The title of Anna Politkovskaya’s new posthu­mous anthol­o­gy, Is Jour­nal­ism Worth Dying For?: Final Dis­patch­es (Melville House, April), pos­es a provoca­tive ques­tion. The answer is prob­a­bly no. But free­dom of speech and free­dom from cor­rup­tion might be worth dying for, and some­times only jour­nal­ists can make those free­doms happen.

Anna Politkovskaya knew she would become a target, and indeed almost died countless times before her murder. But she would not—and could not—stop.

Politkovskaya, who worked as an inves­tiga­tive reporter for the inde­pen­dent Moscow news­pa­per Novaya Gaze­ta until she was assas­si­nat­ed in Octo­ber 2006 at the age of 48, asked her­self this ques­tion in a piece nev­er sub­mit­ted for pub­li­ca­tion. She was appar­ent­ly feel­ing unsure if the irony would be appreciated:

I have nev­er sought my present pari­ah sta­tus and it makes me feel like a beached dol­phin. I am no polit­i­cal infight­er. I will not go into the oth­er joys of the path I have cho­sen – the poi­son­ing, the arrests, the men­ac­ing by mail and over the Inter­net, the tele­phoned death threats. The main thing is to get on with my job, to describe the life I see, to receive vis­i­tors every day in our newspaper’s office who have nowhere else to bring their trou­bles, because the Krem­lin finds their sto­ries off-message…What am I guilty of? I have mere­ly report­ed what I wit­nessed, noth­ing but the truth.

In 1976, Don Bolles, an inves­tiga­tive reporter for the Ari­zona Repub­lic news­pa­per, died after tar­gets of his inquiries placed a bomb under his car. Amer­i­can jour­nal­ists killed on Amer­i­can soil by the sub­jects of their sto­ries is a phe­nom­e­non so rare that Bolles’ mur­der stood out.

In many oth­er nations, tar­gets of inves­tiga­tive report­ing rou­tine­ly try to mur­der jour­nal­ists. One of the vic­tims: Politkovskaya, mur­dered in the ele­va­tor of her Moscow apart­ment build­ing in the prime of her career. In its balka­nized iter­a­tions, the for­mer Sovi­et Union con­sti­tutes hos­tile ter­ri­to­ry for reporters. Dozens of oth­er nations are at least as dan­ger-filled for jour­nal­ists, with Colom­bia and Mex­i­co in the West­ern Hemi­sphere among the leaders.

As Bolles was being blown to shreds, I was attend­ing the first gath­er­ing of a new orga­ni­za­tion called Inves­tiga­tive Reporters and Edi­tors (IRE), which met that June in Indi­anapo­lis. Lat­er in 1976, IRE served as the spon­sor­ing orga­ni­za­tion for a team of jour­nal­ists gath­er­ing in Ari­zona hop­ing to car­ry on Bolles’ projects. The intend­ed mes­sage to would-be killers: You can kill the jour­nal­ist, but you can­not stop the inves­ti­ga­tion. Dur­ing the 1980s, when I was the exec­u­tive direc­tor of IRE, I trav­eled to the Sovi­et Union at the invi­ta­tion of gut­sy native jour­nal­ists hop­ing for guid­ance from Amer­i­can inves­tiga­tive reporters.

I say this about myself to set the stage for the fol­low­ing state­ment: Of all the inves­tiga­tive reporters I’ve been acquaint­ed with, Politkovskaya embod­ies the most remark­able com­bi­na­tion of courage (some might call it fool­har­di­ness) and tal­ent. She knew she would become a tar­get, and indeed almost died count­less times before her mur­der. But she would not – and could not – stop. More than any­thing else, Politkovskaya cared about jus­tice for the var­ied cit­i­zens of the con­glom­er­a­tion of nation states that used to con­sti­tute the Sovi­et Union.

Is Jour­nal­ism Worth Dying For?, trans­lat­ed from the Russ­ian and most­ly pub­lished orig­i­nal­ly in Novaya Gaze­ta, is a mar­velous tes­ta­ment to Politkovskaya’s courage and skill. It picks up where her pre­vi­ous books – like A Russ­ian Diary: A Journalist’s Final Account of Life, Cor­rup­tion, and Death in Putin’s Rus­sia and A Dirty War: A Russ­ian Reporter in Chech­nya–left off.

