Anna Politkovskaya

"Anybody trying to do anything worthwhile in Russia at the moment is moving toward the left. [Mikhail] Khodorkovsky is correct, although all the democrats condemned his thoughts from prison. Russias Left March is a fait accompli, which also rules out any Russian Orange Revolution. There will be no splendid revolutionary breakthrough with oranges, tulips, or roses in Russia. Our revolution, if it comes, will be red, because the Communists are almost the most democratic force in the country, and because it will be bloody."

"Tragically, our most active democrats are on the Left. I cannot bring myself to vote Communist because the distance between their progressive and repressive instincts is too short, but Putins regime is a great recruiting ground for the Left, particularly among the young."

"We have no philanthropists and [Mikhail] Khodorkovskys imprisonment is a warning to others. He set up the Open Russia Foundation and financed opposition parties, environmental organisations and human rights. Vladimir Putin has said that Russia will not allow foreigners to finance our civil society, but now we have no domestic investors to do it, which is a tragedy. If we continue like this, 100 years from now there will be no civil society in Russia."

"We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, its total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial - whatever our special services, Putins guard dogs, see fit."