The end is reason to begin this book

Anna Politkovskaya was murdered outside her apartment in Russia on Oct. 7, 2006. On a day when the country was celebrating its president’s 54th birthday, one of his greatest adversaries lay dead with a gunshot wound to the head. The irony did not escape most people in Russia, as well as those who follow politics worldwide.

Anna had devoted most of her adult life to uncovering and exposing corruption and ruthlessness within the Vladmir Putin administration. She also vigorously opposed the Chechen conflict. Anna gained widespread notoriety by reporting for the Russian liberal newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. Shortly before her assassination, she had completed her memoirs, “A Russian Diary: A Journalist’s Final Account of Life, Corruption and Death in Putin’s Russia.”

Anna was born to Soviet Ukrainian parents who worked for the United Nations. She was born in New York City and had dual citizenship for both the U.S. and Russia. At any time during her reporting she could have sought asylum in the U.S., being a U.S. citizen, but she chose to stay in Russia, fighting her fight.

In “A Russian Diary,” Anna covered the 2004 Russian presidential elections, uncovering cheating, blatant lies and Putin’s silencing of the press. She described the horrid conditions in which soldiers of the Russian army must live, many freezing and starving to death, while their political leaders live in the lap of luxury.

Politkovskaya’s passion and commitment to the people of Russia are nothing if not crystal-clear in her writings. What makes it all the more disheartening is knowing before you even turn to the first page that our brave heroine is going to die in the end.