascist or racist organisations. The St Petersburg skinheads are among the most active in the country and are constantly attacking Azerbaijanis, Chinese and Africans. Nobody is ever punished, because the law-enforcement agencies are themselves infected with racism. You have only to switch off your audio recorder for the militia to start telling you they understand the skinheads, and as for those blacks ... etc, etc. Fascism is in fashion.
February 11
The Candidate Rybkin soap opera continues. Before this, Rybkin had the reputation of being a meticulous person, not a heavy drinker and even slightly dull. "Two days in Kiev" are very much out of character. Rybkin reports that after he disappeared he spent a certain amount of time in Moscow Province at Woodland Retreat, the guest-house of the Presidential Administration. He was taken from there and found himself in Kiev. He says further that those controlling him compelled him to call Moscow from Kiev and talk lightheartedly about having a right to a private life.
February 12
Alexander Litvinenko in London and Oleg Kalugin in Washington, former FSB/KGB officers who have been granted political asylum in the west, have suggested that a psychotropic substance called SP117 may have been used on Rybkin. [Litvinenko died in London last November after being poisoned.] This compound was used in the FSB's counter-intelligence sections and in units combating terrorism, but only in exceptional cases on "important targets". SP117 is a truth drug that prevents an individual from having full possession of his mind. He will tell everything he knows. These statements will not save Rybkin. Putin has won this round against Berezovsky, now his sworn enemy, but his pal in the late 1990s.
February 13
Ivan Rybkin has announced that he will not be returning from London. A defecting presidential candidate is a first in our history. Nobody now has any doubt that the regime drugged him.
February 15
The Sultanovs, the family of the little girl Khursheda who was murdered by skinheads in St Petersburg, have abandoned Russia and gone to live in Tajikistan. They took a small coffin containing the child's remains.
March 5
Everything is being reduced to absurdity. The appointment of [Mikhail] Fradkov as prime minister by the Duma deserves an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. 352 votes in favour of a man who, when asked what his plans for the future were, could only blurt: "I have just come out of the shadow into the light." Fradkov is a man of the shadows because he is a spy. We have a truly third-rate prime minister. The country is sinking into a state of collective unconsciousness, into unreason.
March 12-13
Silence and apathy. Nobody can be bothered to listen to the drivel coming from the television. Let's just get it over with.
March 14
Well, so he's been elected. By and large, the concept of ruling the country by the same methods used in conducting the "anti-terrorist operation" has been vindicated: L'Etat, c'est Putin.
· In G2 on Monday: Politkovskaya's devastating report on the Beslan school hostage disaster; and on Tuesday, her interview with Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen warlord suspected of involvement in her murder. Extracted from A Russian Diary, copyright © Anna Politkovskaya 2007. English translation copyright © Arch Tait 2007. Published by Harvill Secker next month at £17.99. To order a copy for £16.99 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875
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London Monday March 19 2007 'Beslan is quietly going out of its mind'
In September 2004, Chechen terrorists took more than 1,200 people hostage in a school in Beslan, Russia. Two days later, in a chaotic battle between Russian security forces and the hostage-takers, 344 civilians - 186 of them children - died. Anna Politkovskaya visited the town that December, and again on the first anniversary of the atrocity. In the second of three extracts from the last book she wrote before being murdered, Politkovskaya details the unbearable grief of a town that 'spends most of its time at the cemetery'. Read the first extract here.
December 2004
Report from Beslan
Beslan is quietly going out of its mind. The autumn that began when School Number One was attacked on September 1 is over now, but the onset of winter hasn't made anyone feel better. Certainly not the families whose children have yet to be found, who have no child, no funeral, no grave where they can mourn. Zhorik Agaev, Aslan Kisiev, Zarina Normatova - all junior pupils born in 1997 - and 11-year-old Aza Gumetsova have yet to be found. Zifa, the mother of second-year Zhorik Agaev, almost never leaves home. She stays in, waiting for him.
"What if he came back and I wasn't here! What sort of welcome would that be?" Zifa says. Her mouth is twisted: she was wounded at the school. "I know people in this town think I am crazy, but I'm not. I am just certain that my Zhorik is alive. He is being held somewhere."
