Introduction to Pussy Riot 

(MIRROR WRITING)

Russians go home!

56-year old Lyudmila Razumova sentenced to seven years in prison under the article “fakes about the Russian Army” and vandalism motivated by political hatred. According to the investigation, Lyudmila and her husband left Anti-war graffiti and the inscriptions “Putin is war” and “Ukraine, forgive us.” In villages and towns in the Tver region.

A criminal case has been opened against 29-year-old Victoria Petrova for spreading “fakes” about the Russian Army for a repost on social media.

A criminal case has been opened against Anna Bazhutova for “fakes” about the Russian Army. She read out the memories of residents of the Ukrainian Bucha about life under Russian occupation.
She quoted the story of a woman who said that she was raped for a week by a Russian soldier, and after refusing to go with him to Russia, he killed her mother. Anna faces up to 8 years in prison.

-      Bury and rise, break the chains, sprinkle your will with the evil blood of the enemy !  - 

18-year-old Darya Kozyreva was arrested for pasting a poem by Taras Shevchenko onto the poet’s monument. A criminal case was opened against the girl for “discrediting” the Russian Army. She faces up to 5 years in prison.
“I am a patriot and a patriot in the right sense. Not in the sense propagandists put into it. I hope everything will change. The patience of the people is not eternal and one day, I believe, the people will take up these cobblestones and go against these villains who imagine themselves to be kings. And no one who is guilty of this bloodbath and who is responsible for the evil that is happening now will be well. No evil is eternal and any night ends one day. And this night will end too.”

-  Darya Kozyreva

 

(WRITING ON THE WALL)

Pavel Kushnir is a 39-year old pianist, who was jailed for anti-war videos. He ran a channel on behalf of FBI Agent Fex Mulder from X-FILES series. He called for an end of the war.

I WANT TO BELIEVE

A consistent opponent of the regime. Participant of the protests. He condemned the annexation of Crimea.

On july 27, 2024, Pavel died in prison after a long hunger strike, which he declared against the war. He began a hunger strike long before his arrest.

People who attended the funeral reported that he had bruises on his face.

 

24 preludes by Rachmaninov performed by Kushnir are played here in memory of the pianist

 

INTRODUCTION

What follows, in chronological order, is a presentation of more than ten years of protest
actions by the feminist-activist art collective Pussy Riot, formed in Moscow in 2011. They have been protesting Vladimir Putin’s regime ever since.

The exhibition focuses on Pussy Riot’s artistic protests in Russia, collected and presented by Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina. It presents the group’s non-violent actions, as well as the reactions of the increasingly authoritarian regime.

Viewed from the perspective of Pussy Riot, the exhibition provides an insight into the evolution of Putin’s Russia over the past ten years, leading up to the brutal war against Ukraine.
Punk, humour and colours are central tools in Pussy Riot’s method and aesthetics.

This is the largest presentation of the group’s work to date, and the first institutional exhibition in Germany devoted to Pussy Riot.

The exhibition is realised in cooperation with Kling & Bang, Reykjavík

 

PISS

Location
Reykjavík

 

FREE THE COBBLESTONES, 2011

Location
Moscow Metro Station and trolleybus roof

Context
Elections are just around the corner. Moscow’s streets are covered with new paving stones, thanks to Mayor Sobyanin, who has embezzled millions of rubles through laying street tiles. Freeing the cobblestones should be done in the best revolutionary traditions, using the stones for their intended purpose.

→ Nothing serious happened

 

 

FUCK YOU, FUCKING SEXISTS AND FUCKING PUTINISTS, 2011

Location
Various locations, Moscow

 

Context
In the lead-up to the 4 December elections, we released a music video for our song Kropotkin-Vodka, in which we call for a state coup in Russia. Our performances included arsons and a series of musical occupations of glamorous venues in the capital. Concerts took place in areas where wealthy Putinists gather in Moscow boutiques, at fashion shows, in elite cars, and on the rooftops of Kremlin-affiliated bars.

→ Nothing serious happened

DEATH TO PRISON, FREEDOM TO PROTEST, 2011

Location
Detention centre no. 1 Moscow

Context
Pussy Riot performed on the roof of the special detention centre in No. 1, where those who were arrested after the protest rallies held in early December, following the state Duma elections, were being held.
We performed the song Death to Prison, Freedom to Protest in which we call for the peaceful occupation of squares and the release of political prisoners from jail.

 → Nothing serious happened

 

 

(Yellow tape)
ANYONE CAN BE PUSSY RIOT

PUTIN PEED HIS PANTS, 2012

Location
Lobnoye Mesto, Red Square, Moscow

Context
Putin announced he would run for a third presidential term.

The magical winter of 2011. The Snow Revolution. What will they write about it in the history books? Will they mention it at all? What will become of it – will it be the beginning of a bigger revolution that lies ahead? We were led by a belief in the possibility of change.

That winter, the little grey KGB agent Putin and a puffed-up, toy-like Medvedev decided to trade places: prime minister for president. They falsified the results of the elections to the Duma.
We believed that, if we pricked his ass with a pin, Putin would jump out of his presidential seat. He would leap up, and run to hell. His fleshy, botoxed cheeks would head for the hills and roll off into the dustbin of history.

GET READY!

In January we started rehearsing in an old factory. After a while, the security guards were no longer surprised to see us. Oh, those girls are here again. Wearing strange-colored tights, some wearing headgear. Russia’s a strange place anyway. You need at least one month of rehearsal to put an action together. When you go live, you only get one take. You walk through a large hall in an old factory, put up a ladder. Climb up onto the window still one by one. Shout a song. 30,40 times in a row.

YOU CAN’T EVEN IMAGINE US

FOR FREEDOM - YOURS AND MINE

→ The cops got us afterwards for trespassing. We told them we were drama students. We said that we were staging a play and had decided to rehearse at Lobnoye Mesto. We gave them fake names. Actually, they were real names, just not our own.

They hadn’t heard Putin Peed His Pants. We spent four hours at the police station and were released without charges.

 

They used to execute people on Lobnoye Mesto. On Lobnoye Mesto, there’s a round stone platform that looks like an executioner’s block. It’s surrounded by stone walls that are maybe six feet high. It’s like a large barrel cut in half. Inside, it can hold about thirty people. In Red Square, directly facing the Kremlin. The tsar read out decrees – ukases – here. And declared wars. In 1968, eight dissidents climbed on to Lobnoye Mesto to protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

It was an unprecedented protest in Soviet Russia. The authorities responded with prison sentences and forced psychiatric treatment.

We unfurled a violet flag: The Venus mirror symbol, a clenched fist in the centre. There were eight of us, like the eight dissidents in 1968.

 

You stand on the stone walls, and it seems you’ll fall any second. You can’t let yourself fall, because there won’t be a second time. We, Pussy Riot, went out to the square because we dreamed of a different history. Because the one in which the president turned into an emperor was not the one we desired. We were sick of lies. Of the unchanging, dismal lies broadcast on TV – the endless, groundless promises of a happy life.

 A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE

 Riot is always a thing of beauty.

That is how I got interested. At school, I had this dream of becoming a graffiti artist, and I practised graffiti in my school notepad. If you start your schoolwork on the first page and do your sketches in the back, sooner or later the two will meet in the middle. 

AND, NEXT TO YOUR HISTORY NOTES, GRAFFITI APPEARS

which turns history into a different story.

 

LIKE IN A RED PRISON, 2013

Modern Russia is likened to a “Red Prison”. Igor Sechin, president of Rosneft and one of the most influential officials in the state, acts as the main “Godfather”.

Context
The purpose of the trial and imprisonment of Nadia Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina was to stop the activities of the punk band. That is why it is important for us to continue the fight to help Pussy Riot overcome the state.

We got to the very essence of why our friends are in cages, but Putin and his friends are not. For the performance of the song Like in a Red Prison, we broke out of Moscow for the first time and made an All-Russian tour, seizing the country's oil facilities. Last year, oil and gas budget revenues amounted to 7 trillion rubles, but only Putin and several of his friends see these 7 trillion rubles. Therefore, we decided to deal with oil production on our own and sing our new song about the red prison to oil and gas workers.

 → Nothing serious happened

(Green wall on the right):

A green padded coat
From the meeting room, I was led to the loading bay, a sectioned off strip between the huge rusty entrance gates to the Zone and the exit gates that open out to the outside. Dante would have called the area ‘limbo’. But it’s not limbo; it’s just a stinking five-metre strip where trucks load and unload. A black Volga was waiting there for me. Never before had anyone been taken out of the colony in a government car. ‘Get in,’ said the unit head. 

