The use of State terror on a massive scale to exterminate or silence opponents, employed to deadly effect by both Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler, remains very much a weapon of choice for today’s dictatorships.

On October 7 Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated his 68th birthday.

That same day marked the 14th anniversary of the assassination of Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya, a fearless reporter for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta who had earned a reputation by exposing atrocities committed by the Russian government in Chechnya as part of Putin regime’s strategy for ethnic genocide. Politkovskaya was gunned down in broad daylight in front of her Moscow apartment, apparently by hired killers. She was 48.

Who her actual murderers were or who contracted for her killing remains unknown to this day.