Law, Power, and Justice

Our
— Read on jamesrodgersauthor.com/our-dear-friends-in-moscow-a-story-of-russia-and-a-warning-to-the-west/

Our Dear Friends in Moscow is the story of how those friendships faded and died–along with media freedom the like of which Russia had never known. 

Soldatov and Borogan skillfully blend their account of the fracturing of their personal and professional circles with the broader trends in Russian society. This is the story of a dying dream by those who witnessed its death. 

There are warnings on the way. The official response to national disasters such as the sinking in 2000 of the submarine Kursk, or the Beslan school massacre of 2004 include restrictions on the media, and an expectation that journalists will not question the Kremlin. 

Suddenly, it is too late to respond. As the authors note in the aftermath of the murder in 2006 of the indomitable investigative reporter, and implacable Putin critic, Anna Politkovskaya, people, ‘realized they’d surrendered their country to Putin and the FSB, and that they’d completely forgotten how to protest.’ 

Soldatov and Borogan reflect that Politkovskaya’s murder prompted bigger protests in Paris than in Moscow–a sign that Russia was rejecting liberal values that have deeper roots in the West. 

This is part of the dilemma politically liberal Russians face. ‘Being European was not only a cultural choice but also a political one,’ the authors write. That cultural choice was reflected by the fact that much of their former circle’s social life took place in Jean-Jacques, a Parisian style bistro in central Moscow. As a correspondent in the Russian capital in the early 2000s, I remember attending Russian colleagues’ birthday parties there. Now Moscow is a much less friendly place for foreign correspondents. 

It is of course even more hostile for Russian journalists who choose not to duplicate dutifully Kremlin statements on the ‘special military operation’, as the war in Ukraine is officially known. Even before the escalation of that war in 2022, Soldatov and Borogan heed the threat behind a gruesome piece of bureaucratic documentation that declares Soldatov dead. The message is clear. They are in danger. 

Faced with the prospect of gaol–or perhaps even sharing Politkovskaya’s fate–they leave for western Europe. As they do, they follow a long trail of Russians leaving their country for political reasons. They end up renting a small flat in the Bloomsbury area of London. They later discover that Alexander Herzen and Vladimir Lenin had lived in the houses on either side of their building.