The punk band Pussy Riot, to which I belong, is a musical group that conducts unexpected performances in different urban spaces. Pussy Riot’s songs address topical political issues. The interests of the group members are political activism, ecology, and the elimination of authoritarian tendencies in the Russian state system through the creation of a civil society.
Since its origin in October 2011, the band has played concerts in the subway, on the roof of a trolleybus, on the roof of the detention center for administrative detainees, in clothing stores, at fashion shows, and on the Lobnoye Mesto in Red Square. We believe that our art should be accessible to everyone, therefore we perform in diverse public spaces. Pussy Riot never means to show any disrespect to any viewers or witnesses of our punk concerts. This was the case on the roof of the trolley bus and on the Lobnoye Mesto, and this was the case at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
On February 21, 2012, the Pussy Riot band performed its punk prayer “Virgin Mary, Put Putin Away,” at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. In early March 2012 three members of the group were imprisoned because of our music and political activism. The themes of our songs and performances are dictated by the present moment. We simply react to what is happening in our country, and our punk performances express the opinion of a sufficiently large number of people. In our song “Virgin Mary, Put Putin Away,” we reflected the reactions of many Russian citizens to the patriarch’s calls for votes for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin during the presidential election of March 4, 2012.
We, like many of our fellow citizens, wrestle against the treachery, deceit, bribery, hypocrisy, greed, and lawlessness particular to the current authorities and rulers. This is why we were upset by the political initiative of the patriarch and could not fail to express that. The performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was not committed on the grounds of religious enmity and hatred. Equally, we harbor no hatred toward Orthodox Christians. Orthodox Christianity worships the same values we do: mercy, forgiveness, justification, love, and freedom. We are not enemies of Christianity. We care about preserving the good opinion of Orthodox Christians. We want all of them to be on our side—on the side of anti-authoritarian civil society activists. That is why we went to the cathedral.
We came with what we can and what we have: our musical performance. During this performance we intended to express our concern that the rector of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church—the patriarch—supports a politician who forcefully suppresses the civil society that is dear to us.
I would like to emphasize that, while in the cathedral, we did not utter any insulting words toward the church, toward Christians, or toward God. The words we spoke and our entire punk performance aimed to express our disapproval of a specific political event: the patriarch’s support of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, who took an authoritarian and antifeminist course of action. Our performance contained no aggression toward the audience, but only a desperate desire to change the political situation in Russia for the better. Our emotions and expressiveness came from that same desire. If our passion appeared offensive to any spectators, we are sorry for that. We had no intention of offending anyone. We hope that those who cannot understand us will forgive us. Most of all, we want people to hold no grudges against us.
We very much wish that people would not see our denial of guilt under Article 213, Part 2 of the Russian Criminal Code as audacity, insolence, or our unwillingness or inability to admit our mistakes. It seems to me that those who were distressed by our songs tend to interpret our denial of guilt in this way. I believe that we are all victims of the most perfect misunderstanding and confusion of words and legal terms.
My key point is that I separate the legal and ethical assessments of our performance of “Virgin Mary, Put Putin Away.” This is a very important—probably the most important—thing in this proceeding. I insist that the criminal side of our story must not be confused with the ethical one. Our denial of guilt does not mean our unwillingness to explain our actions or to apologize for the distress brought about by our performance, and I would like everyone, especially the victims, to try to understand that.
My assessment of the Pussy Riot punk prayer is this: our ethical mistake was that we brought our newly developed genre—the unexpected political punk performance—to the cathedral. We did not think that our actions might offend some. In fact, we have performed in various places throughout Moscow since October 2011, and everywhere—in the subway, in stores, on the roof of the detention center, on the Lobnoye Mesto—people received our actions with humor, cheerfulness, or, at the very least, with a sense of irony. Similarly, based on the experience of our previous performances, we had no idea that our punk performance could hurt or offend someone. If anyone was offended by our performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, then I am ready to admit that we made an ethical mistake. This was, indeed, a mistake because we had no conscious intent to offend anyone. Our ethical—I emphasize ethical and not criminal—fault lies in the fact that we allowed ourselves to respond to the patriarch’s call to vote for Vladimir Putin with our performance at the cathedral, to share our political position on his political statements with an audience. This is our ethical lapse of judgment, and I emphasize and acknowledge it, and I apologize for it.
