«The border between being free and not free is very thin in Russia, a totalitarian state»
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (words after freed from prison in 23-12-2013)
Before at prison in 13-08-2012 she said:
«By and large, the three members of Pussy Riot are not the ones on
trial here. If we were, this event would hardly be so significant. This
is a trial of the entire political system of the Russian Federation,
which, to its great misfortune, enjoys quoting its own cruelty toward
the individual, its indifference toward human honor and dignity,
repeating all of the worst moments of Russian history. To my deep
regret, this poor excuse for a judicial process approaches Stalin’s
“troikas.” We too have only an interrogator, a judge, and a prosecutor.
Furthermore, this repressive act is executed based on political orders
from above that completely dictate the words, deeds, and decisions of
these three judicial figures.
What was behind our performance at
the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the subsequent trial? Nothing
other than the autocratic political system. Pussy Riot’s performances
can either be called dissident art or political action that engages art
forms. Either way, our performances are a kind of civic activity amidst
the repressions of a corporate political system that directs its power
against basic human rights and civil and political liberties. The young
people who have been flayed by the systematic eradication of freedoms
perpetrated through the aughts have now risen against the state. We were
searching for real sincerity and simplicity, and we found these
qualities in the
yurodstvo [the holy foolishness] of punk.
Passion,
total honesty, and naïveté are superior to the hypocrisy, mendacity,
and false modesty that are used to disguise crime. The so-called leading
figures of our state stand in the Cathedral with righteous faces on,
but, in their cunning, their sin is greater than our own.
We put
on political punk performances in response to a government that is rife
with rigidity, reticence, and caste-like hierarchal structures. It is so
clearly invested in serving only narrow corporate interests, it makes
us sick just to breathe the Russian air. We categorically oppose the
following, which forces us to act and live politically:
—the use
of coercive and forceful methods for regulating social processes; a
situation when the most important political institutions are the
disciplinary structures of the state: the security agencies (the army,
police, and secret services), and their corresponding means of ensuring
political “stability” (prisons, pre-emptive detention, all the
mechanisms of strict control over the citizenry);
—imposed civic passivity among the majority of the population,
—the complete dominance of the executive branch over the legislative and judicial.
Moreover,
we are deeply frustrated by the scandalous dearth of political culture,
which comes as the result of fear and that is kept down through the
conscious efforts of the government and its servants (Patriarch Kirill:
“Orthodox Christians do not attend rallies”); the scandalous weakness of
the horizontal ties within society.
We do not like that the
state so easily manipulates public opinion by means of its strict
control over the majority of medial outlets (a particularly vivid
example of this manipulation is the unprecedentedly insolent and
distorted campaign against Pussy Riot appearing in practically every
Russian media outlet).
Despite the fact that we find ourselves in
an essentially authoritarian situation, living under authoritarian
rule, I see this system crumbling in the face of three members of Pussy
Riot. What the system anticipated did not occur; Russia does not condemn
us, and with each passing day, more and more people believe in us and
that we should be free, and not behind bars.
I see this in the
people I meet. I meet people who work for the system, in its
institutions, I see people who are incarcerated. Every day, I meet our
supporters who wish us luck and, above all, freedom. They say what we
did was justified. More and more people tell us that although they had
doubts about whether we had the right to do what we did, with each
passing day, more and more people tell us that time has shown that our
political gesture was correct—that we opened the wounds of this
political system, and struck directly at the hornet’s nest, so they came
after us, but we. . . .
These people try to relieve our suffering
as much they can, and we are very grateful to them. We are also
grateful to everyone who speaks out in support of us on the outside.
There are many supporters, and I know it. I know that a great number of
Orthodox Christians speak out on our behalf, the ones who gather near
the court in particular. They pray for us; they pray for the imprisoned
members of Pussy Riot. We’ve seen the little booklets the Orthodox pass
out containing prayers for the imprisoned. This fact alone demonstrates
that there is no single, unified group of Orthodox believers, as the
prosecutor would like to prove. This unified group does not exist.
Today, more and more believers have come to the defense of Pussy Riot.
They don’t think that what we did warrants a five-month term in a
pretrial detention center, let alone three years in prison, as the
prosecutor has called for.
Every day, more people understand that
if the system is attacking three young women who performed in the
Cathedral of Christ the Savior for thirty seconds with such vehemence,
it only means that this system fears the truth, sincerity, and
straightforwardness we represent. We have never used cunning during
these proceedings. Meanwhile, our opponents are too often cunning, and
people sense this. Indeed, the truth has an ontological, existential
superiority over deception, and this is described in the Bible,
particularly the Old Testament.
