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There may be more crossovers in the strategies, and fates, of the two titles than people realise.

I joined Novaya Gazeta in January 2006, a few months before Lebedev and Mikhail Gorbachev announced their decision to buy the paper. I was put in charge of covering the Russian secret services and I don’t remember any attempts by my proprietor to change or halt my stories in spite of his KGB past.

Yet I remain to be convinced that he came to our oppositional paper because of any liberal views. From the 1990s Lebedev was surrounded by journalists from the paper Komsomolskaya Pravda. Pavel Vedenyapin, Lebedev’s close associate on the media, came from that stable, as does the current editor of Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov.

Komsomolskaya Pravda enjoyed the largest circulation of any Soviet daily. It was famous not for its investigations, or for its political positioning, but for launching numerous popular and populist campaigns to mobilise public opinion on populist issues: for instance, a campaign to persuade members of the public, especially in rural areas, to hand in illegal firearms. Campaigns such as these were difficult to organise without the support of the Kremlin.

In the liberal 1990s, Komsomolskaya Pravda turned into sensationalist tabloid, although it maintained close ties with the siloviki (the security services). Sergei Ivanov, who in August 2006 took over the press office of the SVR, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, was for some years the paper’s New York correspondent.

Novaya Gazeta had gained a reputation for being not just the most outspoken oppositional paper, but for its record of high-profile investigations, led by Yuri Shchekochikhin and Anna Politkovskaya. When Lebedev took over, the paper was facing its biggest crisis. Shchekochikhin had been killed, reportedly poisoned, in July 2003, while Politkovskaya had been gunned down by assassins in October 2006. The new owner faced a difficult choice — develop the investigations section, or turn to public campaigns as a time-honoured means of increasing the paper’s influence and popularity.

Lebedev chose more of the latter than former. Novaya Gazeta became involved in numerous public campaigns, partly organised by Lebedev: one was the idea of building a memorial to the victims of the Gulag. This was supported by Russia’s new president, Dmitry Medvedev.

In this light the “Sorry London” campaign carried out by the Evening Standard, with its promises to take a more “positive” approach, looks more understandable.

For all his wealth and public profile, Lebedev has not increased Novaya Gazeta’s editorial resources: it still has the lowest salaries amongst Moscow-based papers, and the new computers in the editorial office appear to be the only real investment. His first attempt to launch his own paper turned out to be disaster. In autumn 2007 he started the tabloid Moskovsky Korrespondent, modelling it in part on Komsomolskaya Pravda. Within months he was forced to suspend the paper and to fire its editor when it reported that President Putin had left his wife to marry a gymnast. It later was forced to apologise. In November 2008, Novaya Gazeta made a number of journalists in its political and investigations sections redundant, including myself.

As Russia was hit by the global financial crisis, Lebedev, like other magnates, was forced to go cap in hand to the state for a bail out. Last week, facing a cash crunch, he put his global financial reputation ahead of the needs of the paper when he paid the salaries of the troubled German budget airline Blue Wings –– leaving the staff of Novaya Gazeta to wait, and worry, unpaid.

Andrei Soldatov is editor of Agentura.Ru website. He worked for Novaya Gazeta from January 2006-November 2008. Soldatov and Irina Borogan are working on a book, The New Nobility, about the Russian secret services for PublicAffairs Books to be published in 2010

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It will be recalled that Anna Politkovskaya, murdered in the lift of her apartment block on 7 October 2006, was the best-known journalist on Novaya Gazeta, exposing human rights violations in Chechnya. And her murder followed those of her colleagues on the paper, Igor Domnikov in 2000, and Yury Shchekochikhin in 2003.

Domnikov’s murderers were only convicted in 2007. Indeed, journalism is a high-risk profession in Russia. Between April 1993 and December 2008 up to 70 journalists were killed for their work or went missing; many more were the victims of work-related assaults. Many of the perpetrators have escaped justice, in a context of complete, or increasingly, partial impunity.

The profession of lawyer has not been so dangerous, but Markelov had a very high profile. He worked closely with Anna Politkovskaya, for example on the ‘Cadet case’ in which the Chechen Zelimkhan Murdalov was tortured to death by special forces police. There is speculation that Markelov knew the name of Politkovskaya’s murderer.

Most strikingly, Markelov represented the family of the Chechen girl Elza (Kheda) Kungaeva, who in 2000 at the age of 18 was raped and murdered by Colonel Yury Budanov. At his first trial Budanov was acquitted on the basis of psychiatric evidence that he was temporarily insane at the time. But Markelov secured a forensic review from the London clinical psychologist Stuart Turner, who in a report which Anna Politkovskaya published in Novaya Gazeta on 23 January 2003, advised that Budanov was ‘healthy, and dangerous’. This helped to secure Budanov’s conviction and sentence to ten years in prison at a re-trial. But, on 14 January, 2009 Budanov was released on parole. Shortly before his murder, Markelov had conducted a news conference protesting at this decision, and demanding that the authorities resume the prosecution.

Despite taking cases for Chechens who suffered at the hands of the authorities, Markelov was a hero in Chechnya. On 20 January 2009, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov awarded Markelov a posthumous medal ‘for services to the Chechen Republic’, and tens of thousands demonstrated in the Chechen capital, Grozny.

Yet there have been a number of recent murders connected with Chechnya. On 15 January 2009, Umar Ismailov, a 27-year-old Chechen exile and fierce critic of Ramzan Kadyrov was shot dead in Vienna, using very similar methods.

Furthermore, Markelov and Baburova were both left-wing and anti-fascist activists. He had defended the anti-fascist group Anti-Fa, and she had been hired by the paper to write about neo-Nazis, and quoted Markelov in her articles. In April 2004, he was attacked in the Moscow Metro by five skinheads, who beat him up, shouting nationalist slogans, and denouncing his work against Budanov. Anti-fascist activity too has become very dangerous. In October 2008, neo-fascist skinheads kicked 16-year-old Olga Rukosyla to death in Irkutsk and stabbed 27-year-old Fyodor Filatov to death in Moscow. In January 2009, the young leftist Anton Stradimov was beaten to death in Moscow. Racist violence is monitored by the excellent Sova Centre, which publishes regular updates on its website in Russian and English.

Speculation as to the identity of the murderer is rife. Police have already described the murders as a ‘contract killing’. Yet, as several commentators insist, it seems highly unlikely that Budanov or those close to him are involved. Moreover, this was probably not a neo-fascist or skinhead killing, since their victims are usually beaten or stabbed to death.

The daily Izvestia offers another possible explanation. The killer carried out his assassination on a busy street in broad daylight. He did not drop his gun, but calmly walked into a nearby Metro station. And the ‘Makarov’ pistol is standard police issue. Was he a police officer? The police could have had a grudge against Markelov. In April 2008 there was a brawl in Sokolniki police station in Moscow. Five youths were beaten up, but were charged with assaulting police officers. One of the youths was represented by Markelov, who succeeded in having charges pressed against police. On the day of the murder, the case was at its peak.

The General Prosecutor of the Russian Federation, Yury Chaika, and the Head of the Investigative Committee, Aleksandr Bastrykin, have promised that the murder investigation will be lead by them personally.

While a final judgment would be premature, we are entitled to ask whether this will be yet another example of impunity for those responsible. In any event, ultimate responsibility for the state of affairs in which murder and intimidation are so horrifyingly commonplace must be laid on those in political power in Russia.

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