Families whose children are listed as missing divide into two groups. Some, like Zifa, believe they are being held hostage. Others believe they are dead, and that their remains have been buried by somebody else by mistake.
Zifa is the hostage who let the children in the gymnasium drink from her own breast [because the hostage-takers denied them water]. She gave her breast to all who were sitting near her. Later she squeezed the life-giving liquid out, drop by drop, into a spoon that the children passed round.
"Zhorik will come back and everything will be the same again. Do you know, on September 3 it was very quiet in the hall. The terrorists had gone off somewhere, there were very few of them with us. We were already crawling over the trip wires, we didn't care about anything by then. I began hallucinating, imagining I was in a coffin. Then I imagined I heard a terrorist calling, "Agaevs, some water has been brought for you, take it!" I must have frightened Zhorik, because he crawled away from me."
Suddenly Zifa was blown out of the window by an explosion. Everybody who had been sitting near her was burned to death. Half her face was mutilated; she has had operations and there are more to come. Four pieces of shrapnel can't be removed. "All these scars and fragments don't matter. What matters is Zhorik. When he comes back we will celebrate his rebirth," she says again and again. "How I'll shout, 'Look everybody! Zhorik has come back!' I won't let him go away ever again ... I won't let them bring any of their bags into my house. Zhorik is alive!" By now she is in desperation. "Zhorik in a bag? Never!"
A "bag" is Beslan newspeak for human remains brought from the Rostov-on-Don military mortuary after identification. Zhorik's remains haven't been identified, although there are unclaimed remains of boys of approximately his age.
Zifa by now is quiet and calm, her voice just that of a mother devastated by the loss of her child: "When Zhorik comes back, I will take him to President Dzasokhov [of North Ossetia, the Caucasus republic in which Beslan lies] and President Putin and say, 'Look! This is the angel you made no attempt to save!'"
Marina Kisieva is 31 and lives in the village of Khumalag, a 20-minute drive from Beslan. She lost her husband Artur and her son Aslan in the atrocity. Aslan was seven and a pupil in Class 2A. Marina now has only her daughter, five-year-old Milena, who is serious beyond her years and never asks where Aslan has gone. She simply refuses to go to nursery, and she used to faint whenever the women in their apartment block began wailing.
Aslan's teacher, Raisa Kambulatovna Dzaragasova-Kibizova, would later say that Artur "was the best father in the class". It was he who insisted that Aslan should go to the best school in Beslan, and it was he who did the driving, although he had a job and was also studying. Marina shows me his last piece of coursework, "Creating Rights", for the law faculty of the Pyatigorsk campus of the Russian University of Commerce and Economics. Just the day before the seige began, Artur came back from Pyatigorsk to take his son to school himself. Marina was intending to go too, and stayed at home quite by chance.
"Why did I stay behind? I would have got him out of the gymnasium! Aslan was a loppy-eared, thin, funny little boy. Everybody loved him. He was very timid," Marina says, furrowing her eyebrows, trying not to cry in front of Milena.
Artur was killed almost immediately. They shot him on September 1 when the terrorists took the male hostages away to work on fortifying the building and hanging out explosives. Apparently Artur said, "Do you think I'm going to kill children with my own hands?" and so they killed him.
Aslan was left in the gym without his father. He crept over to his teacher, Raisa Kambulatovna, and stayed close to her almost to the end, constantly asking, "Where is Artur?"
Marina leafs through Aslan's school books. That has been her main occupation this autumn. She went to the school, rummaged through everything in the office of 2A and found Aslan's books from his first year, and those, unwritten in, that Raisa had prepared for her pupils entering second grade. For hours Marina reads and rereads the five lines from the only annual dictation test her son was destined to sit: "The eighteenth of May. In the garden a wild rose is growing. It has lovely, fragrant flowers ..." Behind Marina's back as she gazes at these books is a bed on which Artur's favourite things are laid out: an open pack of cigarettes, his student record, his registration card, his course work. And his portrait. He looks very stern, but has thoughtful eyes. Milena is completely silent when she moves in front of the portrait.
