Anna Politkovskaya,
the daughter of Soviet UN diplomats, was born in New York in 1958. She
studied Journalism at Moscow University and worked for various
newspapers such as »Izvestia« and after the fall of Communism for
independent papers, among them »Obchtchaya Gazeta«. Most recently she
was a special correspondent for the small opposition paper »Novaya
Gazeta«. Her reportages were collected in many books, among them »A
Small Corner of Hell«. Her last book was a detailed and emotional
presentation of the current Russian reality. However »Putin's Russia«
was only published in Western foreign countries.
Politkovskaya was awarded mostly foreign prizes
for her work. She received the »Lettre Ulysses Award« for best
reportage and the Hermann Kesten Medal in 2003. She was honoured with
the Olof Palme Prize in 2004, and in the following year she was awarded
the »Prize for Freedom and Future of the Media«. In her native country,
however, she faced threats and intimidation. Yet she refused to have a
bodyguard in the same way she refused to go into exile. In 2004 she was
the victim of a poisoning attempt. On October 7, 2006 she was shot by
an unknown gunman in the stairwell of her Moscow apartment block.
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