CHERNOV’S CHOICE

By Sergey Chernov

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: February 27, 2013 (Issue # 1748)

Sunday, March 3 marks the first anniversary of the imprisonment of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, members of the feminist punk collective Pussy Riot. Symbolically, the arrests took place on the eve of the election that landed Putin back in the presidential chair amid public cries of rigged voting and other gross violations.

The female group, clad in bright clothes and colored balaclavas, became in some ways the face of the movement of those sick of fraud and televised lies, and who opposed a regime that was set on keeping hold of power at any cost.

They also became the first people to be imprisoned for staging protests, on the highly dubious charges of “hooliganism on the grounds of religious hatred,” a few months before the Russian authorities started to arrest and imprison people for taking part in the May 6, 2012 mass demonstration in Moscow.

It was clear that there was no “hooliganism” (as defined by the Russian law) or “religious hatred” in the group’s “punk prayer,” called “Holy Mother of God, Drive Putin Away.” What there was, was a protest against the Russian Orthodox Church’s support for Putin, whose rule Patriarch Kirill described as a “miracle.”

One year later, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina are in remote penal colonies, while the Pussy Riot videos are banned as “extremist” (but were still available on YouTube in St. Petersburg when checked on Tuesday).

Despite the fact that the original protest has been largely crushed by the authorities, Pussy Riot’s unsanctioned performances seem to have set an example and shown a way towards restoring some measure of freedom in Russia.

“As far as we can see, Putin is scared only of unsanctioned rallies; that’s why we promote holding unauthorized protests in our songs,” Pussy Riot said in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times in January 2012, a month before the arrests.

“The authorities will not get scared and make concessions because they are rallies that they sanctioned themselves.”

Yekaterina Samutsevich, who was arrested March 16, was the third member of the group to be arrested and was initially sentenced to a two-year prison term that was later was suspended by an appeals court. Samutsevich believes that Pussy Riot’s case has brought the issue the issue of human rights violations being committed by the Kremlin to international attention

“There was understanding about the situation in Russia,” Samutsevich said in a recent interview with this paper. “Because Putin and the powers-that-be say that we have democracy and freedom of speech. It turned out that this is not true, that it is all lies; that Russia had huge problems with freedom of speech, with human rights.”

Global events expressing solidarity with Pussy Riot are being held around the world this week to mark the first anniversary of the arrests of the group members.