Local support for Pussy Riot

The Pussy Riot verdict was met by protests all over the world and a new song released by other members of the group.

By Sergey Chernov

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: August 22, 2012 (Issue # 1723)

ALEXANDER BELENKY / SPT Protesters gathered on the Field of Mars on Friday, Aug. 17 to show their support for Pussy Riot. The t-shirt reads, ‘Free Pussy Riot!’

The two-year sentences a Moscow court handed down to three young women from the feminist punk group Pussy Riot have sparked waves of protests and indignation around the world.

The members of Pussy Riot have already been imprisoned for nearly six months and have been dubbed “prisoners of conscience” by Amnesty International.

The verdict was condemned by governments, human rights organizations, artists and ordinary people around the globe.

Despite the decision to send the women to prison for two years, Pussy Riot reacted with a new song and video — “Putin Lights the Fires of Revolution” — only hours after the verdict.

In Russia, the main protest took place in Moscow, as hundreds came to the Khamovnichesky District Court, where the verdict was announced at 3 p.m. on Friday. There was also a sizable protest in St. Petersburg.

In Moscow, police arrested about 60 people outside of the court where the verdict was read, including former chess world champion Garry Kasparov as he spoke to the press. Kasparov was beaten by police officers and later accused of biting a policeman.

OMON special force police also entered the premises of the Turkish Embassy in order to arrest a protester who had climbed onto the fence and donned a balaclava.

“I came because I am concerned about this situation and I am very sorry that there are so few people protesting,” said Marina Granatshtein, 30, who stood near Gostiny Dvor on Nevsky Prospekt with a sign reading, “The Pussy Riot trial is an embarrassment to Russian society.”

“There are a great number of people protesting against this monstrous, Kafkaesque trial on the Internet and in their own kitchens, but very few people are taking to the streets, which is a pity.”

A middle-aged woman in glasses struck up a conversation with Granatshtein, arguing that Pussy Riot had chosen the wrong place for their protest. The woman deliberately positioned herself to obstruct Granatshtein’s poster from passersby.

“We Russians respect our traditions. That’s why we are the only nation that has preserved some of its spirituality,” she said, remarking that Granatshtein was not ethnically Russian.

“How did you reach that conclusion?” Granatshtein asked. “I can see it from the way you look,” the woman replied. “You’re all enemies of the people,” she said as she left, citing the Stalin-era term.

Granatshtein, who identified herself as a journalist writing about animal issues, said that despite a hostile reaction from several passersby, the majority had reacted positively.

“This was the third woman to react in such a way, but before that everyone was smiling and supportive,” she said.

“This idea that all Russian people have united against Pussy Riot, that everybody has been insulted [by the performance they gave in the Moscow church] is not true. This is simply the version enforced by the state media.”

Two to three hundred protesters came to the Field of Mars, the garden in central St. Petersburg whose centerpiece is a memorial to revolutionaries killed by the Tsar’s troops in February 1917.

The activists held posters supporting the imprisoned women and waited for the verdict, while tweets and news from the courtroom in Moscow were announced through a megaphone.

Some cited the New Testament on their posters (“I desire mercy, not sacrifice”) or compared Jesus, who asked for people to forgive each other, to the Russian Orthodox Church’s Patriarch Kirill, who said that “attempts to justify blasphemy of such a degree are unacceptable.”

Other posters read “Art will defeat the Inquisition,” “You don’t frighten us” and “Clergymen should remember 1917,” although most simply had the phrase “Free Pussy Riot” written on them in both Russian and English.

One sign compared the Pussy Riot trial to the Beilis trial in imperial Russia in 1913, during which Menahem Mendel Beilis, a Kievan Jew working as an accountant at a brick factory, was falsely charged with “ritual murder.” Another poster compared it to the Dreyfus trial in France.

“They are connected because of the public reaction caused by the Dreyfus affair then and the Pussy Riot trial now,” said Yelena Smirno, 24, who was holding the sign.

“I came here because I believe that Pussy Riot’s performance was not hooliganism, a mistake or simply an attempt to draw attention to their art, but a well thought-out political protest, which caused the reaction that they wanted it to cause,” she said.

“It’s similar to what happened with the Dreyfus affair: Everybody split into Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards. The group of people who supported Dreyfus were contemptuously called ‘so-called intellectuals,’ just as they call Pussy Riot ‘so-called contemporary artists,’ ‘so-called intelligentsia,’ ‘so-called dissidents.’ And the Dreyfus supporters said, ‘We’re not ‘so-called intellectuals,’ we’re the real thing.’”

Smirno said she was a historian and philosopher, specializing in the cultural connections between Russia and France.

“I came to support the three young women of Pussy Riot, who have been unjustly imprisoned for nearly six months,” said Tatyana, 29, a university lecturer. She did not give her last name.

“I think that their punishment is huge and baseless, I support the feminist ideas they expressed in their performance. I think it’s important, the way they stirred society, and this song can’t be suppressed or killed. That’s why I am here, and this is the least that I can do for them today.”

Margarita Saakova, a poet from Stavropol, in the south of Russia, recited a poem titled “To Pussy Riot.”

“Have you noticed how thin the air has become?” the opening line read.

“We followed [the art trend] actionism and Pussy Riot long before the church performance, as well as the Voina art group, which Pussy Riot branched off from,” said Saakova, 22.

“When they were detained, it was a shock. How can people be detained for art? They did not do anything illegal. According to Russian law, they can’t be prosecuted at all, especially not under the criminal code.”

“The conviction effectively puts a ban on art in Russia,” said Anton Gubanov, a 23-year-old poet, also from Stavropol.

“I think that the Pussy Riot performance was an artistic act. Putting a ban on art in Russia is a shortcut to the concentration camp. The verdict is a triumph of religious superstition. It’s the same superstition that created the Inquisition, which burned great scholars in bonfires, and caused Islamist bombers to blow themselves up and fly into skyscrapers.”

He said that he and Saakova had arrived in St. Petersburg as tourists, but came to the Field of Mars to support Pussy Riot when they learned about the rally.

The police stopped any attempts protesters made to wear Pussy Riot-style colored balaclavas, citing the new law on public assemblies, which forbids protesters from covering their faces. But no arrests were made.

Meanwhile, a concert in support of Pussy Riot was announced last Monday in St. Petersburg. According to the organizers, it will feature DDT frontman Yury Shevchuk (solo or with the band), Televizor, PTVP, the Electric Guerillas and Gleb Samoilov. It is scheduled for Glavclub’s summer stage on Sept. 9.

“It will be in support of Pussy Riot and other political prisoners,” said Televizor frontman Mikhail Borzykin, who co-organized the event.

According to Borzykin, a dozen more bands from St. Petersburg and Moscow want to participate, but the final lineup has not yet been set. Boris Grebenshchikov, founder of the seminal local rock band Akvarium, declined to participate despite previously signing a letter of support for the group.