"For the first two months I was completely numb. I didn't go out. I neglected the house. I wanted nothing to do with my daughter. I was completely isolated. I couldn't bear to turn the tap on, I couldn't bear to hear the sound of running water. Why didn't they let the children drink? It angered me that people went on eating and drinking after September 1. I was going crazy. I still am."
Marina shows me a letter that was brought to her home together with a new satchel, a charitable donation for Aslan "from the schoolchildren of St Petersburg".
"Why did they have to do that, when everybody knew our son had died?"
There is a letter for Aslan "from Irusya, 14". It reads, "You survived those terrible days. You are a hero!" There follows an invitation to be pen-friends. "How could our address have got on to the wrong list?" Marina asks, crying from the hurt caused by this dreadful act of carelessness. "The satchel was unbearable. It was just the opposite of what we needed. I understand now that nobody is going to help me. Where is that Putin? Too busy with some drivel to give orders for all the bodies to be identified as soon as possible, those that can be. Then at least some of the parents could be at peace and have a grave to tend."
Alexander Gumetsov and Rimma Torchinova are the parents of Aza Gumetsova. Alexander is beside himself with grief and self-torment. He cannot sleep at night, blaming himself for failing to save his daughter. He has black rings under his eyes and hasn't shaved for many days. Alexander and Rimma are going round Beslan from house to house, trying to persuade mothers and fathers who have buried their children to have the bodies exhumed.
"At first, of course, we believed Aza was being held hostage. Gradually we had to recognise that was not the case. On September 4, parents were 'identifying' their children by the pants they were wearing, because you couldn't identify them from anything else. They only took charred bodies for DNA identification at the forensic medical laboratory in Rostov, but there were so many that a lot were just left here, unidentified. People took them back to their homes. This is a small town, we don't have any smart boutiques, and many of the children had identical clothes from the bazaar. That's how everything got muddled up. We could see how it happened as we went round the mortuaries ourselves, looking into every bag, examining every little finger."
How could Rimma bear do to that?
Not a muscle flickers on her face. "I told myself, 'Nothing could be worse than what the children went through in that school. I have no right to pity myself.' And I don't. Now the only question for us is how to bury our child, how to perform our last duty to Aza. In the mortuary there is the body of an unidentified little girl of a similar age to ours, but she is not Aza. That means that somebody else has our daughter in a grave. It might be the parents of the little girl in the mortuary. We realise, of course, that the chain of who belongs to whom could turn out to be very long. We are only too aware of that."
The chain of exhumations?
"Of course. On the list we were given by the procurator's office there are 38 addresses of people who might have buried the wrong child. Thirty-eight girls of roughly the same age and build died. The main thing is that we are on the right track: if the total number of remains in Rostov and the number of those missing are the same, then it is simply a matter of errors in identification. They have all been found, only they've been mixed up."
On September 1, Aza went to school alone for the first time, without her mother, as she and her best friends from Class 6G, who were beginning to grow up, had agreed. One was Sveta Tsoy, a Korean girl, the only child of Marina Park: Sveta the dancer, Sveta the fantasist, Sveta the star when it came to children's fashions, Sveta who was identified only on September 27 by DNA analysis, because her legs had been blown off and her body was unidentifiable.
Another friend, Emma Khaeva, was brimming with energy. She would make up impromptu poems. When she was running to school in the morning, she always found time to say good morning to all the neighbours and to ask the old ladies along her route how they were feeling. Her parents were lucky. She was killed too, but it was possible to bury her in an open coffin.
And then there was Aza. Rimma gave Aza every opportunity that Beslan had to offer: dancing, singing, languages, societies. "I used to tell myself that [my daughter and her friends] were people of the 21st century," Rimma continues. "They were not like us. They had a positive attitude towards life. They wanted a lot. Aza had her own opinion about everything. She was a philosopher."
All we now know is that Emma, Sveta and Aza were at first separated in the gym, but on September 3 managed to move towards each other. They decided to celebrate the birthday of Madina Sazanova, another of their classmates, and were last seen sitting together right under the window where the wall was blown in to make an opening for the children to escape. "I haven't heard of anybody sitting by that part of the wall who survived," Rimma concludes. "All that is left now is for us to bury Aza. We go round the addresses, working down the list, as if it were a job. We try to talk people into agreeing."