The paths of truth always triumph
over the paths of cunning, guile, and deception. Every day, truth grows
more victorious, despite the fact that we remain behind bars and will
probably be here for a long time.
Yesterday, Madonna performed in
Moscow with “Pussy Riot” written on her back. More and more people see
that we are held here illegally, on false pretences. This amazes me. I
am amazed that truth really does triumph over deception. Despite the
fact that we are physically here, we are freer than everyone sitting
across from us on the side of the prosecution. We can say anything we
want and we say everything we want. The prosecution can only say what
they are permitted to by political censorship. They can’t say “punk
prayer,” “Our Lady, Chase Putin Out,” they can’t utter a single line of
our punk prayer that deals with the political system.
Perhaps
they think that it would be good to put us in prison because we speak
out against Putin and his regime. They don’t say so, because they aren’t
allowed to. Their mouths are sewn shut. Unfortunately, they are only
here as dummies. But I hope they realize this and ultimately pursue the
path of freedom, truth, and sincerity, because this path is superior to
the path of complete stagnation, false modesty, and hypocrisy.
Stagnation and the search for truth are always opposites, and in this
case, in the course of this trial, we see on the one side people who
attempt to know the truth, and on the other side people who are trying
to fetter them.
A human being is a creature that is always in
error, never perfect. She quests for wisdom, but cannot possess it; this
is why philosophy was born. This is why the philosopher is the one who
loves wisdom and yearns for it, but does not possess it. This is what
ultimately calls a human being to action, to think and live in a certain
way. It was our search for truth that led us to the Cathedral of Christ
the Savior. I think that Christianity, as I understood it while
studying the Old and especially the New Testament, supports the search
for truth and a constant overcoming of oneself, the overcoming of what
you were earlier. It was not in vain that when Christ was among the
prostitutes, he said that those who falter should be helped; “I forgive
them,” He said. I do not see this in our trial, which takes place under
the banner of Christianity. Instead, it seems to me that the prosecution
is trampling on religion.
The lawyers for the [official]
“injured parties” are abandoning them—that is how I interpret it. Two
days ago, [one of the “injured party”‘s lawyers] Alexei Taratukhin made a
speech in which he insisted that it should be clear that under no
circumstances should anyone assume that the lawyer agrees with the
parties he represents. In other words, the lawyer finds himself in an
ethically uncomfortable position and does not want to stand for the
people who seek to imprison Pussy Riot. I don’t know why they want to
put us in prison. Maybe they have the right to, but I want to emphasize
that their lawyer seems to be ashamed. Perhaps he was affected by people
shouting “Executioners! Shame on you!” I want to point out that truth
and goodness always triumph over deception and malice. It also seems to
me that prosecution attorneys are being influenced by some higher power,
because time after time, they slip up and call us “the injured party.”
Almost all of the lawyers have accidentally said this, and even
prosecution attorney Larisa Pavlova, who is very negatively disposed
toward us, nonetheless appears to be moved by some higher power when she
refers to us as “the injured party.” She does not say this about those
she represents, but about us.
I don’t want to label anyone. It
seems to me that there are no winners, losers, victims, or defendants
here. We all simply need to reach each other, connect, and establish a
dialogue in order to seek out the truth together. Together, we can seek
wisdom and be philosophers, instead of stigmatizing people and labeling
them. That is the last thing a person should do. Christ condemned it.
With this trial, the system is abusing us. Who would have thought that
man and the state he rules could, again and again, perpetrate absolutely
unmotivated evil? Who could have imagined that history, especially
Stalin’s still-recent Great Terror, could fail to teach us anything? The
medieval Inquisition methods that reign in the law enforcement and
judicial systems of our country, the Russian Federation, are enough to
make you weep. But from the moment of our arrest, we have stopped
weeping. We have lost our ability to cry. We had desperately shouted at
our punk concerts. With all our might, we decried the lawlessness of the
authorities, the governing bodies. But now, our voices have been taken
away. They were taken from us on March 3, 2012, when we were arrested.
The following day, our voices and our votes were stolen from the
millions at the so-called elections.
During the entire trial,
people have refused to hear us. Hearing us would mean being receptive to
what we say, being thoughtful, striving toward wisdom, being
philosophers. I believe that every person should strive for this, and
not only those who have studied in some philosophy department. A formal
education means nothing, although prosecution attorney Pavlova
constantly attempts to reproach us for our lack of education. We believe
the most important thing is to strive, to strive towards knowledge and
understanding. This is what a person can achieve independently, outside
the walls of an educational institution. Regalia and scholarly degrees
mean nothing. A person can possess a great deal of knowledge, but not be
a human being. Pythagoras said extensive knowledge does not breed
wisdom. Unfortunately, we are here to affirm that. We are here only as
decorations, inanimate elements, mere bodies that have been delivered
into the courtroom. When our motions, after many days of requests,
negotiations and struggles are not given any consideration, they are
always denied. Unfortunately for us and for our country, the court hears
a prosecutor who constantly distorts our words and statements with
impunity, neutering them. The foundational adversarial principle of the
legal system is openly and demonstratively violated.
