Pussy Riot Revisited (A Tale Of Eastern Farce And Western Hypocrisy)
By Milan Djurasovic
29 September, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Collage | By Milan Djurasovic
Pussy Riot’s infamous protest is a story of a ‘punk’ band that proved to all the sourpusses that there is such thing as an overnight success. This globally celebrated group of young women has a number of provocative public art performances on their resume, but the performance that they were charged and jailed for, better known as a “Punk Prayer”, entailed exceptionally brave and lofty objectives. The protest was aimed at the Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill. The venue for the performance was Moscow’s 105 meters tall Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the tallest and most glamorous Orthodox Christian Church in the world. The plan was carried out perfectly. Five members of Pussy Riot barged into the Cathedral with their faces covered with colored balaclavas, shouted at the top of their lungs, danced and kicked on the ‘solea’ (the raised area of the cathedral in which women are not allowed), resisted arrest, and scared the Jesus out of the captive worshipers, mostly elderly women looking for some peace and quiet.
The girls were taken to jail, the edited and dubbed performance found its way on the internet (the only version Western media will show), and an immense upheaval and farce ensued. It is difficult to decide which one was more awash with absurdity, the trial of the Pussy Riot or the hypocrisy of Western media’s indignation. I will start with the former.
The trial opened with the defendants’ request for the judge, Marina Syrova, to delay the trial because they, the defendants, felt exhausted and hungry. After the initial refusal to interrupt the trial, the defendants’ lawyer threatened to ask for the judge’s replacement. The threat was effective. Judge Syrova interrupted the trial so that the girls could sleep and eat. About a week later, full and rested, the girls heard their indictment in which it was stated that they committed an act of “hooliganism, that is, a gross violation of public order expressing a clear disrespect for society, committed on the grounds of religious hatred or enmity.” The girls were also told that their performance “violated the feelings and faith of many Orthodox Christians and a defilement of the spiritual basis of the state.” Many witnesses of the performance were brought to court to describe which particular bodily movements that the girls made during the protest offended them the most, the defense wanted to bring in Alexei Navalny, a famous, a runner up in the most recent Moscow mayoral election, blogger and an agent of US-funded sedition, a man who had absolutely no relation to any of the Pussy Riot’s members, and some time later the girls were psychologically diagnosed (free of charge) with a “mixed-personality disorder.”
Although the trio pleaded not guilty, after realizing that their basic right (freedom of speech) collided with and encroached on other people’s basic right to have a place for undisturbed worship, the girls expressed their regret for unintended affronts and admitted that their performance was an “ethical mistake.” One of the band members asked that their crime be treated as a misdemeanor rather than a felony (In Russia hooliganism by itself is a misdemeanor that carries a fine of about 62 EUR or a 15-day jail sentence). The band’s apologies were mostly dismissed by the Russian Orthodox Church and other Orthodox groups and associations. In August 2012, three members of the band were sentenced to two years in prison, each for aggravated ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred’. Two of the women are currently serving their sentences, while a third was released with a suspended sentence on appeal.
The Russian public is divided on the issue of punishment that the girls’ received. The majority agrees that the two year sentence for a non-violent crime that also didn’t involve any material damage was excessively harsh. However, the polls conducted by the Levada-Center (a Russian non-governmental research organization) show that most Russians chose either mandatory labor or a large fine as adequate punishment.
The “Punk Prayer” at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior automatically involved innocent churchgoers who were not asked whether they would like to be part of it. In other words, Pussy Riot brought their show to a confined venue where people were bound to be disturbed by it. Their act would not have been nearly as offensive if they had performed it in a place where people were given a choice to simply shrug their shoulders and walk away if they thought it to be distasteful.
Another reason why the Pussy Riot protest didn’t have a profound impact on the Russian citizens, despite its unprecedented media coverage, is because most Russians, after having lived through the turbulent 1990s, are no longer surprised or shocked by anything. Under the rule of the former president Boris Yeltsin Russia plunged into nearly a decade of unimaginable self-abasement and poverty. While Yeltsin used tanks to tear down the elected Parliament, and while the Western powers and its internal Russian allies privatized and looted the most profitable Russian assets, a Russian female pop band by the name of Kombinaciya released a major hit song “American Boy” to let all the Russian men know that a Russian woman dreams of an American prince who will drive her in a Mercedes and bathe her in luxury. “Come quickly for me, I’m here!” they called for their American savior. On more than one occasion I have heard Russian men make a comparison of Pussy Riot to Kombinaciya. The similarity that they see in these two bands is that they are both comprised of young women who mock Russia because they foolishly think that the grass is greener on the other side.