What respect can anyone have for a state machine that dementedly replicates these cataclysmic events for its citizens: first Nord-Ost [the Moscow theatre siege], then Beslan. The state refuses ever to admit responsibility for anything, and furtively shuffles off all its other duties too. Should there be exhumations? Leave it to the most vulnerable to worry about that. We will set them against each other, the families who have buried their dead and those who have no dead to bury, and everyone will forget to protest against Dzasokhov and Putin. They won't demand a genuine inquiry for a long time. They will have other things to worry about.
The state has distanced itself from everything that happened at Beslan, abandoning the town to madness in its isolation. Nobody else in Russia wants to know.
he mothers of some of the children who died at Beslan have locked themselves in the court building in Vladi-kavkaz, North Ossetia, where Nurpasha Kulaev is being tried. Officially, he is the only surviving terrorist of all those who seized the school.
After the tragedy, the mothers said they trusted only Vladimir Putin and had every confidence he would ensure an objective inquiry. Putin promised he would. A year has passed. The inquiry, however, exonerated all the bureaucrats and security agents who planned and carried out the assault that led to the deaths of so many children and adults. The women are now demanding that they themselves should be arrested. They consider themselves responsible for the deaths of their own children, because they voted for Putin. Their sit-in is an act of desperation.
Shortly after this it became known that Putin was inviting representatives of the Committee of Mothers of Beslan to meet him in Moscow on September 2. At first the women were indignant: September 2 was a day of commemoration of the dead. They could not possibly go. The presidential administration then bluntly informed them that a meeting between Putin and the people of Beslan would go ahead with or without them; someone would be found to tell Putin in front of the television cameras how much everyone in Beslan loves him. You can always find some of those in Russia.
What should they decide? Immediately after the atrocity Putin promised that the whole truth would be made public. Many believed him, including the "black mothers" who had lost their children. At the president's personal behest, a parliamentary commission was set up to investigate the causes and circumstances of the events in Beslan, chaired by Alexander Torshin, who promised that the commission's detailed and honest report would appear no later than March 2005.
Nothing happened. To this day there is no report, and the investigation has become a mockery. Large numbers of those held hostage in the school were so incensed that they refused to give evidence in the absurd, face-saving trial of Kulaev.
"Obviously nobody was guilty, or they would not all have been given medals," as Marina Park puts it caustically. The citizens of Beslan are still alone with their grief. People come to photograph them, like animals in the zoo, and depart. They are asked if they need money, and reply that the only thing they want is the truth.
In Beslan there is a split. Should the mothers go to Moscow to meet Putin on September 2 or not? Putin, it seems, is very keen that they should: a special plane will be sent to collect them. This is unprecedented, but then, so was Beslan. Many of the mothers, however, are refusing. Today, the delegation of those going to the Kremlin does not consist solely of mothers who lost their only children and who had for so long wanted to tell Putin everything that was on their minds. It includes, of course, Teimuraz Mamsurov, the father of two children who survived in the school, and who, at the time of the terrorist act, was leader of the republican parliament. He is now the "director" of North Ossetia. The republics no longer have presidents, but if he is its director he clearly enjoys Putin's trust. Mamsurov is not going to make a fuss to discover the truth about the terrorist outrage. He is not going to commit political suicide.
Another member of the Beslan delegation is Maierbek Tuaev, director of the public commission for the distribution of humanitarian aid. Maierbek's daughter, a pupil in one of the senior classes, was killed, but after the atrocity, when humanitarian aid flooded into the town from around the world, he was appointed to distribute it. There is also Azamat Sabanov, the son of Tatarkan Sabanov, a former headmaster of the school who, as he did every year, had gone to the September 1 parade and was killed in the attack. Azamat is Maierbek's deputy for distributing humanitarian aid, which is like a narcotic in a town that spends most of its time at the cemetery.
