Reality Block

Andrei Nekrasov’s film My Friend Sasha: A Very Russian Murder was shown last night on BBC2. It is a moving and effective analysis of the issues surrounding the Litvinenko poisoning, and draws attention to one feature in particular: the passivity and lack of response to the event and others like it within Russia itself. As Nick Fraser, the series editor writes, Nekrasov “re-creates Livinenko’s life and, more importantly, his consciousness. And he tells us how terrifying it is to be an intelligent, critical individual in contemporary Russia.” In one sequence, Anna Politkovskaya is interviewed, and she simply says that in Russia now there is a desire among most of the population not to be informed of what is really taking place in the country. People just don’t want to know. And this blocking of reality, she suggests, may be even more deadly than the banning of independent investigative writing and journalism.