Adonis Diaries

“This condensed black energy of hates”; (March 1, 2010)

          “In Russia, soldiers are no better than dirt under officers’ boots.  What to think of an army where over 500 soldiers died in 2002, the equivalent of an entire battalion, just for bad treatments and bullying practices?  Mothers of soldiers have to fight against this monstrous army that devours its children.  This army system functions as a closed cultist prison” wrote Anna Politkovskaia, a journalist investigator to the daily Novaia Gazeta.

          Anna Politkovskaia, casually called Ania, flew to Chechnya 70 times within 7 years to cover the second war there and witness the atrocities and tortures; she was practically the only reporter to dare venture cover this second  war.  The first war in Chechnya (1994-96) was an object of mass demonstrations in Russia but this time around an ominous silence and media blackout was the rule over Russia.  Ania was the journalist who made waves and exposed President Poutine and the army with relentless and repeated targeted articles, strong with accurate details and names.       

          Ania interviewed mothers of soldiers which broke the deathly silence thanks to the eye-witness accounts of afflicted mothers: the Russian army in Chechnya was experiencing mass suicides of soldiers who could no longer suffer the heavy handed practices of the army and its cruel regulations. Young soldiers returned to civilian life unprepared, indifferent, and totally disorganized because the government had already forgotten them.  Most of them ended up delinquents and returned to prisons for callous activities, cold killing, and total despise of civilian life: crimes committed in the Caucasus accelerated the running wild of militaristic spirits.

          What drove Ania to anger was “the total silence of the Russian people is the prime phenomenon of the current political life today.  This system exists because the Russians have been frightened to silence.”  Ania played the mediator in 2002 to the Doubrovka hold up where hundreds of civilians were attending the musical comedy “North-East”.  The Russian commando stormed the theater using poisonous gas killing 170 civilians and injuring 500.  She also tried to mediate the Beslan hold up of a school in 2004.  The Russian authorities did their best to prevent Ania from reaching the location in Ossetia and poisoned her on her flight to the hold up.  32 Chechnya combatants were stormed by the Russia commando killing 300 kids, 11 soldiers, and 31 of the hostage takers.

          Ania was born in the US when her Ukrainian father was assigned to the UN; she lived in Russia most of her life. In October 2006 Ania was assassinated in front of her apartment.  She had a rough day: she had visited her sick mother with cancer at the hospital and paid a visit to her expecting daughter.  She used to call Poutine “The Tchekist” in reference to the Tcheka, the immediate ancestor to the KGB at the beginning of the communist regime.  Four other journalists working for Novaia Gazeta were assassinated in 2009: this daily was the sole media opened to opposition opinions.

          After the assassination of Ania, Poutine cynically commented “her influence on Russian society was insignificant.  Her assassination will cause more harm to Russia than her articles.” After Anna Politkovskaia death, her articles and diary were published and then translated in many languages. She kept a “Journal of an angry woman” that started in December 2003 to August 2006 where she reported her diary and her field investigation to the lowest quarters in Moscow.  In her diary Ania stated “The world is afraid of nuclear catastrophes; I am scared of hatred; feelings of hates are nested in the deep guts of Russians.  This condensed black energy of hatred!”