I ring Marina Park and she tells me, "I am at the cemetery." I can hear many voices around her. She is an extremely active member of the Committee of the Mothers of Beslan. Marina was one of the leading signatories of the committee's many letters to institutions involved in the inquiry into the tragedy, but she has decided against attending the meeting with Putin. "There is no point in going 1,000km to receive condolences," Marina says. "He is receiving us not to move the inquiry forward, but because he wants to be photographed with us."
Alexander Gumetsov, Aza's father, also no longer wants to see the president. I have known Alexander for almost the whole of this year. He is still deeply depressed. Aza was his only child. There was a time when he very much wanted to tell all about what their family went through before they finally received the remains of their daughter, identified only after DNA testing. Now, however, like most people in the town, Alexander feels he has been deceived so many times in the past year that nothing is likely to restore his faith in the state authorities. Even if Putin were now to spend the whole of September 2 with the people from Beslan; if there were to be no mention of money and only discussion of the need for a genuine inquiry; if Putin were to compel the procurator-general, the director of the FSB [the security service], the minister of the interior and all those bemedalled "heroes of Beslan" to report the truth to the mothers in his presence; even if he were himself suddenly to repent and kiss the hands of these women, before whom he will forever be guilty, and swear a terrible oath to beat the truth out of his security services - even then they would not believe him.
And so, two or three mothers out of the 20 who were invited will be going to the Kremlin. They will serve to leaven the more politically reliable men invited to Putin's meeting with the Committee of the Mothers of Beslan.
Aza's mother, Rimma Torchinova, is one of those going. She wants to look Putin in the eye as she asks him some important, unanswered questions. Rimma has no illusions, but this is how she understands her duty to her daughter's memory. She is going to Moscow, come what may. She will be seeking answers about the headquarters from which the operation was directed, about the assault, the grenade-launchers, the role of the federal helicopters overhead.
We can only try to imagine how difficult this will be for her on September 2, as well as for the other women who are going to see the president. What solidarity can society offer them at this moment? We could at least hold out a hand so that they should feel not only their pain, but also the country's support as they confront the chill of the Kremlin. Perhaps our president would then find it more difficult to cynically "manage" everything, and be forced to answer their questions honestly.
There is little evidence of social solidarity. We watch the drama of the mothers of Beslan on television. We see them weeping in the courtroom in Vladikavkaz, locking themselves in in protest, holding meetings, blocking the highway, demanding to see Deputy Procurator-General Nikolai Shepel, who is visibly wilting from having to lie to them endlessly. The country is sedated by this soap opera, inclined to murmur only that "they are out of their minds with grief" and, after all, time will heal them and there is nothing to be done.
We will watch the evening edition of the Vremya news programme [Russia's equivalent of Newsnight] and go to bed forgetting the women wearing black headscarves until the next episode of The Mothers of Beslan. The men of Beslan will carry on going out of their minds, blaming themselves for everything, while the women continue to live at their town's new cemetery.
A year has passed and not one of the bungling bureaucrats, generals, directors of the intelligence services, officials at the operational headquarters or even the heads of the militia have been called to account. Nobody is really demanding that anyway. Whatever happened to public opinion?
· © Anna Politkovskaya 2007
Three days in September: How the Beslan siege turned into a bloodbath
Known as the "Day of Knowledge", the first day of September is the first day of the school year in Russia. Children put on their best clothes and their families accompany them to attend opening ceremonies. This is why there were more children and parents in School Number One on the morning of Wednesday September 1 2004 than usual. At 9.30am, 32 Chechen terrorists, dressed in black and wearing ski masks, stormed the school and fired shots. Around 50 people managed to escape and alert the authorities, but 1,128 children and adults were taken hostage. They were taken to the school's small gym and ringed in by mines and bombs. Several male hostages were shot and children were made to stand at the windows as "human shields".
The school was soon surrounded by special forces. On Thursday September 2, the terrorists were still refusing to allow food and water to be brought into the building. Many of the hostages, suffering from dehydration, were forced to drink their own urine.