On July
30th, the first day of the trial, we presented our reaction to the
prosecutors’ indictments. At that time, the court categorically refused
us the right to speak, and our written texts were read aloud by our
defense lawyer, Violetta Volkova. For us, this was the first opportunity
we had to express ourselves after five months of incarceration. Until
then we had been incarcerated, confined; we can’t do anything from
there, we can’t write appeals, we can’t film what is happening around
us, we have no Internet, our lawyer can’t even bring us papers because
even that is forbidden. On July 30th, we spoke openly for the first
time; we called for making contact and facilitating dialogue, not for
battle and confrontation. We reached our hands out to the people who,
for some reason, consider us their enemies, and they spat into our open
hands. “You are not sincere,” they said to us. Too bad. Do not judge us
according to your behavior. We spoke sincerely, as we always do—we said
what we thought. We were unbelievably childlike, naïve in our truth, but
nonetheless we are not sorry for our words, and this includes our words
on that day. And having been maligned, we do not want to malign others
in response. We are in desperate circumstances, but we do not despair.
We are persecuted, but we have not been abandoned. It is easy to degrade
and destroy people who are open, but “When I am weak, then I am
strong.”
Listen to our words and not to what [pro-Putin television
journalist] Arkady Mamontov says about us. Do not distort and falsify
what we say. Allow us to enter into a dialogue, into contact with this
country, which is also ours and not only the land of Putin and the
Patriarch. Just like Solzhenitsyn, I believe that in the end the word
will break cement. Solzhenitsyn wrote: “Thus, the word is more essential
than cement. Thus, the word is not a small nothing. In this manner,
noble people begin to grow, and their word will break cement.”
[Solzhenitsyn,
The First Circle]
Katya, Masha and I may
be in prison, but I do not consider us defeated. Just as the dissidents
were not defeated; although they disappeared into mental institutions
and prisons, they pronounced their verdict upon the regime. The art of
creating the image of an epoch does not know winners or losers. It was
the same with the
OBERIU poets, who remained
artists until the end, inexplicable and incomprehensible. Purged in
1937, Alexander Vvedensky wrote, “The incomprehensible pleases us, the
inexplicable is our friend.” According to the official death
certificate, Aleksandr Vvedensky died on December 20th, 1941. No one
knows the cause of death. It could have been dysentery on the train on
the way to the camps; it could have been the bullet of a guard. It
occurred somewhere on the railroad between Voronezh and Kazan.
Pussy
Riot are Vvedensky’s students and heirs. His principle of the bad rhyme
is dear to us. He wrote, “Occasionally, I think of two different
rhymes, a good one and a bad one, and I always choose the bad one
because it is always the right one.”
“The inexplicable is our friend”: the highbrow and refined works of the
OBERIU
poets and their search for thought on the edge of meaning were finally
embodied when they paid with their lives, which were taken by the
senseless and inexplicable Great Terror. Paying with their lives, these
poets unintentionally proved that they were right to consider
irrationality and senselessness the nerves of their era. Thus, the
artistic became an historical fact. The price of participation in the
creation of history is immeasurably great for the individual. But the
essence of human existence lies precisely in this participation. To be a
beggar, and yet to enrich others. To have nothing, but to possess all.
One considers the
OBERIU dissidents dead, but they are alive. They are punished, but they do not die.
Do
you remember why young Dostoyevsky was sentenced to death? His entire
guilt lay in the fact that he was fascinated by socialist theories, and
during meetings of freethinkers and friends—which met on Fridays in the
apartment of [Mikhail] Petrashevsky—he discussed the writings of Fourier
and George Sand. On one of the last Fridays, he read Belinsky’s letter
to Gogol aloud, a letter that was filled, according to the court that
tried Dostoevsky (listen!) “with impudent statements against the
Orthodox Church and the State government.” After all the preparations
for execution and “ten agonizing, infinitely terrifying minutes awaiting
death” (Dostoyevsky), it was announced that the sentence was changed to
four years of hard labor in Siberia followed by military service.
