Moscow ? Anna Politkovskaya, a leading Russian journalist writing on explosive subjects, was murdered Oct. 7. She did not have political views, at least in what is traditionally implied by this expression.

She conducted investigations, made reports, and along the way became involved in human rights activities. She did it with all the passion that is naturally inherent in human rights journalism. But passion did not make her texts less professional, or her reports less authentic.

“‘Three militants have been killed, but the names of two are unknown …’ Colonel Solodovnikov announced. … ‘What makes you think they were militants?’ the crowd murmurs.”

Her credo was professionalism and good faith of a journalist. She said: “I’m not a fighter. I’m a reporter inside out. The duty of a journalist is to tell the public what is going on.” In politics, she was stunned by permanent lack of passion, even in her soul mates. In one of her last articles, she wrote: “… does the opposition have enough passion to come to terms, and, maybe, unite? I do mean passion because nothing else will compel the public to believe it anymore.”

Aged 48, Anna Politkovskaya looked like a university professor, gazing into the audience with myopic eyes. She didn’t look one bit like a fearless reporter who had seen more horrors of the Chechen war than several journalists put together. Upon graduation from the faculty of journalism at Moscow University in 1980, Anna worked for many publications, including the Izvestia newspaper, and the democratic Obshchaya Gazeta, which was popular in the 1990s.

But she earned her current reputation in the opposition broadsheet Novaya Gazeta, where she worked for the past seven years. Her articles about Chechnya, abducted people, and the seamy side of “peace” in this southern republic were always sensational. But sensations became routine in the hell described by Politkovskaya. One of her books had a tell-tale title – “A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya.”

She investigated the hostage crises during the Nord Ost musical and in Beslan. An attempt to poison her was made when she was flying to the site of the Beslan tragedy in Ossetia. In her last publication she was planning to write about torture in today’s Chechnya. Perhaps she shouldn’t have mentioned this in her last interview to Radio Liberty.

“I have two photos on my desk now. I’m conducting an investigation about torture in (Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan) Kadyrov’s prisons. These are people who were abducted by Kadyrov’s men for no obvious reason. They were killed for PR. … I mean that these abducted people, whose photos I have on my desk (one is Russian, and the other is Chechen), were presented as militants with whom Kadyrov’s men had been fighting at the village of Aleroy. This episode is well known. It was discussed on our television, radio, and in newspapers. Posing against the background of the defeated militants, Kadyrov gave interviews to state television and other channels, but in real fact these people had been abducted and murdered.”

Politkovskaya’s murder has become a fact of political life, and turned into breaking news like many of her reports and investigations. There is little hope that Russian journalism will change. It is bogged down in cynicism and servility – the main enemies of Anna, “a reporter inside out.”

Russian politics is not likely to change, either. But even a list of those who did not favor Anna, and could contract her murder, looks like a case history of Russian society’s disease. People from the entourage of the Chechen prime minister may have wished her death, just like their enemies from other political clans, who may have tried to tar his reputation. It could have been revenge for one of her numerous reports, revealing the horrible secrets of the war. Investigators say that it could have been an overreaction of a person who felt hurt by her revelations. There are many theories – sometimes it seems way too many.

For the time being, the main evidence is a low quality video recording from a supermarket where Anna was shortly before her assassination, and near the entrance to her house in Moscow. It has already been established that the killer was assisted by a group of criminals, including one woman who had been following Anna.

It is a sad fact but the majority of high-profile murders of journalists in Russia have either remained cold cases, or fallen to pieces during the investigation or trial. But this murder has evoked a very loud response, and so many crimes against journalists have remained unsolved, that it is obvious the investigators will do everything possible to bring it to the end, if politics does not intervene.

A colleague of mine has made a sharp observation: Foreign reporters die on important assignments abroad, whereas ours are killed in peacetime, in broad daylight in the capital, near places of their residence or work. They are slain for professionalism. Death shows that their word carries weight.