Pussy Riot

Masha Gessen, the Russian-American journalist, has consistently challenged the Putin regime's descent in militarism, xenophobia, authoritarianism and strident homophobia.  Although the Russian president currently enjoys enormous popularity at home, his many years in power have helped to undermine Russia's always fragile democratic traditions.  Under Putin, the Russian government has systematically dismantled everything associated with liberal democracy, including fair elections, a free press, an independent judiciary, a healthy separation between church and state, and even a basic respect for human rights. Gessen is one of Russia's bravest souls, writing about a regime that has repeatedly ignored the law to attack or perhaps even kill its political and sometimes even cultural opponents.  Gessen's book doesn't purport to be dispassionate journalism.  Instead, the book is a systematic indictment of Putin's persecution of a group of young punk activists.

Gessen's book is a collective biography of a group of controversial women whose protest in one of Russia's holiest sites brought them both censure and fame.  While Gessen doesn't try to portray any of the young women as unblemished victims, she clearly believes their treatment by authorities and jail time, was unfairly harsh to say the least.  For the most part, Gessen tries to let the women speak for themselves.  This is fortunate for the women, since they all come across as brave, thoughtful, ethical, articulate, and intelligent dissenters.  Clearly, Gessen believes that the women of Pussy Riot belong in the same category as Russia's most celebrated political or religious martyrs, including Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Brodsky, Akhmatova, Solzhenitsyn, and Sinyavsky.  In fact, members of Pussy Riot have written courtroom speeches and letter that would could stand up against even Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s justly famous Letter from a Burmingham Jail.  Indeed, the strength of Pussy Riots' appeals are that they do what both King and Sinyavsky did in their trials, that is, they alluded to a long and cherished tradition of moral and political thinking.  Pussy Riots' protest songs are themselves eloquent artistic expressions of dissent.

Of course, one can't help but sympathize with ordinary Russians, many of whom must have been shocked by Pussy Riots' decision to take over a cathedral in an act of performance art and political protest.  After all, how difficult must it be for average folks to understand a message of liberal democracy laced with feminism and punk aestheticism?  And how much more difficult must it be for average Russians to make sense of this strange performance when it has almost no access to independent news sources?  Ultimately, Pussy Riot members may be lucky to have finally been released from jail at all.  Perhaps only the Olympics saved them. The cards were always stacked against them.  The Russian government was always fully prepared to employ every means to harrass its most independent citizens, including unorthodox police and judicial actions and, ultimately, cruel and unusual jail sentences.

In the end of course the author, who uses Pussy Riots' own words to make her point, makes her case. As one of the women asserts at her trial, the turth is inherently more powerful than the combined forces of Russian authoritarianism.