Pussy Riot formed in late 2011,
its members inspired by outrage at Vladimir Putin’s declared intent to pursue
the presidency for a third time. Wearing colourful balaclavas, they staged a
few provocations, including an impromptu punk rock “Revolt on Red
Square” in January. When Patriarch Kirill described Putin’s 12
year rule as a "miracle of God" in a televised meeting the group
decided to stage a protest in the biggest church in the country, located in the
heart of Moscow.
No doubt it seemed like a
good idea at the time. A few months earlier Pussy Riot had given an interview
to Vice, and after comparing Putin to
Kim Jong-un and Gaddafi two members declared that they had no fear of the state
(while wearing masks and using pseudonyms, naturally):
Kot: We have
nothing to worry about, because if the repressive Putinist police crooks throw
one of us in prison, five, ten, 15 more girls will put on colorful balaclavas
and continue the fight against their symbols of power.
Serafima: And
today, with tens of thousands of people routinely taking to the streets, the
state will think twice before trying to fabricate a criminal case and putting
us away. There are loads of Pussy Riot fans in Russia's protesting masses.
And yet the state did not
think twice, for shortly after the Holy Shit incident three members of the
group- Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich-
were arrested on charges of “hooliganism by an organized group” that was “motivated
by religious hatred”. Denied bail, they face up to seven years in prison
if convicted. That’s right- for singing a crap punk song in a church without
permission Pussy Riot could lose the best years of their lives and contract TB as a bonus gift from the
Russian state (there is an epidemic of the disease in the country’s prison
system).
A bit harsh? Of course. But
this is nothing new, or surprising. Indeed, reading the Vice interview I wondered how old the members of Pussy Riot were,
as the last decade offers plentiful evidence of what the Russian state does to would-be
merry pranksters. In Russia,
the courts will use a sledge hammer to destroy a banana split.
For instance, one of the current
leaders of the Russian opposition movement is the author Edward Limonov.
Nowadays he might sound reasonable when talking to an old bore like David Frost
about human rights in Russia,
but in the 1990s he founded the National Bolsheviks, a conceptual art project masquerading
as a radical nationalist political party. Its members would march through Moscow chanting “Stalin,
Beria, Gulag!” while waving flags which looked exactly the same as the Nazi
flag, only the hammer and sickle had replaced the Swastika inside the white
circle. Limonov was also filmed accepting a gun from Radovan Karadzic, who then
cordially invited the celebrated Russian author to take some pot shots at Sarajevo below. He also wrote
a political manifesto entitled The Other
Russia in which he advocated polygamy, training kids to be warriors, and lots
of other nonsense besides.
But I digress. In the early
2000s Limonov served two years in jail after being charged with trying to buy
guns so he could invade Kazakhstan
(he was ultimately found not guilty of most of the accusations). In jail he
wrote a couple of excellent books and evidently did some serious thinking,
because when he got out he was much less outrageous, declaring that the National
Bolsheviks were now analogous to Greenpeace. His following of teenagers and
young adults- most of whom were on average around 40-50 years younger than him-
staged political pranks. They threw eggs and raided government offices, unfurling
banners from the windows- the kind of hi-jinks that barely raise an eyebrow in Western Europe. And in Russia? Well, hooliganism scores
you years in jail, and very soon a stream of young NatsBols were headed to
prison cells, where TB, overcrowding and all the usual horrors awaited them.
I interviewed Limonov’s lieutenant,
Alexander Averin, in 2005. He had posters of Che Guevara and the Ayatollah
Khomeini on the walls of his flat because, he said, they were both “great
revolutionaries”. His girlfriend was in jail for a mild political provocation-
I can’t remember the details. Averin was an intelligent young man who knew his
Lenin, and he expressed admirable defiance. But as I listened to him advance
completely nonsensical proposals – that the USSR would reconstitute itself
peacefully, for instance – I wondered: what
is the point of your suffering? Limonov looked to me then like a pied piper
figure, leading impressionable kids to jail with his seductive, poetic
gibberish.
But perhaps in those days
impressionable kids had to protest because adults wouldn’t do it- except for an
assortment of old communists and discredited “liberal” reformers from the 90s,
none of whom posed any threat to the Kremlin. And so perhaps it was inevitable
that as Limonov became semi-respectable, a new opposition would emerge, their
tactics even more puerile than those of the NatsBols.
