It is encouraging to know that people like Anastasia Baburova once existed. Baburova was a 25-year-old Russian journalist who was assassinated on January 19 in the center of Moscow in broad daylight. She was shot in the head.
People are still murdered very frequently in Russia for their political beliefs. The Russian government is sometimes complicit and sometimes simply shrugs. Fascism is on the rise. Yes, fascism. Raised-hand salutes and all that. And this in a nation that heroically fought the Nazis at the cost of thousands of lives. And then, one might cynically add, subjected half of Europe to life under its iron thumb.
Baburova stood against this sort of regression and campaigned unceasingly against injustice. She was precisely the opposite of a nationalist; she was a multilingual internationalist, an intellectual, a bright light of hope in the frosty darkness of the Putin era.
We mourn her passing but feel consoled, only somewhat, that there are others like her, that there is hope.
If you want to find out more about Anastasia Baburova, read the Economist’s February 7 obituary or view a documentary about her short life at economist.com/audiovideo/europe.
