Vladimir Putin has presided over a staggering economic boom in the six years since he took control of the Kremlin. Meanwhile, a dozen of his critics have been assassinated and the country's vast natural resources are in the pockets of a chosen few. Michael Specter reports on the corruption and gangsterism gripping Russia.
Saturday 7 October was a marathon of disheartening tasks for Anna Politkovskaya. Two weeks earlier her father, a retired diplomat, had died of a heart attack as he emerged from the Moscow metro while on his way to visit Politkovskaya's mother, Raisa Mazepa, in hospital. She had just been diagnosed with cancer and was too weak even to attend her husband's funeral. 'Your father will forgive me, because he knows I have always loved him,' she told Anna and her sister, Elena Kudimova, the day he was buried. A week later she underwent surgery, and since then Anna and Elena had been taking turns helping her cope with her grief.
Politkovskaya was supposed to spend the day at the hospital, but her 26-year-old daughter, who was pregnant, had just moved into her flat, on Lesnaya Street, while her own place was being prepared for the baby. 'Anna had so much on her mind,' Elena Kudimova told me when we met in London, before Christmas. 'And she was trying to finish her article.'
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