Pussy Riot co-founder talks politics, prison time, and protests

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Nadya Tolokonnikova, a co-founder of the Russian punk protest group Pussy Riot, said she’s heartened by the social activism and protests for change that burst onto streets across America last summer after the murder of George Floyd.

“It created an enormous blast of political imagination. That was something that I was looking for forever, and I’ve been asking people to dream dangerously and to think about alternative futures,” she said in a virtual discussion hosted by the Andrea Mitchell Center. “We’ve been trapped in this mantra that there is no alternative. It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.”

But in 2020, amid the pandemic and the racial unrest, she saw it starting to change.

“You see many people asking questions like, Should we reimagine our public safety? Should we change police funding and reallocate it to social workers and people who really want to help people and not kill them?” Tolokonnikova said.

It’s a hopeful and possibility-filled moment for the world, she said, where people are asking how to make an inequitable place more just.

In 2012, Pussy Riot staged a protest of Vladimir Putin’s reelection campaign with an unsanctioned performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The group was arrested, and Tolokonnikova was jailed on charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” The protest and repressive state response launched the group into worldwide fame.

During a ninety-minute talk with Kevin M. F. Platt, professor of Russian and East European studies, they tackled her two years in prison, how her overnight fame affected her work, and how politics has changed in Russia and in the United States under President Donald Trump.

Russia keeps a tight lid on its prison system, and it is difficult for outsiders to observe the conditions. So, when she was sentenced to two years, Tolokonnikova took it as an opportunity to learn as much as she could about prison conditions and the treatment of inmates.

“I honestly don’t understand why governments would even create political prisoners because in most cases it just makes us more aware of the system; it makes us better and smarter. It makes us more influential,” she said.

During the last five years, the Russian state has changed tactics with regard to art activism and art protesters, now only imprisoning people for days rather than years.

“Twenty days or 30 days doesn’t sound so terrible, and I think it’s really smart of the government,” she said. But if you are getting 20 days every time you do an art action, it affects your life tremendously and is very disruptive, she said.

“It was definitely very dumb and ineffective when they put Pussy Riot in jail because they just gave us a bigger platform,” said Tolokonnikova. “When you poison your political opponent, you actually give them power and validate them.”

In August, her friend and opposition leader Aleksei Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent but survived. The Russian government has repeatedly denied having a role in the poisoning.

Pussy Riot was launched into worldwide fame after the 2012 action and the group’s prison sentence, but Tolokonnikova said that, despite having opportunities to meet idols like Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth and having Madonna ask for their life rights to make a movie about Pussy Riot (which the group didn’t agree to), the newfound celebrity status didn’t alter their work.

They were given an opportunity to speak in the U.S. Senate and used that invitation to highlight the need for prison reform in the U.S.

“Every time I think when we have a chance to use a platform, we try to be critical of the platform itself, in a constructive way,” she said.

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Asked what her sense is for the future of Russia, Tolokonnikova pointed to recent events in Belarus as a place to look for hope for change.

Even six months ago, opposition leaders in Belarus would have laughed if someone predicted the mass protests against President Alexander Lukashenko, she said.

“The overall sentiment was that people are not courageous, people are not ready,” she said, and those are similar sentiments in Russia for people who explain why Putin is still in power.

“We never know when this trigger moment will happen, and it can be really anything,” she said. “You can see trends and the trends are encouraging. Putin’s rating this year is the lowest in the last 13 years, and this is just a part of the trend of people’s discontent with the government.”

Referencing this year’s election in the United States and the sense that many Americans don’t prioritize democracy, given their ongoing support of Trump’s attempts to subvert the results of the election, an audience member asked Tolokonnikova how she does or doesn’t try to engage Putin supporters.

“I try to be useful to them, and this is a strategy,” she said. “When I was in prison. I realized that it’s pretty much impossible to change anyone’s mind with direct confrontation. So, I’ve decided to change my life in a decent way, just be a good person and help others without requiring anything back.”

She relayed a story about her cellmate in prison, who it turned out had been put there as a spy to report back on what Tolokonnikova said and did. But Tolokonnikova befriended this woman, asked her about her life, supported her, and they shared details about their lives. In the end, the woman refused to cooperate with officials who sought information on Tolokonnikova. The woman’s support for Putin waned, and she became a Pussy Riot ally, Tolokonnikova said.

The hardest part of being in prison was how all the women were forced to watch one TV that spewed Russian political propaganda shows that promote the police and soap operas that advance the government agenda.

“It was so incredibly sad for me because I’ve never watched television in my life, and I just realized how bleak the reality is for millions of Russians who do watch television. I started to actually understand the reasons why they support Putin.”

Asked about the relationship between art and politics, she replied that there’s no such thing as a nonpolitical artist.

“I think that all art exists in a political context, and being consciously apolitical is a political choice,” she said.

Regarding American politics, she said she “may sound crazy” but she’s really excited about the changes she has seen in recent years, from the Occupy Wall Street movement back in 2011 to Bernie Sanders’ transforming the idea of fighting against the 1% into a viable political movement.

“I started to see positive mentions of socialism in the American press, and I was like, ‘Oh Jesus, the times are really changing,’” she said.

She sees the eruption of calls for change after the killing of George Floyd as a hopeful sign.

“I feel like something’s going to change because you cannot ignore it,” she said.

A video of the conversation can be viewed on the Andrea Mitchell Center’s YouTube channel.

Kevin M.F. Platt is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Humanities.