However, our ethical slip matches no article of the Criminal Code.
We have been in prison for five months now, but our actions do not constitute a crime.
Our violation of the rules of church conduct differs substantially from the accusations that we now face, of hatred and enmity toward the entire Orthodox religion and all its believers. One does not follow logically from the other. I shudder every time I read the indictment that we went to the cathedral out of contempt and hatred toward Christians. These are terrible, awful words and incredibly strong, terrible accusations. Our motivation was purely political and artistic. I agree that, perhaps, we did not have an ethical right to bring them into the cathedral’s ritual space. But we do not hate anyone.
Think about it: What are hatred and enmity? Neither is a joke. No one should label people with them just like that. Perjury is happening here. For five months we have suffered from slander. It is not easy for me to withstand being cynically and cruelly labeled with feelings that I have never experienced toward any living being on earth. The prosecution accuses us of hiding our true motives (which supposedly are religious hatred and enmity) to avoid punishment. However, we do not lie; we have principles, and one is to always tell the truth. We did not betray our principles even though the investigators detained us and tried to force us to admit our guilt under Article 231 (Part 2). Such an admittance would label us with false motives—hatred and enmity—and crush and destroy us as honest people. The investigators repeatedly told us that if we plead guilty, we would be released. We refused.
If we admit our guilt under Article 231 (Part 2), we defame ourselves. The truth is more precious to us than anything, even more than our freedom. Thus, I think there is no reason not to trust our words. We will not lie, certainly. The content of our laptops and hard drives is presented in the criminal case, and it refutes the prosecution’s version of our motives. These materials prove that we were not motivated by religious hatred or enmity. Anyone who considers the content of our laptops and hard drives will clearly see that our motivation was purely political. Volumes 3 and 4 of our criminal case contain our criticism of Putin’s authoritarian policies and our reflections on the benefits of peaceful civil protests. Volumes 3 and 4 contain our texts about feminism and interviews with the Pussy Riot band. Not a single word is about religious hatred or enmity.
In all of those laptops and hard drives, the prosecution has not found a single piece of evidence confirming this suggested motive, and now they are trying to get out of their predicament by making illogical conclusions. In our interviews after our performance on February 21, 2012, we repeatedly said that we treated Christianity with great consideration and respect. The prosecution, realizing their lack of evidence of our religious hatred, has resorted to the next move. They now claim that our statements of loyalty toward Christianity were meant to cover up our true attitude toward the religion in an attempt to minimize the backlash against the illegal act we committed at the cathedral. These statements are illogical because we have publicly stated our positive attitude toward religion on February 21, 2012, and on other dates—way before the news that a criminal case had been initiated against us.
The conclusion that we “seek revenge for Hypatia’s death” is so absurd that even people who still doubted our intentions now realize that the prosecution has absolutely no evidence of the motive of hatred. Therefore neither the motive nor the elements of a crime exist.
Two expert reports ordered by the investigation found no motive of hatred or enmity in our actions. However, for some unfortunate reason, the indictment fails to mention these reports. The experts concluded that none of our song lyrics, our activities, or our video contain any linguistic features of dishonor or insult toward Orthodox Christians, the Orthodox church officials, or other religious groups. Neither do they contain any linguistic evidence of hostile attitudes toward the Orthodox religion, Orthodox believers, or people of other religious groups. Moreover, the experts noted that the behavior of our group had no psychological signs of hostility: the girls did not commit aggressive or violent acts against anyone.
In summary, we had no motive of religious hatred or enmity, nor did we conduct any crime under Article 213, Part 2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
—Nadezhda Tolokonnikova
Hypatia of Alexandria, an ancient Greek philosopher in Roman Egypt, was the first historically noted woman in mathematics. She taught philosophy and astronomy in Alexandria at the time when positions in science were predominantly occupied by men. Hypatia was highly regarded for her knowledge, extraordinary dignity, and virtue. She died in an incident when Christian monks seized her on the street, beat her, and dragged her body to a church, where they mutilated her flesh and burned her remains.