“Voina” first gained widespread
notice in 2008 when its members staged a public orgy in a Moscow museum on the eve of Dmitri Medvedev’s
election as president. “Fuck for the Heir Puppy Bear” (“Medved” is the Russian
word for bear) was apparently intended as some kind of satire or something. But
it was interesting only insofar as it revealed how close to Western standards Russia’s
contemporary art scene had progressed. “Fuck for the heir” was the kind of
thing you might find in Germany, only there the orgy would have been state
subsidized and the artists would have been aggressively minging, with piercings,
flab and abundant body hair. To me though, public fucking as “protest” just seemed
so, you know, 60s. Voina’s “protest” was narcissistic posing designed to
attract attention, provoke the (microscopic) bourgeoisie, and hopefully score
the “artists” a spot at the Berlin Biennale a few years down the road. Tossing
live cats into a McDonald’s "to break up the drudgery of workers' routine
day" on International Worker’s Day was the act of smug ass-hats of the
worst variety.
The state was like, totally undermined.
Some of Voina’s subsequent
actions were much better, however. Beaming a skull-and-crossbones onto the
façade of Russia’s
parliament with a green laser was not bad, but painting a 65 metre long penis
on the bridge that leads to the HQ of the Saint
Petersburg branch of the FSB, the successor agency to
the KGB (and Putin’s former employer) was a stroke of genius. As an act of
protest it was still extremely puerile, but it was the right kind of puerile,
crudity on an epic scale. It was ridicule, raw and joyous, thrust directly in
the faces of those who do not like to be ridiculed. Admittedly when I read the dreary
art-bollocks that Voina member Alexei Plutser-Samo wrote to accompany Voina’s
actions my respect for the giant schlong diminished somewhat, but I have since
forgotten his cod-theoretical blather and now remember only a giant dick pointed
at FSB agents when they went to work in the morning. The image remains, and
it’s a powerful one. UK
establishment stencil sprayer Bansky also approved: he gave them some cash to
help with legal battles
A bit later, Voina members overturned
an empty cop car. That too was performance art, apparently. Arrest warrants
were issued, and somehow group leader Oleg Vorotnikov wound up on an Interpol
list. Currently he is hiding out somewhere in Russia, but that has only enhanced
the movement’s standing in the world of international contemporary art. Voina are
currently associate curators of the 7th Berlin Biennale, open until
July 1st.
And then along came Pussy Riot.
I can’t say I think their song is on the level of Voina’s giant dick, which was
aimed exclusively at the right people. Pussy Riot managed to offend both the powerful
and hundreds of thousands of others who are weak, marginalized and powerless. I
was present in Russia
during the great die-off of the 90s and early 2000s, when millions were chased
to the grave by poverty, despair and squalor. An entire generation was written
off as collateral damage by both the Russian elite and the well-fed Western
consultants who parachuted in to dispense advice and bang whores in luxury
hotels. Having grown up in an open air prison, many old people were essentially
expected to hurry up and die. The church was one of their few consolations, and
so it remains for those who are not yet dead. And indeed, in Pussy Riot’s Youtube
clip you can see several old ladies who look horrified. Nor is sympathy for the
church restricted to the old- among young adults in Russia, only 5.9% say they have
never believed.
As an act of
consciousness-raising then, Pussy Riot’s “holy shit” stunt failed. In Moscow,
tens of thousands of believers participated in a mass prayer in defence of the
church in April; while a much smaller crowd of pro-Pussy Riot types were
dispersed when bearded Orthodox biker dudes blasted them with holy water (while
chanting “No Sodom”). Also in April, 10,000 people attended a mass protest
against Pussy Riot in Krasnodar, which is
hundreds of miles from Moscow.
None of this is surprising- 70% of Russians consider themselves Orthodox (even
if a fraction of that figure attends church regularly).
Don't mess with the Jesus. Pic (c) RIA Novosti.
On the other hand, 90% of
Russians think jail time is much too severe a punishment for Pussy Riot; two
members have small children. A recent police inquiry also “…failed to find in
the actions of persons at the Christ the Savior Cathedral motives of hatred and
hostility". But the trial is going ahead, scheduled to start on June 24th.
Patriarch Kirill is showing no sign of softening his stance, and in March he lashed
out at those seeking to "justify and downplay this sacrilege…My heart
breaks from bitterness that amongst these people there are those who call themselves
Orthodox”. In April, Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina sounded very scared
indeed: “If I cannot hear my child’s voice because of my criticism of the
authorities, then welcome to 1937,” she said. 1937 was the year when Stalin’s
repression reached its height. We are light years away from those days, but I’d
be panicked in her place.
And where is Putin in all
this? Early on he was reported to be taking an “active interest” in the case.
Last week he signed off on a new law massively increasing fines on those who
attend unauthorised rallies, and on 11th June the police raided the
homes of prominent opposition figures the day before a scheduled
anti-government rally. More and more Russians are protesting, including
grown-ups who don’t think overturning a cop car, shagging in public or singing
a crap song while wearing a balaclava in church constitute effective politics.
And in response, the state is becoming more authoritarian. The signs do not
look good for Pussy Riot.
Holy shit, indeed.
June 19th 2012