Their actual crime – a prank, protest, or performance, depending on the point of view taken – took place at the height of protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin this past February. Together, the women entered Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ, faces covered in their trademark balaclavas, and, armed only with guitars, danced and lip-synced their way to the alter, in mock prayer to the Virgin Mary to rid their country of Putin. They were quickly stopped by security guards, and were later arrested. By the time of the trial, they had already been incarcerated for five months.
It is difficult to say whether the verdict itself was politically determined in the narrow sense of the executive directing a particular result. The maximum sentence was seven years, and, likely sensing the need to engage in a little damage control, President Putin himself had preached leniency. However, as we see through a number of factors – the dogged legal pursuit of perceived enemies of the regime, the ways in which the trial has transcended its normal governance role and has been sensationalized by the media, the accompanying widespread social opposition, and the intended didactic effect of dressing up dissent as crime – the Pussy Riot prosecution has many of the hallmarks of a classic political trial. Moreover, the defendants had limited access to their lawyers, who, in turn, were barred from calling many experts and eyewitnesses to the stand.
As is the case in all political trials, context is everything. Since earlier this year, dissent has been curtailed via fines and other administrative and police actions, yet the trial has served to unite Russians opposed to the arbitrary measures we have come to associate with Putin’s “managed democracy.” Putin’s popularity has dropped over the summer, partially because of the trial. Rather than come across as perpetrators of hate crimes, the women on trial – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Maria Alyokhina – have come across as highly sympathetic defendants: They are politically articulate and thoughtful, and two of them are mothers of young children.
The trial has also exposed a rift among Russia’s increasingly divided population over the appropriate role of the Russian Orthodox Church and its current patriarch, Kirill I, who publicly supported Putin in his election to an unprecedented third term as president. This trial represents no less than the Russian variation of a culture war. The Church has grown in power and continuously allied itself with Putin’s regime: This is why the group chose the cathedral as a performance space in the first place. Pussy Riot, their supporters, and demonstrators against Putin are variously characterized as disrespectful, irreligious, liberal, and urbane, tied together in a vast conspiracy against Mother Russia and the Orthodox Church. Indeed, criticism by western governments, human-rights groups, and even Madonna during a recent concert tour are further evidence of the conspiracy. There’s a long political tradition of conspiracy theory in Russia: It was the Tsarist secret police that authored and propagated the fictional Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the latest round of epithets hurled against legitimate dissent are not dissimilar to several centuries’ worth of name-calling – and worse – against Jews.
Authorities thought they could use the trial to portray the defendants as marginalized and destructive hooligans bent on blaspheming the Russian Orthodox Church and inciting religious hatred. By extension, the legal response would not-so-subtly deliver the broader message that those opposed to the regime were likewise godless ruffians. Political trials have always been tricky to pull off in terms of getting the right message to “stick” with the population rather than being widely recast as ideologically motivated wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice. Russia – and the Soviet Union before it – has a long tradition of using trials to simultaneously punish enemies and “educate” the population, conveniently shifting blame for social and political woes and scapegoating others in the process.
Meanwhile, Russian political elites and the judiciary might fruitfully spend a little time examining the checkered history of putting musicians on trial. In September 1976, the authoritarian communist government of Czechoslovakia put members of the rock band The Plastic People of the Universe on trial and found them guilty of contempt for fundamental moral laws. They, too, were portrayed as repulsive hooligans, yet during the trial the musicians came to represent self-determination and personal freedom. The more they were tagged as immoral, the more obvious it became that their trial was political.
Moreover, then-playwright Václav Havel wrote an essay entitled, “The Trial,” documenting how the trial united the eventual opposition, bringing together – both inside and outside the courtroom – those who would form the country’s most significant and diverse dissident group, Charter 77. Indeed, the trial provided an opportunity for those with differing political pasts to come together and put aside their disagreements. In time, and with no small amount of dedication and personal sacrifice, Charter 77 held the regime to account, promoted human rights, set a moral example, and eventually came to play a role in the downfall of the communist regime. The Pussy Riot convictions may yet deliver a similar result: a successful prosecution serving as a harbinger of larger political failure.
Original Article
Source: the mark news
Author: Barbara J. Falk
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