Socrates
was accused of corrupting the youth with his philosophical discussions
and refusing to accept the Athenian gods. He had a living connection
with the divine voice, and he was not, as he insisted many times, by any
account an enemy of the gods. But what did that matter when Socrates
irritated the influential citizens of his city with his critical,
dialectical thought, free of prejudice? Socrates was sentenced to death
and, having refused to escape Athens (as his students proposed), he
courageously emptied a cup of hemlock and died. Have you forgotten under
what circumstances Stephen, the disciple of the Apostles, concluded his
earthly life? “Then they secretly induced men to say, ‘We have heard
him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.’ And they
stirred up the people, the elders and the scribes, and they came up to
him and dragged him away and brought him before the Council. They put
forward false witnesses who said, ‘This man incessantly speaks against
this holy place and the Law.” [Acts 6:11-13] He was found guilty and
stoned to death. I also hope that you all remember well how the Jews
answered Christ: “It is not for good works that we are going to stone
you but for blasphemy.” [John 10:33] And finally we would do well to
keep in mind the following characterization of Christ: “He is
demon-possessed and raving mad.” [John 10:20]
If the authorities,
tsars, presidents, prime ministers, the people, and judges understood
what “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” meant [Matthew 9:13], they would
not put the innocent on trial.
Our authorities, however, still
rush with condemnations, and never reprieves. To this point, I would
like to thank Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev for providing us with the
following excellent aphorism. He summarized his presidential term with
the statement: “Liberty is better than non-liberty.” Thus in line with
Medvedev’s apt words, Putin’s third term can well be characterized by
the aphorism “Prison is better than stoning.” I ask that you consider
carefully the following from Montaigne’s
Essays, which were
written in the 16th century, preaching tolerance and the skeptical
rejection of any unilateral system or doctrine: “It is putting a very
high value on one’s conjectures, to have a man roasted alive because of
them.”
Is it worth it to pass judgment on living people and put
them in prison based on conjectures not substantiated by the
prosecution? Since we truly have never harbored any religious hatred or
animosity, our accusers have to rely on false witnesses. One of them,
Matilda Ivashchenko, became ashamed of herself and did not appear in
court. Then there were the false testimonies of Mr. Troitsky and Mr.
Ponkin, as well as Mrs. Abramenkova. There is no other proof of our
hatred and animosity except for the so-called “expert evaluation,” which
the court, if it is honest and fair, must consider unacceptable as
factual proof, as it is not a rigorous and objective text but a dirty
and false little paper reminiscent of the Inquisition. There is no other
evidence that can confirm the existence of a motive. The prosecutors
have refused to voice excerpts from Pussy Riot interviews, since these
excerpts would only further prove the absence of any motive. Why wasn’t
the following text by us—which, incidentally, appeared in the
affidavit—presented by the prosecution? “We respect religion in general
and the Orthodox faith in particular. This is why we are especially
infuriated when Christian philosophy, which is full of light, is used in
such a dirty fashion. It makes us sick to see such beautiful ideas
forced to their knees.” This quote appeared in an interview that The
Russian Reporter conducted with Pussy Riot the day after our
performance. We still feel sick, and it causes us real pain to look at
all this. Finally, the lack of any hatred or animosity toward religion
and the religious is affirmed by all character witnesses called in to
testify by our lawyers. Apart from all these character references, I ask
you to consider the results of the psychological and psychiatric
evaluations in jail number 6, ordered by the prison authorities. The
report revealed the following: the values that I embrace are justice,
mutual respect, humaneness, equality, and freedom.
This was
written by a court expert, a person who does not know me personally,
though it is possible that Ranchenko, the interrogator, desired a
different conclusion. But it seems that there are more people in our
world who love and value truth than those who don’t. The Bible is
correct in this. In conclusion I would like to read the words of a Pussy
Riot song, that, strange as they may be, proved prophetic. We foresaw
that “the Head of the
KGB and the Chief Saint of the land place the protesters under guard and take them to prison.” This was about us.
Neither
myself, nor Alyokhina, nor Samutsevich were found to have powerful and
stable affects or other psychological values that could be interpreted
as hatred toward anything or anyone.
So:
“Open all the doors, tear off your epaulets
Come, taste freedom with us.” [Pussy Riot]
That is all.»
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova
Translated by Maria Corrigan and Elena Glazov-Corrigan, n+1, 13-08-2013 (http://nplusonemag.com/pussy-riot-closing-statements )
Carmen Neagu
Gabrielei Dananae
Monica Rigo
Yolanda Parga Rodriguez, women football assistant referee (Spain) 
Gyoengyi Gaal, women football referee (Hungary)
Cristina Cini, men and women football assistant referee (Italy)
The lion (force) and the fox (astuteness) of Machiavel:
Force and consensus by Gramsci:
Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), Dilma Rousseff and Luís Lula (Brazil): force and consensus?
