NP (but) P: "a soft spot for anarchists"

Mon Feb 9 18:21:16 CST 2009

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Subject: An article for you from Mark.

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ANASTASIA BABUROVA
Feb 5th 2009  

Anastasia Baburova, a Russian journalist, died on January 19th, aged 25

IT IS still not clear why Anastasia Baburova was shot in the head. Was
she a target--along with Stanislav Markelov, a human-rights lawyer who
was shot seconds earlier? Was she an accidental victim, in the wrong
place at the wrong time? Or did she try to grab and disarm the killer
after he shot her companion?

Both Mr Markelov and Ms Baburova were killed in broad daylight in the
centre of Moscow. The next day, a party of Russian nationalists brought
champagne to the murder scene to celebrate the "elimination" of their
enemies. Her death was part of a continuing battle between fascists and
anti-fascists in Russia, which is seldom so plainly revealed to the
outside world. 

Jumping an assassin was part of her nature. At any sign of violence or
racism her nerves and muscles instantly responded, hitting out,
resisting what was physically intolerable. "It is hard to look in the
eyes of a Korean student who has just been hit on the head by two
under-age jerks...giving 'Heil Hitler' salutes", she wrote in her blog
after seeing yet another neo-Nazi attack in Moscow. It was the same
blog in which she enthused about roller-blading for the first time: at
night, fast, without a helmet.

The fact that she worked at NOVAYA GAZETA  was no coincidence. "Where
else?" she asked her colleagues, rhetorically. She was the fourth
journalist NOVAYA GAZETA had lost in the past eight years. But Russia's
most critical newspaper, co-founded by Mikhail Gorbachev, the architect
of PERESTROIKA, was the natural place for her to be. 

STRETCHING TOWARDS THE SUN
She was born in 1983, just before PERESTROIKA opened up the country.
Like the best of her generation (alas, few and untypical) she grew up
fearless, thriving on freedom and fresh air. Ms Baburova considered
herself a citizen of the world; she had more in common with rebellious
youths in Europe than with office workers in her own country. She spoke
fluent English and learnt Chinese; yet she had little chance to go
abroad, to London or anywhere else. Instead, she travelled through
books. At 15 her restlessness was compressed in a poem called "Coffee
Cup":

Official patriotic slogans ("A resurgent Russia that is getting off its
knees") sounded false and alien to her. She was never on her knees,
never humiliated by the Soviet collapse, even though she was born in
Sebastopol--a Black Sea port redolent with past Russian glory--when it
was part of the Soviet empire, and went to school there when it had
become part of Ukraine. Instead of feeling inferior, she learnt martial
arts. She managed to get into the Moscow Institute of International
Relations (MGIMO), where the children of the Soviet elite traditionally
prepare themselves for diplomatic careers--a miracle for a girl from
Sebastopol, without connections. Her exam results were so impressive
that she was offered a place at Yale. But she decided she wanted to be
a journalist, and walked out of the institute. 

She could have made a career at IZVESTIA, and did a short stint there,
but never fitted in at a newspaper which in recent years has exuded
nationalism, conformism and cynicism. She got into trouble for showing
her press card, and was arrested for filming police evicting residents
from a building which they had claimed for themselves. Vladimir
Mamontov, the editor of IZVESTIA, who never met Ms Baburova, dismissed
her as the type of girl "who knows very little about real life, but
vibrates at the sight of a social change. They are waiting for a
revolution, and when there is none they get bored."

Dmitry Muratov, the editor of NOVAYA GAZETA, knew her better. She
reminded him of the young men who people Dostoevsky's novels, youths
with a heightened sense of injustice and a longing to change the world.
Though her family came from the Soviet intelligentsia, her roots went
back further, to the 19th-century thinkers who invented the word.
Unsurprisingly, Ms Baburova had a soft spot for anarchists. Mikhail
Bakunin, for example, who believed that without inner freedom for the
individual, society can be neither free nor fair. 

She and her friends rightly identified fascism as the biggest and most
pressing threat to her country. She swore to fight it. She sensed
accurately the social kinship between Stalinism and fascism: the link
between attempts to portray Stalin as a "successful manager", and the
current upsurge of nationalism. Unlike many young people in the
generation before hers, she did not see a safe job as an ultimate
measure of success. 

In Turgenev's poem "The Threshold", a young woman stands before a
door. A voice asks whether she is prepared to endure cold, hunger,
mockery, prison and death, all of which await her on the other side.
She says "Yes" to everything, and steps over. "A fool," cries a voice
from behind her. "A saint," suggests another. 

See this article with graphics and related items at http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13055783

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