/ 4 June 2013

I celebrate the ‘f*** you’ behind Pussy Riot’s eyes

Pussy Riot members
Pussy Riot members

In the midst of Russia's Ural mountains lies the industrial town of Berezniki. It is not a town famous for anything much but its contribution as the world's largest supplier of potash is about to be overshadowed. And yet this fame may not be the kind it would like on its Wikipedia page.

As of today, Maria Alyokhina, a member of the Russian punk feminist collective Pussy Riot, is on the 10th day of a hunger strike. She is protesting at the decision of prison officials to prevent her from attending a parole hearing that might have cut short the sentence she is currently serving in Berezniki's prison camp. As it happened she was subsequently denied parole anyway.

The reason for her parole being refused was that she had "failed to repent for her crime". And what was this crime? The crime that landed her two years' imprisonment in a remote jail, five months of which she has spent in solitary confinement? Just over a year ago she and three other members of the feminist punk-rock collective Pussy Riot danced around the altar of Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow while shouting, "Mother of God, blessed Virgin, drive out Putin." Two years! For disrespecting the church?

But, of course, protecting the delicate sensibilities of the Russian Orthodox church is not the true reason for the unusually punitive attitude of the Russian authorities towards these women (for example, the legal right of two of them to suspend their sentence on account of being mothers was denied).

Great political awakening
The two-year sentence was as clear a signal as you could ask for that this grass-roots feminist, anti-authoritarian and anti-Putin protest movement had the powers that be well and truly scared. The Russian authorities fear the example that a protest movement can move off the streets and into direct action, even if it's non-violent action, and this fear is the driving force behind Alyokhina's continued persecution.

For me, the case of Pussy Riot has been a great political awakening for two important reasons. First, they are young idealists. They identify themselves as being part of a younger generation who are not represented by Russia's new autocracy. Alyokhina herself states: "When we talk about Putin, we have in mind first and foremost not Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin but the system that he himself created – the power vertical, where all control is carried out effectively by one person. And that power vertical is uninterested, completely uninterested, in the opinion of the masses. And what worries me most of all is that the opinion of the younger generations is not taken into consideration."

They speak in a language of political protest that my generation has all but abandoned. The language of freedom-fighting was so co-opted by the baby boomers in order to express their now hopelessly compromised ideologies that no other generation could emulate it without a smirk. This has created an apathetic generation in the west, with young people no longer distinguishing between the old order and the new. To see a protest movement with its young members employing this language suggests a hopefulness and rage that I feel is intensely important for others of their generation to see, and that I personally have found deeply inspiring.

Secondly, they embody a real feminist anger and uncompromisingly scornful attitude to the patriarchal values that women have been taught to accept as the status quo. They reject the pantomime of equality in which we are expected to perform. Women in the public eye who can genuinely be called nonconformist are vital for expanding the horizons of other women. It was figures such as the musicians Kim Gordon and PJ Harvey who taught me, when I was 14, what a truly independent spirit looked like. When I see what my daughter will be told a "strong woman" looks like, I see women in their underwear sucking in their tummies with a look of terror on their faces. This isn't what I want for her and I celebrate the obvious, unadulterated "fuck you" that lies behind Pussy Riot's eyes.

Courage
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When I took part in an event hosted by the Royal Court theatre last year, where myself and a group of other actors performed some plays inspired by Pussy Riot, interspersed with their writings, I had the chance to dress up in pink tights and a fluoro balaclava and jump up and down and scream and shout – and all this when I was six months pregnant. It was a treat to get the chance to be them for a moment, to replicate the courage and exuberance of their moment of protest in the cathedral.

But I am glad I am not sharing a moment in Maria Alyokhina's life today. Cruelly separated from her child, enduring months in solitary confinement, threatened with violence and with the might of the Russian state squaring up to her – when faced with a fate such as this I would undoubtedly crumble. But that's why I'm not in Pussy Riot: they are made of stronger stuff. Putin – beware.Guardian News and Media 2013

Ramola Garai is a British actress who has worked in film, theatre and television.