Black volga
Imagine if we had the power to meet our own future. We would have a fireworks display by the colony’s stone walls, catch the train with minutes to spare, leave those prison diaries behind untouched, get off the train in Moscow to be met by a packed platform; we’d run through the crowd of journalists with white roses.

What’s next?
‘What is your dream, Masha?’ the girl asked. She was only nineteen but serving a long sentence, about six years. For selling drugs. She gave me a hairclip, a crab with blue stones. We were smoking in the North. Putin had signed a decree ordering an amnesty. He signed the amnesty to save face in the West ahead of the Olympic Games in Sochi. A copy of the newspaper with the published presidential decree was passed from one prisoner to the next.
‘I want to go on a trip around the world,’ said one girl. ‘I want to go to the moon,’ said another.
And the girl said, ‘I want to be released in the amnesty. I want to see my child. That’s what I want most of all.’
She was not released in the amnesty. Nadya and I were released. Nadia and I and three other women. Five women from the world’s largest country. Everyone needed this amnesty but me.

vip amnesty
Big, black, childlike eyes. To her I was a heroine in a fairy tale.
‘I want to write a book,’ I said. ‘Will I be in it?’ she asked. ‘Definitely.’

Freedom doesn’t exist unless you fight for it every day. And I’m riding in a car that’s picking up speed.

I had promised my friends in the penal colony that if it would be possible I would light fireworks outside the colony for them when I got out.

PUNK PRAYER, 2012

Context
Putin is getting ready for a third term. The patriarch sails off on a $680,000 boat. The institutions of power, the ruling party and the Church, are servants of the tsar. You can’t achieve any success in Russia, if you’re not enmeshed in the system. But you can change the values, change the system.

CHANGE THE SYSTEM
We feminists, will serve punk prayer at the altar because women cannot approach it. The mother of god would not, for example, approach the altar if she were in the cathedral.

After the meeting between Putin and the patriarch was willing to use the church to bolster any possible role the president might assume. He decided to put the church at Putin’s disposal, to lay it at his feet. To render Putin a demigod, not just a government official. His holiness praised the past twelve years of Putin’s rule as a ‘miracle of god’.

We rehearsed for a long time. Everyday for about a month. At an art gallery surrounded by a large park with benches. 

PUSSY RIOT CHURCH

→ A criminal case was started against us. We were charged with hooliganism, committed for reasons of religious hatred and enmity.

Prison terms: Nadya Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, 2 years in prison/penal colony; Yekaterina Samutsevich, 8 months in jail

BURN THE WITCHES

Don’t let pussy riot into the church was a flash game presented at the orthodox F.A.Q festival.

The participants called for a fight against provocative artists who offend the feelings of believers.

In the game, the player must block the way for figures in baklavas running towards the church.

PUNK PRAYER TRIAL, 2012

aquarium
Our cage in the courtroom is called ‘the aquarium’. It’s made of glass, and stands in the middle of the courtroom on the third floor. There is no microphone in the cage. You listen, and speak, through a narrow slit in the bulletproof glass.
‘All rise! This court is in session!’ a bailiff announces, and everyone stands up.

bulletproof
‘The defendants pose a danger to society and might disrupt the judicial investigation.
For this reason, they must be held in custody during the trial.’
A dog vomits at the entrance to the courtroom; the judge steps over the puddle.

action
Prosecutor: ‘The defendants are being charged with hooliganism, committed for reasons of religious hatred and enmity, for reasons of hatred towards a social group, perpetrated by a number of people who conspired together.’

pus-filled orgy
‘. . . that’s how they should translate the band’s name into Russian,’
the witness begins. Our supporters in the courtroom try not to laugh. ‘But it’s more than a band, it’s a whole movement.’
Ugrik the real-estate agent saw the ‘Punk Prayer’ on the internet and concluded that we worship Satan.
So he is now a witness in the Pussy Riot trial. He’s wearing a rumpled polyester shirt.
The judge tries to ascertain whether Ugrik was present in the church on 21 February.

‘Were you in the church on 21 February?’

‘No, but I saw the video. I was horrified – the girls were heading straight to hell. I had the feeling they didn’t know what they were doing. For a Christian, heaven and hell are as real and obvious as the Moscow metro.’

Are you heading straight to hell?

Speech bubbles of the talking heads:

Larissa Pavlova, victim’s lawyer:
Feminism is a mortal sin, as it is an unnatural expression associated with life.

Gennady Zyuganov, head of communist party:
You can’t joke about national symbols. I’d take a good belt and whip them with it.

Kiryll Gundyayev, patriarch:
Our country has no future if the form of political protest is mockery of shrines. It pains me to see how people who can call themselves orthodox begin to justify Pussy Riot.

Artem Ranchenkov, criminal investigator:
The essence of it is that they are real revolutionaries and demons who wanted to change the state of structure.

Dimitry Medvedev, prime minister:
I am sickened about what they did, by their appearance and by the hysteria surrounding everything that has happened.

Dimitry Smirnov, chairman of the synodal department of the Moscow patriarchate for the Interaction with the armed forces:
They are not girls but creatures. I would take their children away from them.

Archpriest Vsavolod Chaplin, head of the synodal department for church-society relations of the Moscow patriarchate:
They should be in prison for offending the feelings of believers. We, the Orthodox Christians, have been challenged. It is a challenge that is crude, insolent and aggressive.

Maxim Shevchenko, propagandist. Published on the website of “United Russia”:
This spits on the souls of the overwhelming majority of the Russian population.

Tikhon Shevkunov, Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, Putin's Confessor:
All of this is, of course, not merely hooliganism and not even the banal anti-clerical actions that some want to portray it as. This is a new reality of our life - ‘VELVET TERRORISM’.

Putin, President:
The court slapped two years on them. I had nothing to do with it.

 

HUNGER STRIKE, 2013

Context
I am going on hunger strike. This is an extreme method, but I am convinced that is my only way out of my current situation. The penal colony administration refuses to hear me. But I, in turn, refuse to back down from my demands. I will not remain silent, resigned to watch as my fellow prisoners collapse under the strain of slavery-like conditions. I demand that the colony administration respect human rights. I demand that the modovia camp functions in accordance with the law. I demand that we be treated like human beings, not slaves.
It has been a year since I arrived at penal colony No. 19.
Mordovia greeted me with the words of the deputy chief of the penal colony, lieutenant colonel Kupriyanov, who is the de facto head administrator of our colony. “You should know that when it comes to politics, I am a stalinist.”
My brigade in the sewing shop works 16 to 17 hours a day. From 7.30 AM to 12.30 AM. at best, we get four hours of sleep at night. We have a day off once every month and a half. We work almost every Sunday. Prisoners submit petitions to work on weekends “out of (their) own desires.” In actuality there is of course, no desire to speak of. These petitions are written on the orders of the administration and under the pressure from the prisoners that help enforce it. 
For the maintenace of discipline and obedience, there is a widely implemented system of unofficial punishment. Prisoners are forced to “stay in the Lokalka (a fenced off passageway between two areas in the camp) until lights out” (the prisoner is forbidden to go into the barracks. Whether it be autumn or winter. In the second brigade, consisting of the disabled and elderly, there was a woman who ended up getting such a bad frostbite after a day in the Lokalka they had to amputate her fingers and one of her feet); “lose hygiene privileges” (the prisoner is forbidden to wash themselves or use the bathroom); “lose commissary and tea-room privileges “ (the prisoner is forbidden to eat their own food, drink beverages. It’s both funny and frightening when a 40-year old woman tells you: “Looks like we’re being punished today! I wonder whether we’re going to be punished tomorrow, too”. She can’t leave the sewing workshop to pee or get a piece of candy from her purse. It’s forbidden.

Your hands are pierced with needle marks and covered in scratches, your blood is all over the worktable, but still you keep sewing. You are part of the assembly line, and you have to complete your task as well as the experienced sewers. The damn machine keeps breaking down. Because you’re new and there’s a deficit, you end up with the worst equipment – the weakest motor on the line. And now it’s broken down again, and once again, you run to find the mechanic, who is impossible to find. They yell at you. They berate you for slowing down production.
“If you were’nt Tolokonnikova, you would have had the shit kicked out of you a long time ago.” Say fellow prisoners with close ties to the administration. It’s true: Others are beaten up. For not being able to keep up. They hit them in the kidneys, in the face. Prisoners themselves deliver these beatings and not a single one of them is done without the approval and full knowledge of the administration. A year ago, before I came here, a gypsy woman was beaten to death (the third is the pressure-unit where they put prisoners that need to undergo daily beatings). She died in the medical unit PC-14. The administration was able to cover it up: The official cause of death was a stroke. In another unit, where the “snitch” will be beaten on the orders of that same administration, controlled hazing is a convenient method for forcing prisoners into total submission to their systemic abuse of human rights.