On Friday September 3, the hostage-takers agreed to allow aid workers into the school to retrieve the bodies of those who had been killed. As aid workers approached, shortly after 1pm, explosions and gunfire were heard. Another explosion caused the roof to collapse and a gunfight between the special forces and terrorists erupted. Special forces stormed the school, along with some parents, many of them armed; bullets flew in all directions. Children and adults streamed out of the school amid scenes of horrific chaos.
The Russian government reported that all but one of the 32 hostage-takers had died in a gunfight - the one who managed to escape was found a short distance away from the school and was sentenced to life-imprisonment last year - but some say that more terrorists managed to escape.
Different investigations have given different accounts of what happened, and why, that day. The Committee of the Mothers of Beslan consistently claims that it was the bungled official handling of the siege that caused such a large loss of life. The siege left 344 dead, including 186 children. More than 700 other people were wounded.
Emine Saner ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
· A Russian Diary by Anna Politkovskaya is published by Harvill Secker next month at £17.99. To order a copy for £16.99 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875.
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London -- Tuesday March 20, 2007 Inside the dragon's lair
In August 2004, Anna Politkovskaya was granted an audience with Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, son of the country's recently assassinated president. When the crusading journalist was murdered last year, it was this same warlord who was forced to deny accusations that he was involved in her death. In our final extract from Politkovskaya's last book, she describes her fateful meeting with the man who just this month became president of Chechnya
Ramzan Kadyrov is the son of former Chechen president Akhmed Kadyrov, who was put in place by the Kremlin government of Vladimir Putin in mid-2000 and assassinated four years later. At the time of this event, it was Ramzan who was running his father's security detail. Yet he was, perhaps surprisingly, not dismissed for this lapse, but promoted by Putin personally to the exalted post of first deputy prime minister of the Chechen government with special responsibility for security. At the time of our interview, three months after his father's death, he is in charge of the militia, all manner of special operations subdivisions, and the Chechen OMON [special forces units]. Although he has no education, he holds the rank of captain in the militia. This is surprising, because he is not a militiaman, and higher education is required in Russia before you can become a captain. Be that as it may, he now has the right to give orders to career colonels and generals, which he does. They do as they are commanded, because they know that Ramzan is Putin's favourite.
What kind of person is Ramzan? What kind of qualifications do you need to be a favourite of Putin? To have ground Chechnya beneath your heel, and forced the entire republic to pay you tribute like an Asiatic bey [regional potentate] is evidently a plus.
Ramzan is rarely seen outside his village of Tsentoroy, one of the unsightliest of Chechen villages, unfriendly, ugly and swarming with murderous-looking armed men. The village is a collection of narrow, winding, dusty streets hemmed in by enormous fences, behind most of which live members of the Kadyrov family and the families of Kadyrov's most trusted bodyguards and soldiers of the "presidential security service" - now keeping an eye on the latest Moscow-approved successor to his father, Alu Alkhanov. Two or three years ago, those villagers whom Kadyrov did not trust were simply expelled and their houses given to the bruisers of the security service. Kadyrov's men take part in combat operations as if they were soldiers with the Ministry of Defence; they arrest and interrogate people as if they were agents of the Interior Ministry; and they hold people prisoner in their cellars in Tsentoroy, and torture them like gangsters.
Tsentoroy is above the law, by Putin's will. The rules that apply to other people do not apply to Ramzan. He can do as he pleases because he is said to be fighting terrorists using his own methods. In fact, he is fighting nobody. The capital of Chechnya has effectively moved to Ramzan's estate. Pro-Russian Chechen officials come here to bow down before his countenance either when they need to seek some sort of permission or when they are summoned. All of them come, even the young prime minister of Chechnya, Sergey Abramov, who is supposed to report directly to the prime minister of Russia, and not to Ramzan Kadyrov. The reality is, however, that Tsentoroy is where the decisions are taken. It was here that the decision was taken to nominate Alkhanov for the Chechen presidency, and now he is president.
Ramzan rarely travels to the Chechen capital, Grozny, because he fears assassination. The journey takes one and a half hours. That is why Tsentoroy is such a fortress, with a security "filtration" system on its approaches that would do credit to the Kremlin: a series of control posts, one after the other. I get through them all and find myself in what the armed men surrounding me describe as "the guesthouse". I am held there for six or seven hours. Evening falls. In Chechnya this means you should lose no time in finding shelter. Anyone who wants to live hides away in their burrow.
