On Feb. 8, a month before Vladimir Putin faced re-election for a third term as Russia’s President, he paid a visit to the St. Daniel Monastery in Moscow, where he received an endorsement from Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. They tiptoed around the issue of the elections at first. Under the constitution, there is a clear divide between church and state, so the Patriarch isn’t really supposed to interfere in politics. But eventually they softened up, and Kirill called Putin’s time in office nothing less than a “godly miracle,” thanking him for saving Russia from the “catastrophe” of the 1990s. Putin responded with a rather remarkable statement: “We must move away from the primitive notion of separation between church and state,” he said. “On the contrary, we must devote ourselves to the totally different idea of cooperation.” And cooperate they did. Before departing, Putin pledged about $120 million for the construction of Orthodox churches, and the message became clear for the millions of Orthodox faithful in Russia: Putin is the greatest President Russia has ever had.
But for many in the opposition movement, that meeting marked a blatant affront to the constitution. It seemed to conflate religious and political authority in a way that harked back to the czarist era, when the church worked in the service of the Emperor, and it did not take long for a group of activists called Pussy Riot to make their reply. On Feb. 21, four of them, along with a group of photographers and cameramen, walked into the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, the holiest site in Russian Orthodoxy, pulled colorful balaclavas over their heads and performed a “punk prayer” on the altar that was titled “Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!” The video quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of YouTube views, becoming a symbol of the opposition movement, which had just begun to find its voice in the lead up to the elections.
By that point, Pussy Riot had gained some clout among the opposition for their political performances — or “actions” — against Putin’s 12-year rule. A few weeks earlier, they had danced with electric guitars on Red Square, atop the pedestal where the Czars once held public executions, and they posted a video online of a pudgy Kremlin guard trying to make them climb down from there. They were also planning to storm the Russian parliament and hold a performance on the podium during a plenary session. But they never pulled that one off, because on March 5, the day after Putin won another term in office, two members of Pussy Riot were arrested. A third soon joined them in prison, and instead of charging them with the misdemeanor of trespassing or disturbing the peace, investigators hit them with charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” a felony that carries a sentence of at least two years and a maximum of seven. Their trial, which began this week, has crammed into the space of a single, dingy courtroom all of the political divisions, restrictions and anachronisms that will define which way Russia goes from here.
The signs are pointing nowhere good. “We are seeing a concerted effort to instill fear, to let everyone know that dissent will no longer be tolerated,” says Masha Lipman, a political analyst in Moscow. This effort began right after Putin’s inauguration on May 7, and has used every branch of power as a bludgeon. The parliament, for instance, has passed new laws restricting street protests. Special forces have raided the homes of activists involved in demonstrations. Courts are preparing to hear felony charges against demonstrators later this year. Top officials have started advocating censorship of Internet content. And on July 31, the anticorruption blogger Alexei Navalny, the unofficial leader of the Russian protest movement, was informed that he faces up to 10 years in prison for allegedly embezzling half a million dollars worth of timber in 2009. The charges are so sketchy that prosecutors have dropped them twice before for lack of evidence, only to have investigators reopen the case. This time, the amount of money allegedly embezzled was raised more than 10-fold and the charges made much more severe. “This is not all coming down at once by some coincidence. It is a pattern,” says Lipman.
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The court is dominated by a glass cage that holds the three women – Maria Alyokhina, who has emerged as their unofficial spokeswoman; Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, whose chiselled features have made her the band's unofficial face; and Yekaterina Samutsevich, who sits in a corner of the cage looking every bit the disgruntled punk.
After five days' sitting in the cage, some days for 10 hours at a time, the women appear exhausted. Violetta Volkova, one of their lawyers, said they were being tortured – denied food and adequate sleep. After a week of being dismissed and lectured by the judge, she could no longer hide her anger. On Friday, as the judge, Marina Syrova, denied yet another defence objection, Volkova began to shout.
Syrova, her glasses forever perched perfectly in the middle of her nose, answered tartly: "You're losing the frames of dignity."
"Those frames long haven't existed here," Volkova replied, seething.
According to Pussy Riot's lawyers, Russia has revived the Soviet-era tradition of the show trial with its case against the group. "Even in Soviet times, in Stalin's times, the courts were more honest than this one," lawyer Nikolai Polozov shouted in court. Outside, during a rare break, he explained: "This is one of the most shameful trials in modern Russia. In Soviet times, at least they followed some sort of procedure."
In one week, Syrova has refused to hear nearly all the objections brought by the defence. One objection claimed that exactly the same spelling errors were found in several witness statements, implying they were falsified.
The prosecution was allowed to call all its witnesses, mainly people who were inside the church at the time of the performance or who had viewed a video of it on YouTube. They answered questions like: "What does your Orthodox faith mean to you?", "Was the women's clothing tight?" and "What offended you about their balaclavas?"
One witness said she heard music during the band's performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, although footage shown in court showed the women singing with no live instruments. The music was added later to their viral video clip, "Virgin Mary, Chase Putin Out!"
"What kind of music did you hear?" asked the defence. "It wasn't classical – and it wasn't Orthodox," the witness replied.
The defence, meanwhile, tried to call 13 witness, including opposition leader Alexey Navalny and celebrated novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya. Syrova only allowed them to call three. The prosecution launched the questioning of all its witnesses with the same question: Are you an Orthodox believer? When the defence tried to ask the same question of one of its three witnesses, Syrova shouted: "Question stricken."
Excerpts above from Time (Russia’s Pussy Riot Trial: A Kangaroo Court Goes on a Witch Hunt) and The Guardian (Pussy Riot trial 'worse than Soviet era').