The living and working-condition violations at PC-14 are endless. However, my main and most important grievance is bigger that these. It is that the colony administration prevents any complaints or claims regarding conditions at PC-14 from leaving colony walls by the harshest means available. The administration forces people to remain silent. It does not scorn stooping to the very lowest and cruelest means to this end. All the other problems come from this one.
My lawyer Dmitry Dinze filed a complaint about the conditions at PC-14 with the prosecutors office. The deputy head of the colony, Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov, instantly made conditions at the camp unbearable. There was search after search, a flood of reports on all my acquaintances, the seizure of warm clothes, and threats of seizure of warm footwear. At work they get revenge with complicated sewing assignments, increased quotas and fabricated malfunctions. The leaders of the unit next to mine, lieutenant colonel Kupriyanov’s right hand, openly requested that prisoners interfere with my work output so that I could be sent to the punishment cell for “damaging government property”. They also ordered prisoners to provoke a fight with me.
It is possible to tolerate anything as long as it only affects you. But the method of collective punishments is bigger that that. It means that your unit, or even the entire colony is required to endure your punishment along with you. This includes, worst of all, people you have come to care about. One of my friends was denied parole, for which she had been awaiting seven years, working hard to exceed her work quotas. She was reprimanded for drinking tea with me. That day, lieutenant colonel Kupriyanov transferred her to another unit. Another close acquaintance of mine, a very well-educated woman, was thrown into the “stress-unit” for daily beatings because she was reading and discussing a justice department document with me. They filed reports on everyone who talked to me.
I am going on hunger strike and refusing to participate in colony slave labor. I will do this until the administration starts obeying the law and stops treating incarcerated women like cattle ejected from the realm of justice for the purpose of stoking the production of the sewing industry; until they start treating us like humans.

PRISON TRIALS, 2012

Context
You have to think up things to do to stay awake: tie a bunch of cigarettes together with thread (the packs themselves are forbidden; they throw them away during searches and the cigarettes are dumped into a big bag). Put matches back in a box. Sew name tags into your uniform. Make a list of your belongings. All so you won’t fall asleep. Sleeping is a violation of the rules. A missing or poorly attached name tag is a violation. A coat unbuttoned during inspection is a violation. 

VIOLATION VIOLATION VIOLATION

FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NO RIGHTS

I have two violations for oversleeping on my record. My minder says they’ll take me to a disciplinary commission and punish me. She speaks sharply, spitting out the words.

Violated the regimen?

And if I accept their authority, by agreeing to lies about violating the regimen, I would be submitting, too. I’d be pleading guilty to a crime I didn’t commit. Such moments of choice, made in prison, will stay with you for the rest of your life. These decisions become the most important ones you ever make. Because you can’t forget anything you do here within the prison walls. Once you betray yourself, even a single time, you can’t stop. You become another person, a stranger to yourself. You become a prisoner. And that means you have been defeated. They will have truly deprived you of your freedom.

To back down an inch is to give up a mile

‘I will take you to court,’ I say.
‘You can send your complaints to the prosecutor. The court won’t consider them,’ the major says dismissively.

The guards all laugh

Several months later, I win the first case against the guards in the history of this penal colony.

 ‘I came to the court for all those who have no rights, for all those who have no voice, for those who are deprived of their voices by those who have the power to do so.’
– Statement to the court, 7 February 2013

For those who have no rights

Location
Penal Colony #28 – Berezniki town, Ural mountains

A large hall in the guards’ club. In this hall, the disciplinary commission holds its sessions and punishes the prisoners. It is panelled, with rows of chairs and an oak table. A room that serves guards has been turned into a courtroom where guards are now put on trial.

I have two advocates working on my case against the penal colony. My slight and lively blonde lawyer, Oksana Darova, and Alexander Podrabinek, the Soviet- era dissident who hid us in Moscow. The judge refused to allow me to be present in the courthouse, so I am videoconferencing from the hall. This means that expensive equipment has been installed for the first time in the colony – monitors and microphones – so that I can address the court about the ways in which my rights are being infringed.

Trial in a guards club

I stand up. I look at the screen. The judge’s face is broken into pixels. The head of Unit No. 11 Nikolaeva’s white braid is broken into pixels; the fleshy cheeks of Major Ignatov are broken into pixels. The courtroom in Berezniki is broken into pixels. I say:

‘I can’t quite see you, Your Honour.
You appear only as a black silhouette.’

A mechanical voice from a small speaker answers, with much interference:
‘Sit down, Alyokhina. You have not been asked to speak yet.’

After the court session is over, my friends from home wave to me through the court camera. They say smile. They say ‘We won, Masha!’
‘Look this way! Wave to us!'

→ We won three cases out of four against the prison administration.

PENAL COLONY, 2012-2013

Context
The republic of convicts is what they call the perm region. This is where the camps of the Gulag were, and the last camps of the soviet dissidents. Total isolation, hand-picked prison guards, harsh northern climate.

Location for Maria
Penal Colony #28 - Berezkniki town, Ural Mountains
Penal Colony #2 - Nizniy Novgorod

Location for Nadya
Penal Colony #2 - Mordovia Region

‘Where? Where are you taking me?’
‘You’ll find out when you get there.’

This is their trick – the unknown. This is their method – to frighten. Their way of showing you are just a body.

I arrived at the penal colony after a month
November in the Urals is cold and wild

Prisoners in penal colonies live in barracks of 80-100 people in one room. They call it a “unit”. Usually there are only three toilets in the units and there is no hot water. Bath once a week.

According to the law in Russia, all prisoners in colonies are required to work. Working 8 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, the job is most often sewing, police uniforms and uniforms for the army. As a salary, prisoners receive 5 to 7 euros per month. This is legalized slavery. In case of any complaints or disagreements with the system, the prisoner is placed from the unit in solitary confinement.

PUTIN LIGHTS THE FIRES OF REVOLUTION, 2012 

Location
Outside of Khamovnichesky Court, Moscow

On the day of our sentence, our collective wrote a song ‘Putin lights the fires of revolution’ and performed it outside the court.

→ Almost 60 people were detained

PUTIN WILL TEACH YOU HOW TO LOVE THE MOTHERLAND, 2014

Location
Winter Olympic Games, Sochi

1.We decided – we are flying to the Olympics at Sochi to shoot the video “Putin Will Teach You to Love the Motherland”.
2.Three days before the closing of the games, we are sure that none of us will reach Sochi. Everyone will be arrested
3.We fly to Sochi with a large team of 12 people on four different flights. If they start arresting us at the entrance to the city, at least some of us have a chance of getting there.
4. It is known that during the Olympics there are more employees of Russia’s FSB in Sochi than indigenous inhabitants. Hot dogs in rolls are being served by a saleswoman with a rank no lower than that of Lieutenant of State Security.
5. Exit from the airport. We light cigarettes, with Nadya a few metres from the door. Immediately we are surrounded by uniformed policemen. They demand our documents. We refuse. We didn’t do anything wrong. We are leaving.
6. We rent a car. We are going to look at the first location for the Pussy Riot performance. On an empty night road, the group is stopped by the police.
The police are sure the car was stolen and that the Pussy Riot activist who is driving has a fake licence. We are being arrested. We are released by the police late at night, after they have taken away our right to the car.
7. At eight in the morning we swim in the icy black sea of February – this is our first shoot for the Pussy Riot Olympic video. A police car pulls up to an empty beach. The operatives get out. For 20 minutes they film girls squealing from the cold and diving in balaclavas on several video cameras.
Our compulsory VIP-amnesty is all because of the Winter Olympics. Putin has grown tired of answering questions from foreign statesmen about Pussy Riot. He needs to solve the issue of us ‘hooligans’, so as not to spoil the celebrations.
The amnesty is to save face in front of the West.

It is at the Winter Olympics that we realise that everything has changed, we realise that we haven’t grasped the scale of change, that we have left prison and arrived in a different country. There is no way back. Putin is on his third presidential term, which has now been extended to six years, and the year 2014 becomes a point of no return.

Point of no return

For Putin the Olympics is a special operation to return Russia to greatness.