"Where is Ramzan?" I ask. He has agreed to meet me.
"Soon, soon," the guardian of the guesthouse, and now of me, mutters.
There is always someone with me. Vakha Visaev introduces himself as the director of Yugoilprodukt, the new oil refinery at Gudermes, the second-largest city in Chechnya. He offers to show me round the guesthouse. It is not badly set out. There is a fountain in the courtyard; ugly, but a fountain nevertheless. Bamboo furniture graces an open terrace with pillars. Opposite the main entrance is a grey-green marble fireplace. To the right are a sauna, a Jacuzzi and a swimming pool. The highlight, however, is the two cavernous bedrooms endowed with stadium-sized beds. One is in blue, the other pink. Everywhere there is massive, dark, oppressive furniture, all with the price tags in full view. There is a price tag on the mirror in the bathroom, on the toilet pedestal, on the towel holder. This is evidently the fashion in Tsentoroy.
The excursion takes in a viewing of Ramzan's modest and very dark study adjoining one of the bedrooms. Its chief decoration is a Dagestani wall rug depicting, in the style of socialist realism, the deceased Akhmed Kadyrov wearing an Astrakhan papakha [hat] on his head, against a black background. He is portrayed with a seraphic expression on his face, his chin jutting forwards.
After dark, Ramzan appears, surrounded by armed men. They are everywhere: in the courtyard, on the balcony, in the rooms. Some of them subsequently involve themselves in our conversation, commenting loudly and aggressively. Ramzan sprawls in an armchair crossing his legs, his foot, in a sock, almost level with my face. He doesn't appear to notice. He is taking it easy. "We want to restore order not only in Chechnya, but throughout the north Caucasus," Ramzan begins. "We will fight anywhere in Russia. I have a directive to operate throughout the north Caucasus. Against the bandits."
Who does he call bandits? "Maskhadov, Basaev and the like [a reference to Aslan Maskhado, a Chechen commander who fought the Russians in the first Chechen war of 1994-96, then became president before resuming hostilities after 1999; and Shamil Basaev, a militant anti-Moscow commander who claimed responsibility for, among other things, the Beslan school siege of 2004 in which 344 people died]."
So the mission of his troops is to find Maskhadov and Basaev? "Yes. That is the main thing, to destroy them." [By 2006, both Maskhadov and Basaev were dead.]
Everything that has been done so far in Kadyrov's name has been about destroying and liquidating. Doesn't he think perhaps there's been enough fighting? "Of course there has. Seven hundred people have already surrendered to us and are living a normal life. We have asked the others to stop their senseless resistance, but they carry on fighting. That is why we have to exterminate them."
But perhaps it is time to stop exterminating people and sit down to negotiate? "Who with?" With all the Chechens who are fighting, I say. "With Maskhadov? Maskhadov is nobody here. Nobody obeys his orders. The main figure is Basaev. He is a mighty warrior. He knows how to fight. He is a good strategist. And a good Chechen. But Maskhadov is a pathetic old man who is incapable of doing anything." He guffaws, neighing like a horse. All present follow suit. "He's only got a couple of boys following him. I can prove that. I write everything down. At present Maskhadov has women. I know those women. They told me, 'If we refused, we would be killed. We had no work and he gave us money.' "
Is he saying Maskhadov has a women's battalion? "No. We have broken Maskhadov. He has other people now."
I hear disrespect for Maskhadov in what he is saying, but also clear respect for Basaev. "I respect Basaev as a warrior. He is not a coward. I pray to Allah that Basaev and I may meet in open combat. One man dreams of being a president, another of being a pilot, another a tractor driver - but my dream is to fight Basaev in the open. My troops against his troops, with no outsiders. With him in command, and with me in command."
What if Basaev won? "No way. I will. In battle I always win."
