The all-female Russian band Pussy Riot is drawing attention to problems in the former Soviet country, but their trip to Sochi, which is currently hosting the Winter Olympics, raised a number of questions, the largest of which is simply: Why?
By staging a public protest in Sochi, they pretty much got what they must have expected: a public beating by the Cossacks. But what issues were the band members trying to draw attention to?
They are testing the limits of free speech in Russia. But it is difficult to tell how much they are standing up for the press that has been under attack for years, or whether they favor gay rights, are against rampant corruption or if they support separatist movements in Dagestan or Chechnya.
Do they play instruments? It may not matter, as long as they’re drawing attention.
Some of these issues were addressed in an op-ed column written by Pussy Riot band member Maria Alyokhina and published in The New York Times on Thursday.
Alyokhina did address LGBT and press freedom issues in her op-ed and wrote that, “Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, another member of Pussy Riot, and I were detained three times and then, on Wednesday, assaulted by Cossack militiamen with whips and pepper spray. Mr. Putin will teach you how to love the motherland.”
In addition to making a point, Pussy Riot was in Sochi to get footage for a new video.
When they emerged from a police station the last time, Tolokonnikova and Ms. Alyokhina – joined by three other women in balaclavas – ran into a waiting mob of Russian and foreign media, screaming the lyrics of their new song.
“Putin will teach you to love the Motherland!” was the shouted chorus, according to video taken at the scene.
It had all been a brilliant stunt meant to embarrass Putin in the middle of the grand Olympic Games. It worked because police, journalists and bewildered local residents all played their part predictably and perfectly.
But then came the real story: the police, the journalists and everyone waiting outside the police station had been unwitting extras, helping make a video for “Putin will teach you to love the Motherland!”
This time, it fit the group’s agenda. But would there be more stunts, more arrests as the week unfolded, all meant to embarrass Putin and spoil his Olympic Games?
The December amnesty that saw Pussy Riot and other political prisoners released was supposed to eliminate controversies like these by scrubbing up Russia’s human-rights record ahead of the Games.
The amnesty, however, appears to be backfiring.
“The face of these Olympics is deceptive, as is the entire authoritarian regime,” Alyokhina said in her Times piece. “At first, the authorities do not strike out at you directly. Rather, they systematically force you to adopt the only stance they deem proper, which is to move passively, apolitically, through the entire chain of post-Soviet institutions, from primary school to the grave.”
She continued: “Those who are writing about the Olympics and who are currently present at the Games should not fall into this forgetfulness, because it is fatal. When you talk about the Olympics — whether you like it or not — you are talking about Russia.
“For this is a country where people are arrested for waving umbrellas and little flags, where they are sent to penal colonies, like the environmental activist Yevgeny Vitishko, for writing a slogan like ‘the forest is for everybody’ on a governor’s fence, and where they may be sentenced to five or six years in prison for voicing their dissent against the status quo. … This story is bigger than the Olympic venues, bigger even than the Olympics. This is a story about the real Russia of today. It exists, and the price of its existence is prison sentences for innocent people who speak out.”
The point was certainly to embarrass Putin at his $50-billion Olympic Games. Making a statement takes on many artistic forms. If there are any comparisons to be drawn, Pussy Riot’s 21st century version of punk rock resembles the 1980s American punk rock scene that lashed out against President Ronald Reagan.