8. At noon, we are detained by a joint border patrol unit of the FSB. We are accused of not having permission to be in the border special zone. The officers don't know where this special zone is located. For the next 12 hours, we are held under arrest at a military facility near the Russian border.
9. In the evening, after 12 hours of interrogations by the FSB border patrol unit, we go to have dinner. Almost immediately, we are targeted by undercover police agents trying to provoke a fight, who are pretending to be regular café patrons.
10. At two o’clock in the morning, we are filming an episode of the video near the Olympic rings on the outskirts of Sochi. We manage to break away from the operatives.
11. In the morning, we leave the cars. We get on a regular bus and go to the centre of Sochi. After 15 minutes, a group of police officers catch up with us: “You must ride with us to the police station”, “Why?”, “Your hotel has been robbed. You are all suspects”. They twist our arms forcefully, throw us into paddy wagons and take us to the police station.
12. We leave the police station, where we were kept for five hours. At the gate, a huge crowd of journalists. We put on balaclavas and break through the ring of press representatives, chanting lines from the song “Putin will teach you to love the motherland”. A crowd of journalists is running after us down the alley. People are falling, cameras are falling.
13. In the morning, we shoot the key episode of the video, by the blue wall of Sochi 2014, near the sea port. We are attacked by a crowd of bearded Cossacks with whips. The policemen stand silently nearby. Some of them film what is happening on video cameras.
14. The Cossacks twist our arms, fight, smash our faces until we bleed and spray tear gas in our faces. The police are smiling, watching the bloody carnage.
15. We wipe away the blood, put bandages on the wounds in the hospital, wash the tear gas out of our eyes and go to shoot the next and last episode of the video.
16. At night, in a secret house on the outskirts of Sochi, we edit the video Putin will teach you to love the motherland. Early in the morning – the premiere and meeting with journalists.
17. Half an hour before the press conference, the hotel, where the meeting with journalists is to take place, refuses to provide a room, under an idiotic pretext. The meeting with journalists goes ahead on the street, in front of the entrance to the frightened hotel.
18. Journalists are pestered by pro-Kremlin youths dressed as red roosters, waving raw chicken carcasses in the air and chanting “We like sex with chicken!”. In an interview with CNN, young people holding chicken carcasses say: “Life is so good in Sochi that there is no need to protest”.
19. We’re going to the airport – it’s time to return to Moscow. The taxi driver recognizes us and takes a picture as a keepsake. On the way we stop for lunch. We leave the café and find out that while we were having lunch two FSB officers approached the taxi driver and forced him to erase the photo. They also called him in to the FSB department for a conversation. We arrive at the airport. We return to Moscow.
20. At the Vnukovo airport. We are again met by a crowd of pro-Kremlin youths, dressed as red roosters. The roosters sing our song Putin will teach you to love the motherland with hoarse voices and smash the guitars on the floor, after which they are theatrically detained by the police.
21. Our first morning in Moscow after Sochi. 21 February. We are going to court to support the guys who were arrested for attending a rally against Putin’s inauguration on 6 May 2012 at Bolotnaya square. Seven people receive terms from two to four years in prison.
22. The next day, 22 February, the revolution in Ukraine, which we strongly support, prevails. The ousted president Yanukovych secretly flees to Russia.
23. Immediately after the closing of the Sochi Olympics and the victory of the revolution in Ukraine, the "Russian spring” begins - in a few days, the annexation of Crimea will commence.

→ Everyone was detained 3 times. Beatings, harassments, surveillance, slashed tires.

DON’T BE AFRAID, 2015

(Pussy Riot mask and speach bubble):
“The country itself has become imprisoned in a socio-cultural sense. In reality, 12 June is the holiday of the Imprisoned Russia”

For Don't be Afraid artist Katrin Nenasheva wore prison clothing in various public places for 30 days, documenting daily how others reacted to her presence.
The performance with the flag was done on the 18th day of the action, on Russia Day. Nadia joined Katrin, wearing the uniform she had worn during her incarceration in the Mordovian penal colony.
The girls came to the square in prison uniforms and attempted to sew the flag of Russia with the tag “Russia, Penal Colony-1”.

→ They did not have time to finish the flag in the square, because they were detained by the police.

THE BALL, 2014

Context
Navalny’s brother, Oleg, received three and a half years in prison for being the brother of the country’s main opposition leader. Thousands of people came to Red Square to protest, but they were dispersed by the police. But a few people remained. 26 degrees below zero. All night we stood with posters inside a huge Christmas ball. We were also detained in the morning. Three paddy wagons came for eight, super-frozen people.

Location
Red Square, Moscow

→ Detention, day in police station

 

NEW FACE OF THE COUNTRY, 2014

Location
Zamoskvoretsky Court, Moscow

Context
21 February 2014. Two years ago, exactly, we were on our way to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Now it’s to the Zamoskvoretsky Court to support the defendants in the Bolotnaya case, who were arrested for attending a protest rally on 6 May 2012 in Bolotnaya Square against Putin's inauguration as President. Seven people in this case will receive prison terms of 2 to 4 years. Hundreds more will become potential defendants in the case, some of them will leave the country to avoid prison.

Political prisoners from the Bolotnaya Case will not be released from their prison sentences. Despite hundreds of letters of support, which in Russia have long been equated with toilet paper, they will remain in jail until the end of their term. Putin needs them in prison as an example. An example of what awaits you if you protest in Russia.

Boris Nemstov, opposition politician
Murdered in 2015, on a bridge in the centre of Moscow, he was the loudest voice against the annexation and war in 2014

Ilya Yashin, opposition politician
Currently serving 8 years for making a YouTube report on his blog about war crimes of the Russian army in Bucha, Ukraine

Alexey Navalny, opposition politician
Currently serving more than 20 years for resisting Putin’s regime and fighting against corruption in Russia

 

ANNEXED CRIMEA, 2014

In the annexed Crimea, they started to build these warning signs about “agents of the West”, and also started to use Soviet Union rhetoric against people, like “enemy of the State”, “enemy of the people”, “agents”, “foreign agents”. They started to change the law again, and again, and created laws about foreign agents and unwanted organisations. Since that moment, they can call anyone they want a foreign agent as a legal term.

The same for unwanted organisations and unwanted persons. They can persecute whoever they want 

Location
Simferopol Centre

Context
In 2014, we realized that we had been released into a different country than we remembered. Another place, which was more violent and more terrifying. Putin annexed Crimea one week after the event of Putin will teach you to love the Motherland, one week after the Sochi games.

They annexed Crimea. They took another’s territory and didn’t receive any proper reaction from the West, just very light embargoes that were avoided by the biggest European countries. This was a sign for Putin as a dictator that it was OK to take territories, and, even back then, they started a war in the Ukraine.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EXECUTIONERS 2017

Location
Lubyanka, FSB building, Moscow

Context
We wandered around the backyards of the Lubyanka - here Lenin spoke, and had a grandiose banquet, here is where Dzerzhinsky organised the first underground laboratory in the country, where the first experiments on psychotropic substances were made on those arrested and taken into the unknown at night. Laboratory X. And now - literally next to it - with a huge sickle and hammer in a wreath: the reception of the FSB. We decided to give the Chekists a present for their anniversary. We go to the reception of the FSB to congratulate them. They’ve been in Lubyanka since 1917 under different names – Cheka – NKVD – KGB and now FSB – and today they are celebrating 70 years since Stalin’s Big Terror in 1937.

→ Spent one night in the police station and received 40 hours of community service.

Night. Happy birthday, executioners - we write with a spray can, folding the sheet to fit it in the narrow kitchen.

Morning. Meet me at Starbucks on Lubyanka. We go to the reception of the FSB to congratulate the security officers. We are rolling out the sheet in the most protected place of the country. And everything seems to be fine. The fact that we manage to hang it without having our faces immediately pushed into the asphalt is a success. It seems to me that the corner is not straight so I return to fix it. Olga walks away. And suddenly I'm surrounded from all sides by policemen in civilian clothes. They missed Olga.

PAPER PLANES, 2018

Location
Lubyanka, FSB Building, Moscow

Context
This has been the main headquarters of the special services since 1917. In addition to the Chekist’s cabinets, it was used as a prison for the most dangerous revolutionaries, directors, and poets, who went through many days of torture in the Lubyanka cellar.

No one has escaped in the building’s entire history

During the last century, the Checkists often changed their title, but never left the building.
VChK – NKVD – KGB – and finally FSB.
The archives of what went on here remains classified to this day.