What does Ramzan consider to be the strongest aspect of his personality? "What do you mean? I don't understand the question." What are his strengths? And his weaknesses? "I consider that I have no weaknesses. I am strong. Alu Alkhanov was made president because I consider he is strong and I trust him 100%. Do you think the Kremlin decides that? The people choose. It's the first time anyone has told me the Kremlin has a say in anything." No more than an hour later, Ramzan was saying that absolutely everything was decided by the Kremlin, that the people were just cattle, and that he had been offered the presidency of Chechnya in the Kremlin immediately after his father's assassination, but had turned it down because he wanted to fight.
"If you left us in peace, we Chechens would have reunited long ago." Who does he mean by "you"? "Journalists, people like you. Russian politicians. You don't let us sort things out. You divide us. You come between Chechens. You personally are the enemy. You are worse than Basaev." Who else are his enemies? "I don't have enemies. Only bandits to fight."
Does he intend to become president of Chechnya himself? "No."
What does he most enjoy doing? "Fighting. I am a warrior." Has he ever killed anyone himself? "No. I've always been in command."
But he is too young always to have been in command. Somebody must have given him orders. "Only my father. Nobody else ever gave me orders, or ever will."
Has he given orders to kill? "Yes."
Is that not terrible? "It is not I, but Allah. The Prophet said the Wahhabis [in the Chechen context, radical Islamic groups] must be destroyed."
Did he really say that? And when there are no more Wahhabis left, who will Kadyrov fight? "I will take up bee farming. Already I have bees, and bullocks, and fighting dogs."
Doesn't he feel sorry when dogs kill each other? "Not at all. I like it. I respect my dog Tarzan as much as a human being. He's a Caucasian sheepdog. Those are the most fair-minded dogs there are."
What other hobbies does he have? "I very much like women."
Doesn't his wife mind? "I don't tell her."
What education has he had? "Higher education, law. I'm just finishing it. I am taking my exams."
What exams? "What do you mean, 'What exams?' The exams, that's all."
What's the institute called where he is studying? "It's a branch of the Moscow Institute of Business. In Gudermes. It's a law college."
What is he specialising in? "Law." But what kind of law? Criminal? Civil? "I can't remember. Someone wrote the topic down for me on a piece of paper, but I've forgotten. There's a lot going on at the moment."
Kadyrov's real hobby is setting people at each other's throats, and nobody at the table can rival him in this. The conversation becomes more animated. "You are putting the case for bandits"; "You are an enemy of the Chechen people"; "You should have to answer for this" - all these comments are addressed to me. Ramzan is shouting, jumping up and down in his chair, and Nikolai Ivanovich, the translator at his side, is goading him on. We are seated round a large, oval table and the scene increasingly resembles a thieves' convention. Ramzan behaves more and more oddly, as if he is the oldest person in the house, though he is the youngest. He laughs at inappropriate moments. He scratches himself. He orders his bodyguards to scratch his back. He arches himself, wriggling, and keeps making irritating, inane remarks. Then he goes to watch himself on television. He is very pleased about this, and comments on the way Putin walks: "He's got real class!" He declares that Putin walks like a mountain-dweller.
Outside the windows it is night. The temperature indoors is rising and it is time for me to get out. Kadyrov gives orders for me to be taken back to Grozny. Musa, a former fighter from Zakan-Yurt, sits at the wheel and there are two bodyguards. I get into the vehicle and think that somewhere along the route, in the dark, with checkpoints everywhere, I am obviously going to be killed. But the ex-fighter from Zakan-Yurt is just waiting for Ramzan to leave. He wants to bare his soul, and when he starts telling me the story of his life, how he had been a fighter, why he joined Ramzan, I know he is not going to kill me. He wants the world to hear his story. Even so, I sit there crying from fear and loathing - tears of despair that history should have raised up, of all people, Ramzan Kadyrov. He really does have power, and rules according to his own ideas and abilities. "Don't cry," the fighter from Zakan-Yurt finally said to me. "You are strong."
It is an old story, repeated many times in our history: the Kremlin fosters a baby dragon, which it then has to keep feeding to stop him from setting everything on fire. There has been a total failure of the Russian intelligence services in Chechnya, something they try to represent as a victory and a "restoration of civilian life". But what about the people of Chechnya? They have to live with the baby dragon.
© Anna Politkovskaya 2007
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