A house on Lesnaya Street holds the memory of Anna Politkovskaya. This is where she lived — coming home after her trips, writing her pieces, finding the quiet of ordinary life between assignments to wherever people needed her. A memorial plaque on the building is a simple, quiet way to keep this place connected to her name, so that everyone who walks past knows: a person who knew how to come to others' aid once lived here.
Memorial plaques on residential buildings in Moscow are installed on an ongoing basis, and there is a clear procedure for it. The rules for placing memorial plaques were approved by a joint order of the Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage (Mosgornasledie) and the Moscow Committee for Architecture, dated May 14, 2018, No. 363/357, issued to implement Moscow Government Decree No. 1085-PP of December 25, 2017, "On the Procedure for Placing Memorial Plaques in the City of Moscow."
Memorial plaques in the city fall under the Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage (Mosgornasledie). It is this department that reviews applications and approves the design, text, and placement of a plaque. It is a government procedure with clear rules — an official process carried out to the letter of the law.
Under Russian law, the façade of an apartment building is common property belonging to all of its owners. That means any change to it — a canopy, an antenna, a sign — requires the residents' consent. This is a general requirement of the Housing Code of the Russian Federation (Articles 44–46), the same one that applies to any everyday decision about the building. A memorial plaque follows the same ordinary rule as any other matter concerning shared property.
Consent is given through a decision of the general meeting of owners — in person, by absentee ballot, or through the state's housing services system (GIS ZhKH). Such meetings happen regularly, for all kinds of reasons, in buildings across the city, so the procedure is a familiar one for residents. An owner is only asked to state their position on a ballot — nothing more.
Once the owners have given their consent, an application is prepared for Mosgornasledie, accompanied by the minutes of the general meeting and a design for the plaque, including its future text and placement. The relevant department reviews the application and approves the design and the inscription, after which the plaque is manufactured and installed on the building. For residents, the process ends there — their part is limited to giving consent.
Memorial plaques and other signs of remembrance for Anna exist around the world, including in Russia. In Moscow, on the Novaya Gazeta building in Potapovsky Lane, there is a bronze plaque by sculptor Ivan Balashov and architect Pyotr Kozlov. Streets and squares in Italy bear her name, and she is remembered at the European Parliament, in Rome, in Hamburg, in Tbilisi.
But none of these signs replaces the memory that belongs here, on her own home. The plaque at the newsroom speaks of her as a journalist of her newspaper. The signs abroad speak of how the world valued her. A plaque on the house speaks of something simpler and more human: this is where she lived. It is the one address where remembering Anna becomes part of the everyday life of her neighbors and her neighborhood, rather than a public or professional gesture. Other plaques tell of her work and her recognition; this one would speak of her as a neighbor who lived close by — and that kind of memory doesn't exist anywhere else yet.
All that's asked of you is one thing — your consent to the installation. That means a signature on the owners' ballot, nothing more. You don't need to contribute any money: everyone involved in the initiative is covering the costs of design, approval, and installation.
Tell your friends and acquaintances about her, show them this site, let them read her articles. The more people know who Anna was and what she did, the more alive her memory stays — and keeping her memory alive is the whole point of this.
Perhaps you knew Anna, or you have photographs, memories, or thoughts of your own about how else this initiative could be supported. Any response matters and is deeply valued — leave us a message in the form below, in this section.
Anna Politkovskaya was not a person of loud words. She was a person of action. When the Dubrovka theater siege came down to a matter of hours, she went in and talked with the hostage-takers, carrying water to the people trapped inside. When children were among the hostages in the seized school in Beslan, she did everything she could to get there and help. She never thought of it as heroism — to her, it was simply the natural continuation of her work and her character: where others felt fear, she moved toward it, because on the other side of that fear were real people who needed help.
This is exactly how she deserves to be remembered. Not as a symbol of tragedy, but as proof that one person who refuses to look away can change someone's fate. She believed that noticing other people's misfortune, telling the truth, and not turning away are what an ordinary, decent human life is built on. That belief hasn't gone out of date. We need it today just as much as we did while she was alive.
A small plaque on a building won't change the world. But it will quietly remind neighbors, passersby, and the children who grow up in that building, day after day, that a person once lived there for whom other people's troubles were never someone else's problem. This isn't a memory of death — it's a memory of how to live. And if each of us keeps even this simple sign on the wall of her home, then what Anna lived for keeps going, in us.
Keeping this memory alive is within our power. And it takes very little from each of us to do it.
What do you imagine for the future plaque in memory of Anna Politkovskaya? What inscription would you like to see on it? Share any thoughts, memories, or suggestions — the form below is for that.