In 2018, Roskomnadzor decided to block Telegram, the messenger service we all used. The Telegram logo? An airplane. We made lots of colourful paper airplanes and launched them into the FSB building.

→ A few nights in police detention +100 hours of community service for Masha.

 

FSIN = GULAG, 2018

Location
Federal Penitentiary Service, Moscow 

→ I didn’t get caught by the cops. The officers there were employees of the Fsin who don’t arrest anyone.

Context
When we started pasting them, an employee came out and told us to submit all complaints in writing.
We replied that that was exactly what we were doing. We just enlarged the words so that they would be readable.
Today in Russia, anyone can get behind bars. To do this, you don’t even have to sing a song against Putin. You can be imprisoned for a post, for a repost, for a single demonstration, for talking to friends about politics at McDonalds. What is the prison system? For two years I have seen it from the inside. It is a meat grinder that destroys the humanity in a person.

In my colony, women worked 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, sometimes more. They were paid 200 rubles a month, instead of the required minimum wage.
Without medicine, without proper food, without the ability to talk about the conditions in which they live in. In my first colony, dissenters were thrown out of windows, in the second they were put in cold chambers.

(On black tape below image with subtitles): Maybe I should burn your tongue? It’s not a big deal…

Everyone here has seen a video from the Yaroslavl correctional colony, in which eleven employees torture a prisoner. They beat the heels and the body with rubber batons. This video is not an exceptional case of sadism, but part of the daily practice of the Russian prison system, which turns people into slaves and hostages. That’s why we printed our photos of these people, or rather of what was done to them. We are here to say that if we forget this, we will cease to be human.

 We came to the reception of the FSIN (Russian federal penitent service) with stickers “FSIN=GULAG”, “Murders”, “Torture”, “Slave labour”

 

140 HOURS OF COMMUNITY SERVICE, 2018-19

 THE KAFKAESQUE WAY 

Location
Molodeznalya district, Moscow

The house they gave me to clean was supposed to be destroyed in a few months, which is a very Kafkaesque way to make a punishment.

ATTACKS ON PUSSY RIOT, 2014

Location
McDonalds, Nizhny Novgorod

Context
We came to my penal colony, the last one in Nizhny Novgorod, with groceries for my inmate friends and we were attacked by a Nazi group. They grow like mushrooms around the country.

Gopniks in puffer jackets with St. George ribbons leap into McDonald's and surround us. They throw chicken legs at us and spray us with glue from a can. They are carrying syringes filled with Zelenka - brilliant green. They take turns running up to us. One of them is holding a sign: "Dirty whores get out of town."

6 am, we had just got off the train and gone to eat. Another guy in a hat sprays brilliant green from a syringe. Aim for the eyes. Ten people stand over our table at McDonald's. They are filming us and repeat that we must go “back... to America!”

Tasya is holding the camera, she has an ocular burn that will lead to complete loss of vision. And Nadia has a burn too. I have concussion. The police, whose station is just around the corner, take 40 minutes to get to us. The ambulance travels at the same speed.

→  THE ATTACK WILL NOT BE INVESTIGATED

WORLD CUP, POLICEMAN ENTERS THE GAME, 2018

Location
Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow 

Four members of Pussy Riot ran onto the pitch during the 15 July match between France and Croatia in the 2018 FIFA World Cup final.

The action is timed to coincide with the 11th anniversary of the death of the poet, Dimitri Prigov. The heavenly policeman, according to Prigov, speaks on his walkie-talkie with God himself. The earthly policeman fabricates criminal cases. While the heavenly policeman is gently watching the fans at the World Cup, the earthly policeman is preparing to disperse the rallies. The heavenly policeman gently touches a flower in the field and rejoices at the victories of the Russian national team, and the earthly policeman is indifferent to Oleg Sentsov's hunger strike. The heavenly policeman stands as an example of statehood, the earthly policeman hurts everyone.

→ We were all arrested and detained for 15 days.

A couple of months later Pyotr Verzilov was exposed to military poison.

Pyotr was brought unconscious from Moscow to Charité clinic in Germany on a private plane, arranged by Pussy Riot supporters. He recovered in several months.

FREE SENTSOV, 2017

Location
Bridge next to Sentsov’s Penal Colony
Yakutsk, Siberia

Context
After the annexation of Crimea and the subsequent war in the east of Ukraine in 2014, not only oppositionists, but also Ukrainian citizens began to be persecuted inside Russia.
One of them was the Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov. Having been tortured by the FSB and having received a sentence of 20 years under strict regime in the autumn of 2015, Sentsov delivered one of the strongest speeches in court I have heard.

We went to Siberia, to Yakutsk, and carried out the first action, next to the penal colony in which he was being held.

→ Detained by the police, received a fine

 

Location
Trump Tower, New York

We held the second action in New York with local activists from the literary organization PEN, having told them about the Sentsov case. During a break between performances, blocking Trump Tower for half an hour, we hung a huge banner and released several hundred leaflets.

→ Talk with NY Police, no detention, no fine 

Location
Simferopol, Annexed Crimea

We decided to do a third action in Crimea. According to the plan, the action was to take place near a statue of Lenin in Simferopol that Sentsov was wrongly accused of attempting to bomb.

→ The FSB detained me at the airport, and Olga and Sasha on the ferry, burned all the equipment and threatened me with physical violence. After the arrest, Olga and Sasha left, but I still unfurled the banner at the train station. Then people dressed as Cossacks attacked me with whips.

All three participants of the action were detained by the police and sentenced.

From Sentsov’s speech in court at the time of his sentencing.
"You know, you were right, the worst sin on earth is cowardice."

This was written by the great Russian writer Bulgakov in the book The Master and Margarita, and I agree with him. Cowardice is the most important, the most terrible sin on earth. Betrayal is such a private form of cowardice.
I have been staying in your beautiful country for a year and watching your TV. Your propaganda is working great. Most of the Russian population believes what they say: Putin is a good fellow, fascists are in Ukraine, Russia is doing everything right, enemies are all around. You understand perfectly well that there are no fascists in Ukraine, that Crimea was taken illegally, and your troops are present in the Donbass. Even I, being here in prison, know that your troops are in Donbass.
We also had a criminal power, but we came out against it. They didn't want to hear us
– we knocked on trash cans. The authorities didn't want to see us – we set fire to tires. In the end, we won. The same thing will happen to you sooner or later. I don't want anyone to get hurt, I just want you not to be ruled by criminals anymore.

And I want to wish Russia – learn not to be afraid!

 

STOP GULAG, 2019 

Location
Bolshoy Kamenny bridge, Moscow

Context
By the end of 2019, Russia was busy with a large number of different criminal cases sewn together for political reasons. The defendants in these cases were completely different people.

A female politician, students, intellectuals from the middle class, random passers-by or people who have devoted their lives to finding victims of the regime – all these people have become defendants in criminal cases, because once the repressive mechanism gets going it will not stop.

We made a 10-metre banner saying “Stop Gulag” with portraits of new political prisoners and hung it on a bridge near the Kremlin.

→ I recieved a big fine, blocking all my bank accounts

NEW YEAR TREE, 2019-2020

Location
Lubyanka, Moscow

Context
In the Soviet Union religion was considered opium for the people and so they did not celebrate Christmas, but New Year instead, and that is still how it is done in Russia. Outside the headquarters of the Russian Secret Service FSB on Lubyanka there are big illuminated New Year trees, and so, on New Year's Eve, we came to Lubyanka and decorated a tree.

Lubyanka is a dreadful place, and it should become a museum, not a home for the secret police. When the archives are opened and we see how many lives were destroyed within these walls, when this is taught in schools, there will be a chance that the rule of the strong, and power held by fear and indifference, will no longer be key concepts in Russia.

We made 36 ornaments – colourful ornaments with portraits of political prisoners on them. From the tree, defendants of infamous political cases like the “Moscow Case”, the “Rostov Case”, “The Network” and “New Greatness”, Yuri Dmitriev, Azat Miftakhov and Yulia Tsvetkova look out at passersby and through the windows of Lubyanka. All of them are innocent, almost all are under arrest, many have been tortured, some face up to 18 years in prison, some have found love, some have married, but they all share one thing – their lives will never be the same.

Because real power is not with thos who have helmets, batons, and a repressive apparatus, but with those who have remained human

→ We didn’t get caught

 

“2036”, 2020

Context
The action 2036 is an homage to the Russian art group E.T.I., who, in April 1991, spelled out a three letter word, equivalent to FUCK, with their bodies, near Lenin’s mausoleum.

