What motivated Natasha Estemirova? Why did she do this work that led eventually to her death? She did this for nearly 17 years, having started in 1992 during the Osset-Ingush conflict. I don't think that patriotism, at least as it is generally understood, was her motivation. She didn't have well-defined political views. She was neither a supporter nor an opponent of Chechen independence. She wanted political questions to be resolved without blood, without shooting, without suffering and killing. She was interested in politics only when this would help her to resolve her human rights cases successfully, to the small degree that this is still possible in Russia.
Natasha's father was Russian and her mother was Chechen and she loved both of her nations equally. For her consciousness, what she saw happening around her was as if one part of her was killing the other. She cried when the elected president of Chechnya, Aslan Maskhadov, was killed. She refused to walk on Victory Boulevard after it was renamed Putin Boulevard, even though, from our office to the center of Grozny, this was the most convenient route. The latter was responsible for killing the former, and for the former, she had cast her vote. It sounds naive, but, for her, this was very important.
She was a naive person in general. She would begin by saying, "now, listen to my idea," and what would follow would be completely impractical, at least in my view. For instance, there was her desire to reconcile everyone with everyone else, by creating a reconciliation commission in Chechnya, similar to one that had existed during Soviet times. The difference is that, back then, the government was reconciling people who were involved in blood feuds, where one family had wronged another. Now, the crimes are being committed by the government, and an institution of this type could well become an additional form of pressure against the victims, so that they would not appeal to the courts or the police. What do you have to complain about if you have already forgiven the offense? It did not take long to persuade Natasha. When she understood the argument against it, she gave up the idea.
She was a real human rights activist. If she took on a case, she gave it her full attention, and she didn't transfer the work onto others. She wrote the appeals to the prosecutors herself, carried them to their offices herself, and monitored them to be sure that criminal cases would be opened. She gave information to the press, when it would pose no risk to the people she was defending. She valued the lives of other people above all else, and for this, did not even spare her own.
