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Three members of Russian punk group Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in prison last week for protesting the Russian Orthodox Church and President Vladimir Putin in a church.
Even though the 2012 election had long since been a foregone conclusion to anyone with a basic understanding of the facts on the ground, there was still a fair deal of resistance to the inevitability of the soon-to-be reelection of Vladimir Putin. In addition to the ability to vote against Mr. Putin and participate in (the few remaining legal) opposition rallies, there were some off-the-beaten-path protests. One of the more notable ones came on the 21st of February, when a female punk rock group called Pussy Riot showed up at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour church in Moscow. After making the sign of the cross, they began to perform the song “Virgin Mary, Put Putin Away” as cameras rolled – the video intended for a music video. They were quickly whisked away by guards.
On the 3rd of March, the day before the election, two of the group’s members were arrested and charged with hooliganism. With the election of Mr. Putin sowed up in a total demolishing of the opposition the next day (63.6% for Mr. Putin, 17.18% for the next closest), the Russian legal system moved forward with making sure that the message was heard loud and clear: dissent against the established order will not be tolerated. A third member of the group was arrested on the 16th. The short trial began on the 30th of July and by the 17th of August the verdict was handed down – guilty, with two years imprisonment up next. The presiding judge, Judge Syrova, announced the verdict with this full-throated announcement that the not-state-religion (of which its leader strongly endorses Mr. Putin) trumps any freedom of speech concerns:
The Court considers that social justice and prevention of further possible crimes can only be achieved by restricting the defendants’ freedom and real imprisonment,” Judge Syrova said.
“By their actions, Samutsevich, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina seriously disrupted public order and the day-to-day running of the Cathedral. They showed blatant disrespect to church-goers and workers, and in doing so gravely offended their religious sensibilities.”
This flash-performance for a music video is what earned Pussy Riot two years in prison.
Reaction from pro-freedom groups has been predictably critical of Russia’s sentencing of the young women. From Amnesty International:
Amnesty International called the verdict “a bitter blow for freedom of expression” in Russia, adding it believes the decision was politically motivated.
“The Russian authorities should overturn the court ruling and release the members of Pussy Riot immediately and unconditionally,” said John Dalhuisen, director of Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia Programme.
“What Maria Alekhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich did was calculated to shock — and did shock many. But in sentencing them to two years’ imprisonment, Russia has set the limits of freedom of expression in the wrong place.”
From Human Rights Watch:
Tolokonnikova, Alyokhina and Samutsevich have said their actions in the Cathedral aimed at criticizing the close ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin, as well as the way in which the two institutions reinforce each other’s conservative approaches on such issues as gender equality and rights for gay people. The group was particularly critical of the Russian Patriarch Kirill for his alleged calls on Orthodox believers to vote for Putin in the May presidential election.
“It’s clear in this case that the women’s aim was to make a political statement, and it’s also clear that some found their actions offensive,” Williamson (Director, Europe and Central Asia) said. “But there is still a long way to go between an offensive political statement and a hate crime.”
There have been protests both in Russia and elsewhere in the wake of the Pussy Riot conviction.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev continued his odd role as being a supporter of freedom of speech, saying that the trial was “a completely pointless undertaking.” It was, if the end game was supposed to have something to do with fairness. It was perfectly useful if the end goal was to deliver the message that freedom of speech in today’s Russia has nothing to do with criticism of the state, the state religion, or walking deity/unofficial leader for life President Putin. The “who” that is being locked up in the Pussy Riot case is not so much the effected individuals as it is what they represent for Russia’s future:
Before their arrest, Tolokonnikova was a student of philosophy; Alekhina studied journalism and creative writing and was engaged in religious charities and environmental causes. Samutsevich, the oldest of the three, has a degree in computer programming. They are members of a larger group that also goes by the name Pussy Riot—they use a transliterated version of the English words—that combines radical performance with leftist ideas ranging broadly from anti-authoritarianism to feminism; the group cites figures such as Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva among their many sources of inspiration, as well as the American punk-rock band Bikini Kill and the riot-grrrl movement of the nineties.
Such thoughts, stances, and leanings run contrary to the Russia that the well-entrenched establishment wants to hang on to. A still shell-shocked generation from the economic depression and despair that ruled the country in the years either side of the collapse of the Soviet Union are very willing to trade in the rights of a few misguided punk rock girls for a continuation of the stability and relative prosperity that the country now enjoys. Russia does not yet have enough enlightened individuals to form a critical mass that can affect change and a true continuation down the path toward a more free society that the end of the Soviet era tried to usher in.
With Mr. Putin’s recent electoral trouncing and the outspoken support from the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, the establishment has tightened its grip on Russian society.
The most notable example of post-electoral critical mass in recent memory is still the 2004 “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine. There a 49.46 – 46.61 loss for Viktor Yushchenko was overturned in a second 51.99 – 44.20 vote after weeks of protest by his supporters, who correctly believed that their candidate had the election stolen away. The vote moved 5.38% toward Mr. Yushchenko and 5.26% away from his opponent. If you applied the same numbers to Russia’s 2012 election, Mr. Putin still trounces the opposition 58.34 – 22.56. Thus, either the “electoral fraud” in Russia is many times worse than it was in the Ukraine and Russia is much more effective in suppression or, tragically, while there is a very vocal and determined opposition to the Russian establishment, they are still a long, long way off from being able to take control of the country via the ballot box.
What is for certain, however, is that for the forseeable future, expression of dissenting thoughts against the establishment – political or religious – will certainly not be tolerated on any sort of moderate or large scale by the government. The three convicted members of Pussy Riot will give up two years of their lives in support for that cause, and will likely be released into a Russia with just as much of an entrenched establishment and just as little of a hope for dissent in 2014.
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