On 1 July, a “vote” was held on amendments to the constitution, one of which nullifies Putin’s presidential terms. If the amendments are approved, the president will be able to be re-elected to his post and remain in power until 2036.

We staged 2036 on Red Square, forming these numbers with our bodies on the paving stones.

Location
Red Square, Moscow

→ Four hours in a police station. Viktor Kotov brutally beaten by the police.

 

BURNING THE CONSTITUTION, 2020

Context
At the time when the amendments to the constitution were being made, I was continuously monitored.

Two of three unmarked cars followed us day and night, and several plainclothed officers were monitoring the entrance to my building. For this reason, my participation in the street action would have attracted a whole company of police, and the action wouldn’t have been able to take place. So I decided to just make a little joke at home.

SINGLE DEMONSTRATIONS, 2019

Location
Moscow

In the summer of 2019, a number of independent candidates were not registered for the elections to the Moscow Parliament, despite the fact that they properly collected sufficient signatures.
Mass protests began. The security forces violently arrested protesters. Former employees of the Kyiv Berkut, who were wanted in Ukraine, were seen in the ranks of the security forces.

After several hours of participating in a rally taking place all over the centre of Moscow, I sat down on a bench in the park next to where the rally continued and read on my phone. There are several policemen in civilian clothes sitting opposite me, suddenly one of them jumps up, sits down on my bench and says he wants a selfie – he quickly gets out his phone and takes a picture with me.

After that, he tells the uniformed policeman,
“Now you can detain her”.
They detain me and take me to the police station.
I get a $2,000 fine the next day.

A total of 1,373 people were detained at the rally on 27 July.
After this rally, a criminal case was initiated against the demonstrators, “The Moscow Case”.

2019 was the year of demonstrations – single demonstrations, queues of demonstrations – in support of the defendants in the “Moscow Case”, the largest criminal case since 2012.
When the authorities banned all mass protests, people started lining up to take turns holding a sign on their own. Eventually the line was banned too and, finally, standing alone holding a sign.

Location
Moscow

●     Administration of the president

●     Petrovka isolation centre

●     Lubyanka, FSB Building

(Green tape)
I am / We are Konstantin Kotov
5 peaceful actions - 4 years of penal colony
I / We are the country

Dozens of innocents are being jailed now
Russia is imprisoned! 

→ Massive fines

 

RAINBOW DIVERSION, 2020

Location of images

●     Ministry of culture, Moscow

●     Federal Security Service on Lubyanka, Moscow

●     Administration of the President of Russia, Moscow

●     Basmanny police station, Moscow

●     Russian Supreme Court, Moscow

Pussy Riot congratulates Putin on his 68th birthday and puts up rainbow flags on 5 of the most important government buildings in Russia

Now is the time

“There will never be any restrictions on the basis of orientation in Russia,” promised Putin. At the same time, the government was killing gay people in Chechnya, passing transphobic laws (to “strengthen the institution of the family”) and persecuting fathers of children born from surrogate mothers. To encourage people to vote for changes in the Constitution that allowed Putin to stay in power indefinitely, propaganda shared horrific homophobic videos aiming to convince our Russian citizens that staying in a same-sex family is worse for a kid than living in an orphanage.

We are just doing our job

We chose rainbow flags as our gift to Putin as a symbol of missing love and freedom. The state should not interfere in the life of the LGBTQ community. But if it does, then the community can intervene in the life of the state. You yourself like to say “symmetrical response” in such cases.

Therefore, we require from the government of Russia and Vladimir Putin himself:

1. Investigate the killings and kidnappings of gay, lesbian, transgender and queer people in Chechnya

2. Stop the harassment of activists and organizations who help the LGBTQ community

3. Pass a law that prevents discrimination on the basis of gender and sexual orientation

4. Legalize same-sex partnerships

5. Stop the harassment of same-sex families, stop taking away children from these families

6. Abolish “a propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” law as discriminatory and violating the right to freedom of expression

7. Make 7 October LGBTQ Visibility Day

Pussy Riot and friends greet Alexander Sofeev when he is released from prison.

→ Alexander Sofeev was arrested for a month. The other participants were detained and fined.

 

CENTRE E

Context
Centre E is the so-called Centre Against Extremism. They are the Russian political police, providing permanent surveillance and organizing attacks on activists. Their officers are called Eshniki.

The work of the Centre E police involves creating fake accounts on social networks, following activists, politicians and artists – anyone who has ever been noticed speaking out against the government – subscribing and watching. They monitor our social networks for hours and then write reports.
“Detected,” “Identified,” “Requesting action”.

Speech bubble: How to recognize officers from Centre E:

1.    Pretending to speak on mobile phone, but actually filming you

2.    Living in a grey/brown car under your window

3.    Shoes with pointed toes

4.    Puffy jackets

5.    Small black bags

Usually, their accounts are empty profiles without photos and names, something like “Igor 015987,” but sometimes a personality breaks through the username.

hateeveryone – one Eshnik’s online nickname

Eshniks are following us, we film them, they film us. We laugh. On the territory of the Russian Federation we are always provided with a dignified escort by the officers of the
Centre Against Extremism – Centre E.

 

CAREFUL, FRAGILE!, 2020

Location
Kremlin, Moscow

Attempt N 1
National Unity Day

National Unity Day was invented by Putin to replace Revolution Day. I am not enthusiastic about Lenin’s revolution, but the authorities are not afraid of him, they are afraid the word

Revolution

We are at the Kremlin. Morning. Cops are on our tail.
Cut.
We exit the subway on the outskirts of Moscow.
There doesn’t seem to be a tail.
No one is following us.
Cut.
Plastic bags with pita bread and kefir are falling on the ground. I fall too. Ten people in uniform run to question us, twisting our arms, knocking me to the ground.

Attempt N 2
Police Day

- And what are you wearing?
- Kokoshniks
- Why?
- Well, we are Russians, so we put them on
- You’re detained.

We’re being issued a protocol on a non-existent article. In a month we’ll be fined for it. Me and Rita for wearing Kokoshniks in the city centre, Farhhad and Samar for not wearing them.
Since the protests of 2019, hundreds of people have been accused and several have been prosecuted. While people were receiving sentences, the police were testifying in court that they were frightened by a plastic cup that fell nearby. The plastic cup has been called a weapon for no reason, but the most terrible weapon directed against common people is the police state.

Attempt N 3
We finally did it without being detained immediately.

→ We were detained by the police for the first two attempts. One of the charges literally says that we were detained for wearing a kokoshnik.
After the action, Rita was arrested almost immediately and issued 20 days of arrest. I was arrested a bit later.

 

A SUITCASE, 2020

Location
Moscow, our apartments

Context
Before my arrest, we decided to troll the cops a little and twice escaped from apartments that they were guarding.

The first time I dressed up as a boy and the second time I climbed into a suitcase and was lifted into a car boot by Lucy and Roma. I ran away from the cops in a suitcase and posted a video of it.
So the cops came to the third apartment, and started to guard the entrance. Our lawyer friend came down to the entrance, with the suitcase in his hand. The cops surrounded the lawyer and demanded that he open the suitcase. “We have information that there is a person in there", the cops began to yell.
“This is the property of a lawyer, according to the law you cannot touch it”, the lawyer answers and shows the certificate.
“But we have information that there is a person inside and we need to arrest her!” the cops answer.

They fight for 10 minutes. In the end, the lawyer opens the suitcase – it's empty. We take pictures of everything that’s happening from the balcony, wave to them from above and laugh. 

ARRESTS FOR NAZI PROPAGANDA, 2021

Location
Moscow

Context
I heard about the start of the war on the radio while in a special detention centre during one of my 15-day arrests.
In winter, we did not understand why we, and other activists, were being imprisoned for "Nazi propaganda”. In the spring, in February 2022, Putin unleashed a full-scale war on Ukraine and propaganda began calling all Ukrainians Nazis.
Autumn/winter 2021, when most of the Pussy Riot members had left the country, the state began to make carousels again against me and Lucy. A key difference was that the charges this time were not drawn up for “resisting” the police, as usual, but for “Nazi propaganda”.
For instance, in 2018, when Lucy was a municipal deputy in Moscow, she shared a link to a fundraising campaign for the Ukrainian military forces. Pro-Kremlin people responded by calling her a Nazi. One of them made a youtube video about what a Nazi she was, including this collage of her, that says “Lucy Shtein fascist deputy”. The hat obviously being his addition to the photo.

Three years later Lucy was arrested for it and accused of Nazi propaganda.

Three months after that, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the term “Nazi” began to be used in relation to Ukrainians, to justify the war.

