| Yury Shchekochikhin
emerged from the Moskovsky Komsomolets school of journalism, and he never
lost his populist touch. His articles were wonderful reads, a mix of mournful
optimism and cruel wit. His signature phrase when writing about his country
was some variation on, "Honestly, I don't understand anything anymore."
I went through his old articles again after his death last week at age
53 -- from a mystery "allergic reaction," one that has political
Moscow buzzing he may have been poisoned. Strung out over the years on
the thread of his distinctive voice, his writings hang together well.
Someone -- Novaya Gazeta, where he was an editor, or the Yabloko party,
where he was a leader -- ought to collect them into a book.
Typical was the day in September 1998, amid the ruble crash, when Shchekochikhin
unveiled the salary of the Central Bank chief. Sergei Dubinin, he began,
is a wonderful, soft-spoken guy. And there's no point blaming him for
a currency crash. But his 1997 salary was, ahem, 1,258,113,518.45 rubles.
"Chevo-chevo? Skolko-Skolko?" Shchekochikhin wrote. ("What?
What? How much? How much?")
"I'm trying to understand it by the order of the numbers,"
he continued. "The '45' on the end, I understand that's kopeks. The
'518' next to it, that's rubles, the '113' is thousands, the '258' is
millions. And the '1' at the beginning ...?" It worked out to about
$240,000 a year, nearly twice what U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan
Greenspan was pulling down, but average for Central Bankers internationally.
For Shchekochikhin, however, 1.26 billion rubles equaled the salaries
of 210 Russian ministers and parliament members -- or 40 times Boris Yeltsin's
laughable official salary, or the annual budget of five large Moscow schools.
Dubinin's many lieutenants earned nearly as much.
Looking back on it, it's striking what a unique dual role Shchekochikhin
carved out: He was a full-time working journalist, as prolific as any
reporter anywhere -- and simultaneously a prominent and active member
of the Russian parliament. That's bizarre. Very few people would be able
to bring that off without discrediting themselves one way or another.
But Shchekochikhin not only pulled it off, he did it masterfully -- because,
it seems to me, so much of what he did was about public service and not
"politics."
It's surprising how little envy I heard from other journalists over
the way Shchekochikhin could use his status as a Duma deputy to issue
official requests for documents and information. But Shchekochikhin wasn't
about the scoop or the byline; he was about the truth.
One example of his brand of journalism-activism -- one that I'm always
surprised is not ragingly famous across Russia -- was Shchekochikhin's
work with Novaya Gazeta colleague Vyacheslav Izmailov, a retired military
officer, in freeing Russian POWs. (If Shchekochikhin were in politics
to be a politician, he'd have loudly claimed ownership of this work; instead,
it's mostly seen as Izmailov's project, and the newspaper's.) Izmailov
cajoles prosecutors across Russia into releasing ethnic Chechens who've
been detained on misdemeanors -- provided that, in return, the families
of those pardoned Chechens lean on guerrillas back home to set free a
Russian POW. It's complicated, and messy, but at last count Shchekochikhin
and Izmailov have freed about 200 POWs.
Russia has lost many young public figures in recent tragedies -- Alexander
Lebed, Artyom Borovik, Galina Starovoitova -- but personally, I'll miss
Shchekochikhin most of all.
Matt Bivens, a former editor of The Moscow Times, writes the Daily
Outrage at thenation.com.
|
