Anna Politkovskaya’s lesson Calling things by their name – Corriere.it

Sixteen years have passed since the murder of my mother, the journalist Anna Politkovskaya. My mother has always been seen as an uncomfortable person not only by the Russian authorities but also by those of ordinary people who simply open the newspapers and read the articles. Because the majority of the Russian population unfortunately believes in everything that is broadcast on the screens of the state channels, a virtual world created by propaganda where, after all, everything seems to be fine. While the problems that are periodically reported to the population are only the problems attributable to Western countries or, as they say in Russia with a smile, to the decaying West.

In her articles, my mom never talked about pleasant things; almost always, her role was that of bringer of bad news. He spoke the truth, naked and crude, about soldiers, bandits, ordinary people ended up in the meat grinder of the war. She spoke of pain, blood, death, torn bodies and broken destinies.

I began to live with the thought that someday, sooner or later, my mother might be gone, long before she was killed. Living with thought is not the most correct expression. Better perhaps to say that I simply lived, as if our family were the most ordinary in the world, as if the life we ​​led was one of the most normal. And, indeed, to a certain extent she was, although my mother always knew that hers was going to be a violent end. However, she looked at her from a purely practical perspective, she even joked about her and, anyway, she always talked about it calmly. She was a pragmatic woman, and she was afraid of death only to the extent that he could have caught her suddenly, too soon, at a time perhaps when we, her children, had not yet stood up, had not yet stabilized and settled in life. With her, however, we have never talked about the suffering that the loss of loved ones can cause, or about her own possible fate. No pompous and tearful speeches, no twisted hands, also because with her it would have been useless: with her, the only possible course of action was to look her own destiny straight in the face.

Yet, despite everything, we could not avoid the surprise effect, when it happened: she was killed when I least expected it. The fact that my mother never hid from anyone, he never stopped working, helping people; he has always considered his death as possible as the price to pay for the life choice he had made and for the professional path he was following.

On October 7, 2006, the day my mother was killed, I was twenty-six and preparing to become a mother myself. Until that moment I had wanted to believe that Anna Politkovskaya’s popularity in the West could somehow protect her from her possible risks, from a violent death. I was wrong.

Dictators need to sacrifice people to consolidate their power. The only way to protect freedom is to fight lies and tell the truth. Freedom is lacking in Russia. I decided to write this book to remember the lesson my mother left us: always call everyone by their name, including dictators.

At Buchmesse the project born in Italy

Sixteen years ago, on 7 October 2006, the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered outside her front door. For the first time, her daughter Vera, now 42, who fled Russia and lives in a safe place with her family, chose to tell the story of her mother’s life and battles for freedom and her dissent over Vladimir Putin’s policy. . I will do it in a book, My mother would have called it war, written with the journalist Sara Giudice, which will be released in January for Rizzoli and whose genesis Vera Politkovskaja recounts in the document that we publish above. As Rizzoli announced, at the Frankfurt Fair the offers for the acquisition of the international rights of the volume came from many countries around the world: a project born from the Italian publisher that is gaining great international interest. Massimo Turchetta, general manager and publisher of Rizzoli explains: Rizzoli’s vocation has always been for international non-fiction, we have also acquired Angela Merkel’s autobiography which is a bit like the book of this year’s Fair. The interesting thing is that a book like that of Vera Politkovskaja is a project that starts from Italy, in Rizzoli, and has aroused interest all over the world. There is a territory of world-class projects that Italians have so far only partially beaten: there are personalities of great importance who are of enormous interest to the international public. Italian publishers must explore a market that covers the whole world, from Japan to Tierra del Fuego. He cites the example of another project born in Rizzoli and which was successful at the Frankfurt Fair, the book Siblings, by Santo Versace. And he explains that a lot has changed in these pandemic years: The Fair is a community that finds itself, after the years of Covid, and the publishing world, a world in which personal relationships are still extremely important. It has even more so given the times we are living in, the pandemic, the war, and which have changed the sense of being together. And Turchetta concludes by explaining the meaning of this global vision with new perspectives: Publishing today means seeing the world in a more empathic way. (ida bozzi)

The memoir

Vera Politkovskaya, now 42 years old; she was 26 when her mother Anna, a journalist from Novaya Gazeta, known for her dissent against Vladimir Putin, was killed on the stairs of her house in Moscow. The book My mother would have called it war, by Vera Politkovskaya (in collaboration with Sara Giudice), to be released by Rizzoli in January 2023. It will tell the life and battles of the murdered journalist At the Frankfurt Fair, international book rights were sold in various countries around the world. The journalist Anna Politkovskaya (1958-2006) on Novaya Gazeta and in her books expressed criticisms of Putin’s policy and the Chechen war. She was murdered in 2006 in Moscow. Among her essays: Chechnya. The Russian dishonor (Fandango, 2003), Putin’s Russia (Adelphi, 2005), A little corner of hell (Rizzoli, 2008).