 

ARREST CAROUSEL, 2021

Context
In the summer of 2021, the detentions of Pussy Riot began for no reason. On the streets, and near the houses, they detained and imprisoned us for 16 days. On leaving the detention centre we were detained again and imprisoned for another 15 days.

Such chains of of detentions we call arrest carousels.

Arrest carousels of Pussy Riot & friends / 15 days / 2021-22

1 / 7 May 2021 / Nika / 5 nights / resistance
2 / 8 May 2021 / Sasha / 5 nights / hooliganism
3 / 16 June 2021 / Nika / 15 days / resistance
4 / 21 June 2021 / Sasha ( + friend) / 15 nights / hooliganism
5 / 22 June 2021 / Lucy / 15 days / resistance
6 / 22 June 2021 / Anya / 15 days / resistance
7 / 22 June 2021 / Masha (+ 2 friends) / 15 nights / resistance
8 / 2 July 2021 / Nika (+ Roma) / 15 nights / resistance
9 / 7 July 2021 / Masha () / 15 days / resistance
10 / 9 July 2021 / Anya / 10 days / resistance
11 / 21 July, 2021 / Rita / 15 days / resistance
12 / 12 August 2021 / Rita / 15 days / Nazi propaganda
13 / 3 November 2021 / Farhad / 15 days / resistance
14 / 16 December 2021 / Lucy / 14 days / Nazi propaganda
15 / 16 December 2021 / Masha / 15 days / Nazi propaganda
16 / 7 February 2022 / Masha / 15 days / Nazi propaganda
17 / 27 February 2022 / Masha / 15 days / resistance
18 / 13 March 2022 / Masha / 15 days / resistance

Masha and Lucy, cell no. 3
Masha, cell no. 3
Here it is, the main privilege of same-sex relationships - you can do time together! If were were a heater couple, we would be detained in separate cells.

DETENTION CENTRE NO 2

Nika, cell no. 2

We are all serving our arrest in the same special detention centre – Detention centre No. 2 “Mnevniki”. One of us managed to bring the phone inside and we took super-romantic, lo-fi photos.
"Detention center" is a jail for minor offenses (small fights, drunk driving) - where one can be incarcerated for no more than 15-30 days at a time. The detention center is located in the city, and the administrative case required to incarcerate a political activist there can be written/fabricated within an hour. It is a very easy tool for exerting pressure. Detention Centre #2 looks like a hostel stylized as a prison. Mustard-coloured walls, high ceilings. Round lamps in black mesh covers, reminiscent of a woman's breast in erotic lingerie. In the cells, there are inscriptions - notes from those who have been here. In Sasha and Mitya's cell, one of them reads, "Navalny was here" and in ours "Rita - 20 days for an action near the Kremlin."

HOUSE ARREST, 2021

Navalny returned to Russia after being poisoned and was arrested at the airport. After that, a large demonstration is announced in support of him and other political prisoners.

The apartment where me and Lucy are is surrounded by the police. They turn off our electricity to try to get us to leave the apartment, to be able to arrest and detain us so we will not make it to the demonstration.
Our friend comes over to see if the police are still outside our door and he is detained by them when he enters our floor, right by the elevator. A second friend is detained by the police when he manges to slip us a powerbank.
Both are arrested for 15 days. For no reason.
The third friend arrives by car in the morning, we quickly go down, jump into his car and drive towards the demonstration. In a few days, a criminal case will be opened against this friend.

We are going to participate

Masha’s instagram post:

We have guests! Lucy’s apartment is surrounded by cops and cut off from electricity.
Therefore, I want to say:
Comrade major, go fuck yourself,
we have candles
and let’s meet tomorrow at 2 pm in the city centre for our freedom and yours!

Lucy’s tweet:

Joking is cool, but on 23 January, we need to take to the streets and tell the old fart and his friends to go to hell (even though I don't believe in anything and expect nothing, it's better than just sitting at home)

We get to the demonstration and protest together with the others, then we decide to go closer to the Kremlin. On the way, near the Bolshoi Theatre, the police detain us and take us to the police station. We spend the night in the police department. The next day, the court issues me a fine, and Lucy is arrested for 10 days.

Two days later we find out that a criminal case has been opened against us. As part of the criminal case, the court puts us under house arrest, they put electronic bracelets on our ankles. During the investigation and trial, we, as accomplices, are prohibited from communicating with each other, leaving the place of house arrest and using the internet. You aren’t even able to take out the trash, go grocery shopping or order delivery. Your home turns into a prison cell. Your movements become controlled by the tracking tag on your ankle. Any trips like going to the court or visiting the doctor can only happen when escorted by a penitentiary service officer called “inspector”.

Me and Lucy were put under house arrest, split up in two different apartments.

VIOLATING HOUSE ARREST

Spring 2021

1.The first violation of house arrest happened suddenly. I just missed Lucy, downloaded the taxi app (nothing happens if you use the internet as long as you stayom my off social media) and went fr apartment prison to hers. Two hours later, the apartment was surrounded by police, they took me to the police station, from where the inspector took me and returned me to my apartment.

2. Once we managed to schedule medical appointments in the same clinic at the same time and met in the x-ray basement. We had been developing this plan for a couple of weeks.

No one found out.

WE’RE BREAKING THE RULES

3. Then we were both brought to an appeal hearing. On that day, someone had called the court with a false bomb threat, so people were evacuated from the building. We were on the street together and kissed. The investigator was very dissatisfied, he shouted to our inspectors: “Stop this, do something.” But they did nothing.

During the arrest carousels, Lucy and I are still involved in the criminal case. We have electronic bracelets on our feet. Every day, the paddy wagon takes
us from the cell at the detention centre to the investigative committee to get acquainted with the thick books of the criminal case, sewn with white threads.

1 instagram post = 6 thick criminal case books.

In the investigative committee, we read these books together with the lawyers, and then we are returned back to the cell. We have fun, because this is the first time in the six months of being accomplices that we can spend the night together.
Finally, in the fall, we receive the sentence in our criminal cases. The electronic bracelets will have to stay on our ankles, but now we will be able to stay in the same apartment and to leave the apartment during the daytime, when the verdict finally arrives at the Department of Corrections.

 

 

(Written in the hallway):

Navalny says “To be in Germany was not my choice, it is a great country but I am not here of my own free will” He stands on a hill with a view of a German suburb behind him. In a blue jacket with a seriously thin face. “But I have bought a ticket home! I return to Moscow on 17th January on the Pobeda flight. Come and meet me!”

tickets home

The flight from Berlin to Moscow is sold out to journalists. Navalny enters the plane to the sound of applause. Cameras, telephones, questions, surgical masks. “Hello everyone!” says Navalny and even through the mask it is clear that he is smiling.

“Alexei! Are you not scared?”
“Alexei! Are you not afraid of being arrested when you land?”
“Alexei! How are you feeling?”

“I feel that I am a citizen of Russia who has the absolute right to return home” Navalny says, pushing through the crowd of journalists.

We go to meet him. Lucy and I are in our lawyer’s car, it is old and broken down, with no back seat, we go slowly through traffic jams, we don’t want to be late, but many people do want this. At Vnukovo airport - a crowd. An excited one, with everyone’s eyes moving from their phones to the doors and back again. Two thousand people. Some have come with flowers, some with placards “We are proud of you!”. The police begin to push people away from the airport building. The detentions begin. Those who came to meet Navalny are dragged into avtozaks. Centre E cops mix with the people.  
At a height of 10 thousand metres Navalny and his wife Yuliya watch the series ‘Rick and Morty’ on a laptop. Yuliya understands everything. She understands that this is his last 2 hours of freedom. Their last two hours of freedom. She knows that as soon as the plane lands they will take him away. For a long time. But she doesn’t know yet that it will be forever. They laugh, look back and share one set of earphones between them. 
The pilot announces that due to technical reasons they won’t be landing in Vnukovo airport. The plane changes course. A change in route that thousands of people are following. We won’t get to the other airport in time. Our lawyer pulls a person out from the group of detained. I drink sweet coffee from a vending machine and look at my phone. And then I look around. Opposite me there’s a shop with an advert for sportswear – a sponsor of the Olympics, where the Cossacks beat us up.
to love the motherland

Why did you come back?
In answering this question I already feel annoyed for two reasons. The first – at myself, for not being able to find the right words so that everyone can understand why and stop asking me. The second – at Russian politics over the last decade, which has instilled a cynicism and love of conspiracy in society to the extent that people simply don’t trust your motives. Like, if you came back, it means you must have done a deal with someone. But it hasn’t worked out. Or it hasn’t worked out - yet. There’s some kind of cunning plan, in which the towers of the Kremlin have a part to play. In any case, there must be some SECRET underlying reason. After all in politics all is not as it seems.

