Stephen Cox | Staff Writer
Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in Crime and Punishment that ‘nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery’. This quotation came to mind on writing this article. His native country receives ample press coverage; between Edward Snowden, anti-LGBT measures and the Kremlin’s stance on Syria, Russia seems of late to have been in the news more often than is usual. However, one story we seem to hear less about at the moment is that of Pussy Riot, the feminist punk/performance art group. A provocative (in the words of one Orthodox activist, ‘devious’) band name has become synonymous the world over with the struggle for freedom of expression and the brutal totalitarianism of Putin’s Russia. But how?
For those unfamiliar with the group’s story, they formed on the same day in 2011 that Vladimir Putin was awarded a new six-year term. They consist of a variable membership of between 10 and 15 women who wear distinctive balaclavas and make short, angry songs and videos with a fiercely feminist, anti-authoritarian outlook. In February 2012, five members performed the 40-second ‘Mother of God, Drive Putin Away’ in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. As a result of this ‘punk prayer’, three of the group were arrested for ‘disrupting social order by an act of hooliganism’ designed ‘to incite religious hatred’. After a long drawn out trial process, two of the defendants, Nadezha Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, received two-year sentences in penal colonies; the third, Yekaterina Samutsevich, eventually secured a suspended sentence.
I remember seeing the scandalous cathedral protest on the news. I remember hearing about the trial and reading that the offenders had been sentenced. But in spite of Western media interest in the case, I didn’t follow it at the time. While I sympathised with the harsh treatment and disproportionate punishment bestowed upon the young women, the court procedure took place over such an extended period that it was easy to lose track of updates on the situation.
The case came to my attention again recently, a little over a year since the verdict was passed. Glancing through The Guardian’s music webpage, I was struck by a photo of imprisoned member Nadezha Tolokonnikova emblazoned with the headline ‘Why I have gone on hunger strike’. I didn’t know then that she was the second incarcerated member to resort to such tactics to demand fairer treatment; nonetheless I was shocked to read about her life in jail. There, ‘the hygienic and residential conditions of the camp are calculated to make the prisoner feel like a filthy animal without any rights’, where sewing uniforms for up to 17 hours a day is the norm. Her statement is akin to Solzhenitsyn’s most harrowing descriptions of the gulags—a barbaric indicator of how little has changed since the oppressive, abusive punishment of Soviet times. Tolokonnikova was forcibly placed in the prison hospital nine days after her strike began; she has threatened to begin it again if she is not transferred from her penal colony in the province of Mordovia.
It was extremely discomfiting to read of such suffering for an act which, if it happened in the UK, for instance, would warrant little more than a rap on the knuckles. However, quite apart from the anti-Putin sentiment of the ‘punk prayer’, much of the furore associated with the performance comes down to its criticism of religion’s influence on Russian society. Since the collapse of communism, the link between Orthodoxy and the Russian people has grown stronger in an attempt to shake off Soviet-era state atheism. Pussy Riot’s choice of location was crucial. The cathedral had been rebuilt in the 1990s after it was destroyed under Stalin; furthermore it was the location for the 2000 canonisation of the Romanovs, the royal family murdered in the 1917 Revolution. While the constitution remains secular and blasphemy is nominally not a criminal offence, the group’s provocation evidently touched a nerve. Putin himself said that Pussy Riot’s performance brought about ‘painful memories of the early Soviet period’—another sign of the ghosts of the past lurking beneath the surface of modern Russia.
What makes the Pussy Riot case fascinating is the debate it has engendered. The women’s cause was widely championed in Western liberal circles—the same has not been true of Russia. While many politically engaged young people have protested at the treatment of the group, a Levada Center survey revealed that 44 per cent of Russians polled believed the trial to be ‘fair and impartial’. One of the lawyers for the prosecution appeared to see no irony in saying, ‘now people think all liberals are intolerant fascists who don’t listen to the opinions of others’. An enraged man at an Orthodox prayer meeting (called as a result of Pussy Riot’s performance) claimed that ‘in the 16th Century we would have burned them’, while an elderly woman at the same event declared that ‘they walked into the heart of Russia and took a shit’. Even The Guardian’s online comment streams contain numerous vitriolic posts from keyboard critics. Some declare the band’s acts to be little more than publicity stunts, and that the group have exploited their status as young women in Putin’s Russia to gain more media coverage than, say, a wrongfully accused prisoner in Guantánamo Bay could.
Of course, this entirely misses the point. As member Yekaterina Samutsevich pointed out in her opening statement for the defence, ‘if we had sung “Mother of God, protect Putin”, and “Mother of God, don’t become a feminist”, we would not be here right now’. Pussy Riot was formed in an attempt to raise consciousness of both women’s rights and the extreme lack of political transparency in Russia. To this end they appear to have succeeded, but at what cost? Tolokonnikova claimed during the hearing that ‘jail is not the worst place for a person who thinks’. This statement appears to rashly brush off any concerns about prison conditions, let alone what will happen when the convicted members are due to be released. Alyokhina’s mother spoke in the 2013 documentary Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer about receiving threats of an ‘Orthodox jihad’ when her daughter is released. Tolokonnikova told in her statement of fellow inmates’ claims of her preferential treatment from prison guards—even if this is true, it is hard to imagine similar favouritism from the authorities upon her release.
Perhaps the greatest reason for my interest in the case was the age and background of the convicted demonstrators. Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina are just 23 and 24 respectively; in spite of being university students roughly my age, the differences between my circumstances and their own are startling. I cannot imagine living in a country where one is so harshly punished for an apparently non-serious misdemeanour. The women involved are clearly very brave, and maybe more than a little foolhardy. That said, while I don’t subscribe to Pussy Riot’s own brand of extremist politics, if my rights as an Irish citizen and as a human were compromised similarly to those of its convicted members, perhaps this would not be the case.