Even though many Russians disagree with Putin on many issues, I would argue that most are at least tacitly appreciative that he put a stop to the embarrassment their country endured during the 1990s. It was Vladimir Putin who paid and raised pensions that Yeltsin neglected, and it was Putin who increased the average salaries and the living standard in Russia. Therefore, when Russians hear that Pussy Riot are being promoted and defended by people who are receiving donations that originate from the U.S. State Department, they become alarmed that Putin might be replaced by another Yeltsin, and are terrified at the prospect that the years of Wall Street and British unhindered plundering of their land are just around the corner.
The story of Pussy Riot would not be complete without a comment on the eagerness of the Western media to jump on any opportunity available to vilify Vladimir Putin and the current Russian government. Furthermore, with each new article or speech directed at Russia’s repression of free speech and artistic expression, the Western media is only highlighting its own hypocrisy. A great number of cases similar to the one of Pussy Riot have taken place in the West and have received lengthy jail sentences – almost without any media coverage, and definitely without Putin’s or Russia’s indignation.
Hypocrisy of the United States’ mainstream media coverage of the Pussy Riot trial reached the level of self-parody. Many of the major television networks in the United States attempted to criticize Russia’s crackdown on free speech with arguments that at all costs avoided the word “pussy”. “The punk rock girl band whose name we cannot mention on morning television”, was heard on The Today Show (a daily American morning television show on NBC), and “the female punk rock band named after a female body part which we are not going to say”, was heard all over Fox News channel. But the absurdity of the United States’ media coverage (in this case lack of it) of the Pussy Riot saga reached its apex when six Pussy Riot supporters were arrested for blocking traffic and for wearing face masks in front of the Saint Nicholas Russian Orthodox church in New York.
Next to all of this silliness there are many comparable cases that have either been carefully swept under the rug or have not been mentioned at all in the Western media. One of them is the case of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the writer and producer who made the “Innocence of Muslims”. Even during the peak of the protests and riots that took place in many countries around the world, we haven’t heard nearly as much about the man behind this notorious anti-Islam video as we have about the brave actions and unduly punishment of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich. Nakoula was jailed and faces up to three years in prison for alleged parole violations. Since his arrest, Nakoula has virtually disappeared from media.
In 2009, Leeds Crown Court (United Kingdom) sentenced Simon Sheppard to four years and 10 months, and Stephen Whittle to two years and four months in prison for “publishing and distributing racially inflammatory material.” It is vital to note that this case involved no impropriety or disruptive behavior in a place of worship. The investigation into Simon Sheppard began after a single leaflet was pushed through the door of a synagogue. One cannot help but wonder how severe the punishment would have been if Sheppard or Whittle had barged into the synagogue, entered inside the The Holy Ark (where the Torah Scrolls are kept), and performed a ‘prayer’ of their own?
With undercover policemen and FBI agents embedded and inciting violence in the Occupy Wall Street protests, e-mail and telephone wiretapping by the NSA, the imprisonment and torture of the U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, and thousands of protesters being arrested during the 2011 London Riots, the Western mainstream media has plenty of inadequately covered cases of free speech criminalization and repression to clean up before their indignation at Putin’s suppression of free speech can smell of something other than hypocrisy.
When observed on its own, the punishment of the Pussy Riot girls is undoubtedly harsh and the criticism that it has attracted is often appropriate. However, when it is compared to other similar cases that took and continue to take place in the countries that unabashedly express their indignation and point the index fingers the most, one must ask: why did the Russian incident deserved such disproportionate media coverage?
Milan Djurasovic is a Bosnian American collage artist, blogger, and a book author. He currently lives and works in St. Petersburg, Russia. His educational background is in psychology and history. He can be reached via Face Book https://www.facebook.com/milan.djurasovic
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