But there are no secrets or schemes. It’s actually very simple.
I have my country and my convictions. And I don’t want to turn my back on my country or my convictions. And I cannot betray either the first or the second. If your convictions are worth anything then you have to stand by them. And if necessary be prepared to pay the price.
And if you’re not prepared to, then you don’t have any convictions. You just think you do. But they aren’t convictions or principles - just thoughts in your head.
There is a different expectation placed on me. I travelled the country and announced from the stage “I promise that I will not let you down, I will not deceive you, I will not abandon you”. By returning, I fulfilled my promise to my voters. After all there must come a time when they are not lied to.
- Alexei Navalny

They detain him at passport control. The plane needed to be diverted so that he thought that he was on his own. The crowd of people who love him are left in a different corner of the city. Admiration and bewilderment, the front covers of the world’s newspapers, and behind the scenes negotiations. Navalny’s action is an action with a capital “A” - to return to your motherland that will kill you. But he doesn’t know that yet and neither do we. We watch his team’s investigation about Putin’s palace, we read the announcement of an unsanctioned protest. He’s worth coming out for. A criminal case awaits us. Awaits many of us, but among the many, it awaits the two of us - Lucy and me, sitting on different benches in a deserted night-time airport.

 

ACTIVISTS’ FRONT DOORS, 2022

(Black tape, white marker)

“Let’z finish the war”
Rita Flores’ front door - Pussy Riot activist, Moscow

“Here lives the traitor”
Front door of Alexey Milovanov - Activist, Kaliningrad

“Don’t sell your motherland, bitch”
Front door of Olga Misik - Activist, Moscow

“Don’t sell your motherland, Dima”
Front door of Dima Ivanov - Activist, Moscow

“Traitor”
Front door of Kristina Vorotnikova - Activist, St. Petersburg 

“Don’t sell your motherland, collaborator”
Front door of Lucy Shtein - Pussy Riot activist, Moscow

“We know what you’ve done, nazi”
Front door of Daria Heikinen - Activist, St. Petersburg

After the beginning of the war, mass harassment and imprisonment of all those who protested against the war began. War censorship was introduced. Putin's regime forbade even calling the war a war, but instead called it a "special military operation”.
The main emblem and the new swastika is the letter Z.
Centre E co-ordinated these attacks on activists’ doors, labelling them as traitors, foreign agents etc.

 

ESCAPE, 2022

Context
The war had begun. When I was put on the arrest carousel for 15 days, Centre E was constantly on duty at our house, so in order to leave, Lucy needed a disguise. A bright green uniform for food delivery couriers – Lucy buys it on a used goods service, where in Russia you can buy anything. It's the perfect disguise – you're simultaneously visible from everywhere and invisible to all. Couriers constantly move around the city and go in and out of buildings, and nobody pays any attention.
Early in the morning, Lucy changes into the uniform, puts Mr. Rat into the thermal bag on her back, and leaves the apartment. By the time the police come to their senses, Lucy and Mr. Rat will already be in Belarus.
Lucy then passes the uniform on to me, and it will come in handy when I finally decide to leave to help Ukraine win the war. It was very useful, because the house where I was staying was surrounded by police. The suit allowed me to go out the back door unnoticed.

Location
Moscow - Europe

Dear Mr. Rat, thank you for sharing this journey with us! Rest in peace, our beloved best friend, the kindest of creatures
Lucy and Masha

→ Masha and Lucy appear on the Russian federal wanted list.

 

PUTINS ASHES, 2022

Context

Members of Pussy Riot burn a 3x3 M portrait of Putin, performs rituals and cast spells aimed to chase Putin away

→ A few months later a criminal case was opened on Nadya, under the “Pussy Riot” criminal article” – for “hurting the feelings of believers”. This article was introduced to Russias criminal code in 2012 while Pussy Riot members were on trial for punk prayer. Nadya was put on Russia’s wanted list.

 

SCARECROW, 2022

Location
Tiblisi, Georgia

The action is timed to the end of winter and the onset of spring, the transition from bad to good.
After the bonfire was lit, the Russians who had gathered for the rally, who had mostly left over the past few weeks, as well as Belarusians and Ukrainians living in Georgia, began to dance.
As Zelensky said, ‘life will defeat death, and light will defeat darkness,’ and Putin will be punished for all crimes in The Hague. We know for sure – good will win.”

→ A criminal case was started against Anna Kuzminykh in Russia, despite the action having taken place outside the country.

 

GRAFFITI

→ one arrest in switzerland

MAMA DON’T WATCH TV, 2022

Context
On 24 February 2022, Russia began a wide-scale military attack on Ukraine. Russian bombs and rockets destroyed Ukrainian homes, schools and hospitals, wrecking towns and destroying lives.

We believe that Putin’s regime is a terrorist regime, and Putin himself, his officials, generals and propagandists are war criminals.

Russia has continued its military aggression on the territory of Ukraine since 2014, when Russian troops annexed Crimea and began the occupation of the Donbass region. Every day since then Ukraine has had to fight for the right to live and for freedom, fight to guarantee its sovereignty.

We call for:

1. An EMBARGO on the purchase of Russian oil and gas, on the sale of weapons and police ammunition to Russia.

2. SIEZE the western bank accounts and property of Russian officials and oligarchs and introduce personal sanctions against them.

3. An INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL to try Vladimir Putin, employees of Russian state propaganda, army officers and everyone who is responsible for the genocide of the Ukrainian nation.

 

Europe continues to buy Russian oil and gas. More than 12 billion Euros WERE SPENT by Germany on Russian gas last year.

With this money, Putin buys weapons and drones from his allies – Iran, North Korea and China. With these WEAPONS, the Russian Army kills Ukranians.

About 50000 Ukranians have already died from the “Russian World” of death that Putin brings.

By continuing to buy Russian oil and gas – you are sponsoring Putin’s “RUSSIANWORLD” which is not so far away and CAN COME TO YOU.

 

SWAN LAKE

Context
Russian state propaganda poisons people's hearts and brains with hatred. Putin's propagandists are no less war criminals than the soldiers who kill and rape the civilian population of Ukraine or the generals who give these orders. The cult of victory has become the assembly point of the new fascism in Russia.

Lessons of "forced patriotism" were introduced in schools after the invasion in Ukraine. Teachers make groups of schoolchildren get in formations to spell out giant letter Zs with their bodies in classrooms and school gyms to show their support for the war. All over Russia, children are forced to write "kind letters" to the occupying soldiers. In Yekaterinburg, fifth-grader Timofey wrote in his letter that he wished the military "to return home, not to kill people on foreign soil and not to cause harm." The teacher condemned the child and he was harassed by classmates for "insufficient patriotism". "Soldier, don't kill people" was written by a boy and it inspired us to write a song.

This, at first glance invisible and quiet protest of a child against the war is not the only one. Propaganda has made it so that children who take an anti-war position are bullied, beaten and sent to orphanages. Children are being prepared to become meat — "the happiness of the Motherland is more important than life."

We took the musical theme of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake as the basis of the song, it was this ballet that the television would broadcast in the Soviet Union to hide reality.

 

BURNING THE CONSTITUTION

Context
At the time when the amendments to the constitution were being made, I was continuously monitored.

Two or three unmarked cars followed us day and night, and several plainclothes officers were monitoring the entrance to my building. For this reason, my participation in the street action would have attracted a whole company of police, and the action wouldn’t have been able to take place. So I decided to just make a little joke at home.

 

ILLUSTRATION “RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA”
Ostankino Tower

Speech bubble: Burn this shit

From top left to bottom left

“The Kyiv gang of neo nazis and drug addicts has taken the entire Ukranian people hostage”

“What kind of negotiations can there be with Satan! They have always lied. This is the foundation of the satanic western civilization.”

“Gays should be banned from donating blood and sperm and their hearts in case of a car accident should be burried or burned”

From top right to bottom right

“Nobody is fighting against Ukrainians, Ukrain is being liberated now.”

“We are fighting for the human race to exist in it’s original form

“Russia is the only country in the world capable of turning the U.S.A into radioactive ashes.”

Images: “Velvet Terrorism. Pussy Riot’s Russia”, exhibition views, Haus der Kunst 2024. Photo: Maximilian Geuter