In Memoriam: Anna Dolgov

The Moscow Times recently received the sad news that our colleague and friend Anna Dolgov, who worked for the newspaper for many years, died suddenly in New York of a stroke. Dolgov was 47 years old.

Anna Dolgov was a well-known journalist in Moscow. She worked for The Moscow Times, AP and headed the Moscow office of the Boston Globe. At AP she was part of the team that covered the first war in Chechnya and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. After leaving Moscow, she wrote for The Moscow Times from New York for many years before taking the position of editor of The Riverdale Press in 2016.

The journalists and editors who worked with Dolgov remembered her as a smart and fiercely hard-working journalist. Catherine Belton, who worked with her at The Moscow Times before moving to the Financial Times, recalled her as a “brilliant journalist — tough and dedicated and extremely sharp.” 

Lynn Berry, who was the paper’s editor for many years, remembered working with her before joining The Moscow Times. “I first worked with Anna at the AP when I had just arrived in Moscow in December 1995, and I clearly remember one interview that I would have gotten completely wrong if she hadn’t been with me. She must have been right out of university. She was sharp.”

Her colleagues also remembered her willingness to help. Carl Schreck wrote that he “met her during my first years at The Moscow Times. It was a pleasure to work with her, and she was always generous with advice and ideas as I was learning the ropes of Russian politics.”

Later, when Dolgov worked for the paper from New York, editors and journalists formed warm long-distance relationships with her. Eva Hartog, current editor and web editor when Anna was covering stories from New York, recalled coming into the office in the morning and often finding Anna still online. “We’d have a quick back and forth about her stories. She seemed to really enjoy her work and took great pride in it. On the web desk we knew that if Anna had written it, it was bound to be one of the best-read stories that day.”

Daria Litvinova remembered her as an anchor in the fraught period of newspaper production during the year of transition from a daily to a weekly paper. “Anna – this invisible guardian angel – was always there for me. Every morning on my way to work I knew I could expect four or five solid news stories that she wrote overnight and we could put on the website right away. They barely needed any editing – that’s how good she was. And they were always there, day in and day out.

“It was an amazing feeling – a small piece of stability in the stormy ocean of journalism.” 

Her close friend Iosif Zhitnitsky wrote from New York that one of her many hobbies was solving logical puzzles, which she excelled at. Her love for puzzle-solving and logic spurred her on to continue her education. At the time of her death, she was a graduate student at Fordham University, studying for a master's degree in big data  and cybersecurity.

Andrew McChesney, who worked with her when he was editor, recalled her “great sense for news and a deft touch in reporting.

“But for me,” he wrote, “her legacy is something else. Anna always pressed forward, striving to succeed, despite any setback. This is a quality that I admire and is a wonderful example for all of us. May we honor her memory by also always pressing forward, striving to succeed, despite any setbacks.”

Anna was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. She will be remembered with love, admiration and gratitude by her family, friends and colleagues around the world.