A week has passed since the murder of Anastasia Yeshchenko, a fellow female historian of the 18th & 19th centuries. Not surprisingly, there is virtually no coverage in the English language press about who she was but a lot about her murderer. I'd like redress this imbalance here. 
From a Russian source, @nokingbutCaesar I was sent some translations of what's being said about her in Russia. She is described as 'An honest and truthful woman who was never afraid of having an unpopular opinion if she believed it was truth'.
@nokingbutCaesar She is also described as 'a kind person and a good listener'. She liked step aerobics and the poetry of Mayakovsky. Her brother is a football player, her father a PE teacher. Her mother works in the police force. Anastasia is described by those who knew her as 'a romantic soul'.
@nokingbutCaesar She was a committed historian, passionate about the Napoleonic era, to the extent that her friends often joked that she was born in the wrong century. To any historian, those are familiar sentiments. Her career was a promising one. At 24, she had her whole life ahead of her.
@nokingbutCaesar I'm sure there is so much more to say about this fellow historian, this woman who could have been any one of us, this person who we might have met at a conference or a festival and laughed with or with whom we might have discussed history. I wish the press cared a bit more.
@nokingbutCaesar In these sensational cases of murder the murderer always gets the last word and a deranged killer will say anything to defend himself. In this case he says she attacked him with a knife because she was jealous of his children. We'll never know the truth, because he shot her.
@nokingbutCaesar Where femicide is concerned, there is always an element of victim blaming present, and it's on this point that the press usually jumps (enthusiastically). 'I thought this girl was an ideal creature and she gradually turned into a beast from a scary fairy tale', her killer said.
@nokingbutCaesar In other words, she was asking for it. They are always 'asking for it', these women who die at the hands of men who 'love' them. Anastasia's brother presents another picture - one of a jealous, violent lover who didn't want her to go to a party with her friends that night.
@nokingbutCaesar There are also hints that Anastasia was an adulteress - women who are 'asking for it' are always shown to be sexually unfaithful, sexually promiscuous and contravening the feminine norms - even in the 21st century. She was a bad woman = 'asking for it'.
@nokingbutCaesar Her murderer (whose name I will not mention) was a man with a violent past. He attacked another girlfriend with an iron, apparently, yet people were happy enough to look the other way. You know how it is with these great men of genius and these silly little girls.
@nokingbutCaesar Anastasia Yeshchenko is any one of us. She is your childhood friend, your sister, the woman you work with. She's the one with the swinging ponytail in your step aerobics class. She's the one who brings her coffee to the library. She is not a dismembered body. #ЯМыАнастасияЕщенко
