Birds on the Brain

Pussy Riot On Trial in Russia : The New Yorker

When the accused are finally given the opportunity to respond to the prosecution and the defense, they talked about art, politics, rights; they sound thoughtful, logical, articulate, and, amazingly, strong-spirited.

Katya Samutsevich: “The Patriarch spoke many times about the supernatural role of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in the Russian history and called for the believers to vote for him and his party. He said that Orthodox Christians don’t join protest rallies. This way he insulted many believers who have their own political opinions. We were perplexed by the Patriarch’s statements and his instructions how people should vote and how they should behave in political life….”

Nadia Tolokonnikova: “Our group took shape when the congress of United Russia (the pro-Kremlin force dominating the Russian parliament), which even stylistically looked like a congress of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R., decided that Putin would once again become the next President. I was outraged by the words of the Patriarch that Putin “rectified the crooked path of history.”

Masha Alekhina: “I am accused of quasi-violent actions. But violence is used against me. I have been in jail since March 3rd; during this period law-enforcement officials, including operatives who handle cases of extremism, have come four times to talk with me. They threatened me mentioning my child, which, I think, is fully inadmissible. One person persuaded me to reject the services of my lawyer. He spoke with me accusingly: said, you are heirs of (Soviet) dissidents.”

The latest accusation is amazing in a country that had two decades ago this month gotten rid of the very Communist system that the dissidents had been fighting against. But the prosecution of Pussy Riot does, indeed, have a lot in common with the Soviet dissidents’ trials. Then as now, the judges didn’t care to conceal their bias; then as now, there was a clear sense that conviction was preordained. Then as now, those in the dock were voices of reason, honesty and morality, while their persecutors were cruel, absurd, and ultimately immoral. Then as now, the formal charge was a thin disguise. In 1964, the poet Joseph Brodsky was charged and convicted for “parasitism”; in 1968, the participants of the demonstration against Soviet invasion in Czechoslovakia were charged with violation of public order. The Pussy Riot women are tried for hooliganism and for inciting religious hatred.

There’s irony in how the role of the church has changed. Back in 1964, Brodsky said at the trial that he thought being a poet didn’t require any special education: “I think this is … from God.” Back then, a mere mention of God and faith was a mark of defiance, a challenge to Communism’s ideological supremacy. In the atheist Soviet state of those years, the church was allowed to exist, but it was fully marginalized, submissive to the state and readily coöperated with the Communist leadership. In Putin’s Russia, reverence for the Russian Orthodox church is an almost indispensable element of allegiance to the state; the status and clout of the church have been dramatically raised, but it has remained as servile as in the Soviet times.

Putin’s Russia is not Brezhnev’s U.S.S.R.—it’s a much freer and open country. Lots of people actively protest the prosecution of the Pussy Riot women; the international sympathy of art and music celebrities is thoroughly reported and broadly discussed. Back in the Soviet days, those who dared sign and circulate underground letters supporting dissidents commonly lost their jobs, or worse. Back then the only source of information about dissidents, their supporters, and their trials was foreign radio broadcasts. Taking records of political trials was a feat committed at the risk of one’s freedom, with hasty shorthand typewritten and smuggled out for publication abroad. Today, reporters and legal professionals are covering the trial online, their notes made instantly available to anyone with Internet access. Of the authorities who accused her of taking over from Soviet dissidents Masha Alekhina said, “I told them that I was proud to continue the dissidents’ traditions.”