After a comment from the World Newspaper Association, ”an NGO uniting more than 18,000 publications worldwide” there follows a tribute by Russia’s senior human rights activist Sergei Kovalyov to Anna’s “inconvenient” character. Next the politicians, led by Irina Khakamada. The list is extraordinarily wide. It naturally includes the centre-liberal  Grigory Yavlinsky but also Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist leader defeated by Yeltsin in the 1996 presidential elections, and “hardliners” such as Victor Ilyukhin.

This list closes with two of the most resolute and uncompromising opponents of the Soviet regime. Vladimir Bukovsky is well known. Sasha Podrabinek (Putin’s exact contemporary) was imprisoned for 7 years for publishing his book Psychiatric Abuse in the Soviet Union. Bukovsky was forcibly ejected from the country. Podrabinek, who is Jewish was offered the alternative of “emigrating to Israel” (neither he nor his brother Kirill accepted).

The concluding note from the editors of Novaya gazeta comments that Anna never got involved in political intrigue, neither did she have any business interests: “it was impossible to buy her off or make her keep quiet”. The paper promises that letters of condolence and sympathy will continue to be published in the newspaper and on the bi-weekly’s website.

http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2006/77/04.html