The new vol­ume opens with a heart­break­ing note from Raisa Mazepa, Anna’s moth­er, who was hos­pi­tal­ized the day her daugh­ter died vio­lent­ly. Polit­skovskaya had been sched­uled to vis­it her moth­er that day, but called in the morn­ing to say Mazepa’s oth­er daugh­ter would be vis­it­ing instead. The next day, Anna promised, she would make it to the hospital.

Over the years, Mazepa had begged Polit­skovskaya to think about safe­ty in her job, giv­en her sta­tus as daugh­ter, wife, moth­er and future grand­moth­er. Her daughter’s reply: ​“Of course I know the sword of Damo­cles is always hang­ing over me. I know it, but I won’t give in.”

Dur­ing the same con­ver­sa­tion, Mazepa told her daugh­ter about the book she was read­ing in the hos­pi­tal, a book Anna had brought to her. Mazepa read a pas­sage to her daugh­ter, a pas­sage that seemed to encap­su­late the Russ­ian expe­ri­ence: ​“There are drunk­en years in the his­to­ry of peo­ples. You have to live through them, but you can nev­er tru­ly live in them.”

Per­haps Politkovskaya end­ed up dead because she tried to live both through the drunk­en years and in them. She insert­ed her­self into ​“for­eign” wars tak­ing place with­in the bound­aries of the for­mer Sovi­et Union, espe­cial­ly the war between the cen­tral Russ­ian admin­is­tra­tion in Moscow and the new­ly inde­pen­dent land of Chech­nya, with its most­ly Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion. Maybe her con­tro­ver­sial reports from Chech­nya for a decade before her death led to Politkovskaya’s mur­der in Moscow, maybe not. It is unclear who com­mit­ted the mur­der, as is the case almost every time a Russ­ian jour­nal­ist dies vio­lent­ly (four Novaya Gaze­ta jour­nal­ists were mur­dered between 2001 and 2009). Maybe those in pow­er who are sup­posed to solve homi­cides do not care when a pesky jour­nal­ist dies. Or maybe those in pow­er are com­plic­it in the homicides.

Politkovskaya knew how to write about some­thing oth­er than cor­rup­tion and war and pover­ty. A brief sec­tion of the book col­lects her writ­ings under the head­ing ​“The Oth­er Anna.” The intro­duc­tion to that sec­tion sounds a bit strained, though, say­ing Anna ​“has been described as ​‘steely.’ She was not; she was mat­ter-of-fact. These arti­cles show her human­i­ty, a sen­si­tive con­science, a will­ing­ness to engage with the unfa­mil­iar, and regret that her home­land was not a more enjoy­able place to live.” Yes, even when Politkovskaya was try­ing to find fun, she could not put aside the low thresh­old of out­rage that char­ac­ter­izes great inves­tiga­tive reporters.

Just before her death, Politkovskaya was inves­ti­gat­ing the tor­ture of inno­cent cit­i­zens accused of crimes by gov­ern­ment offi­cials. She noted:

[T]he over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of these sus­pects have been des­ig­nat­ed ter­ror­ists. Now, in 2006 , this habit of des­ig­nat­ing peo­ple as ter­ror­ists has not only dis­placed any gen­uine attempt to com­bat ter­ror­ism, but is of itself pro­duc­ing poten­tial ter­ror­ists thirst­ing for revenge. When the prosecutor-general’s office and the courts fail to uphold the law and pun­ish the guilty, and instead mere­ly act on polit­i­cal instruc­tions and con­nive in pro­duc­ing anti-ter­ror­ist sta­tis­tics to please the Krem­lin, crim­i­nal cas­es get cooked up like pancakes.

Politkovskaya might not have believed jour­nal­ism is worth dying for. But the tar­gets of her inves­ti­ga­tions appar­ent­ly believed inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism can be halt­ed by mur­der­ing the messenger.