Artist Profile
Pussy Riot
Russia
Status: Detained
UPDATE: In May of 2022 it was revealed that Pussy Riot member Lucy Shtein had successfully escaped from house arrest in Russia earlier in March. She reunited with her girlfriend and fellow Pussy Riot activist, Masha Alyokhina, after the latter's similar escape from criminal charges in Russia in May. Both had disguised themselves as food delivery persons while fleeing the country. Shtein and Alyokhina's escapes come as Pussy Riot member Aisoltan Niyazova remains detained in Croatia on an Interpol order initiated by Turkmenistan. She has been accused of stealing $40 million from Turkmenistan's central bank. Amnesty International has called for Niyazova not to be extradited.
Dancing in brightly colored balaclavas and singing “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, chase Putin away,” Pussy Riot first captured the attention of the world in February 2012. Five members of the collective had staged a performance in front of the iconostasis, an area reserved for men, at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Though their performance was put to an end by church security, footage from the scene soon turned into a viral music video. This daring act of protest against the Orthodox Church’s support for then-prime minister Vladimir Putin, an event now remembered as “Punk Prayer,” marked the beginning of Pussy Riot’s international notoriety.
Putin was elected to his third presidential term a few weeks after the cathedral flash mob. Soon after, performers Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were arrested and charged with “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” Some Russian listeners heard the song as an attack on the church rather than as a protest against Putin, and Patriarch Kirill claimed that the performance had desecrated the church.
However, as the Pusssy Riot trial received international media coverage, high-profile celebrities began to share letters of support from around the world. They were soon named one of the 100 most influential contemporary artists of 2012 by ArtReview. A Russian-British documentary about their cathedral performance, called “Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer,” won a World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013.
Founded in March 2011, Pussy Riot was formed during a conversation among artists on the topic of Riot Grrrl, an underground feminist punk movement from the early 1990s. The artist-founders were inspired by the international subculture and elected to form a punk band of their own. As Tolokonnikova put it in a recent interview with K(Y)NK Magazine, the founders “wanted to create a whole new genre that other performance artists all around the globe could use to identify their art.”
Participants agreed to act anonymously and use pseudonyms whenever possible. The plan was to hold performances across Moscow, making recordings of the political acts to circulate online as music videos. Their platform incorporates a wide range of ideals, from anti-Putinism to feminism to LGBTQ+ activism to environmental justice.
Their first major song was “Освободи брусчатку [Free the pavement stones],” which lamented upcoming elections in the State Duma. Leading up to the December 2011 elections, the group traveled around Moscow on an unofficial tour, performing the song in as many public places as possible. The heavily politicized lyrics of the song invited Russians to take up the same cause as those who had protested in Tahrir Square a year earlier as part of the Arab Spring.
In January 2012, Pussy Riot had what some consider to be their “breakthrough performance.” Dressed in colorful balaclavas and dresses, the group took to Red Square with flags and instruments to play “Путин зассал [Putin wet himself].” The song was inspired by protests that took place that December, where people had rallied against the upcoming election and Putin’s announcement that he would seek a new term as president. “A riot in Russia,” they declared in the song, “is the charisma of a protest.”
Ultimately, it was “Punk Prayer,” released a month later, that turned Pussy Riot into a household name. After the trial in July 2012, Alyokhina, Samutsevich, and Tolokonnikova were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. Samutsevich was released on probation in October of that year, while the other two served time at a prison camp. Tolokonnikova, imprisoned in the Mordavia region, wrote a public statement describing the horrendous conditions in the penal colony. Alyokhina went on a hunger strike at a prison in the Perm region, after which she was transferred to a different camp.
Both Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were set free a few months before the official end of their sentence, in anticipation of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Pussy Riot members called the move a “PR stunt,” and Tolokonnikova invited all who were willing to boycott the upcoming Olympics. A number of Pussy Riot participants traveled to Sochi, where they were beaten by Cossacks and detained while trying to gather footage for a new music video.
Their time in Russian forced labor camps moved Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina to address the horrors of Russia’s criminal justice system. In 2014, they launched Zona Prava, a prisoners’ rights NGO that provides a range of services, including a hotline for incarcerated individuals and their families to request legal assistance.
Some of the group’s more recent creative projects incorporate discourse about Russian corruption, American and Russian police violence, and political issues related to gender and sexuality. In “I Can’t Breathe,” Pussy Riot’s first song in English, Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova are slowly buried alive in Russian riot police uniforms. They sing to honor Eric Garner, who was murdered by police in New York in 2014. The video establishes a powerful parallel between American and Russian police brutality, which take different forms but inflict undeniable harm in their respective countries.
“Make America Great Again,” released days before Trump was elected in 2016, also addresses the American political system. “Let other people in/Listen to your women/Stop killing Black children/Make America Great Again,” they sing in the song’s slow, jazzy chorus. The video features scenes of Pussy Riot members dressed as Donald Trump, and imagines how America would eventually look under his rule.
Several former and current members have left Russia for good. In 2018, Lusine Djanyan and Alexei Knedlyakovsky publicly announced that they were seeking asylum in Sweden, citing that they would face persecution if they continued to reside in Russia. Neither of them had participated in the “Punk Prayer,” but both had made art in support of fellow member Tolokonnikova during her incarceration. Initially denied asylum, they appealed the Swedish government’s decision and were granted asylum in 2019.
There has been a quiet justice in the aftermath of Punk Prayer: In 2018, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned Russia for its handling of the Pussy Riot case in 2012. Citing humiliation, overcrowding, lack of access to lawyers, and most importantly, an infringement of the right to free expression, ECHR ordered the Russian government to pay 37,000 Euros plus legal fees to Pussy Riot.
As the Russian government increasingly cracks down on freedom of expression, the group has continued to face censorship and harassment for their political activism. In January 2021, three members of the group were arrested for participating in nationwide protests calling for the release of jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. The following month, two members of the group were placed under house arrest for allegedly sharing posts on social media encouraging people to join protests decrying the jailing of Navalny. As of July 2021, several members are jailed or under house arrest in Moscow.
Nonetheless, a decade after the events of Punk Prayer, Pussy Riot has grown increasingly serious about both politics and music. When the group was formed, none of the members played any instruments—and now, with 2021 releases like “TOXIC” and “SEXIST,” music has become their primary focus. The group regularly collaborates with other musical artists and has shifted to a more pop sound. They continue to make art and to demand change.
As Tolokonnikova said in a 2018 interview with PEN America: “I believe that art is a device to get to know the world better and challenge it to become better.”
By Rachel Landau, July 2021. Rachel Landau is an incoming MA student at Stanford University’s Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies.
