by Masha Gessen
Some women showed up and said they were also feminist artists. They suggested doing an action in Red Square. Pussy Riot thought that Red Square was overexposed; just about every Russian contemporary artist worthy of the title had done something there. Then again, if just about every Russian contemporary artist worthy of the title had done something there, why had Pussy Riot not done anything there? Pussy Riot became obsessed with Red Square.
The square contained a structure known as Lobnoye Mesto, a round stone platform about fourteen yards in diameter and eight feet high. Ivan the Terrible had used it to address Muscovites in 1547, and the czars’ decrees were read from it in subsequent centuries, but contrary to popular lore, it had not been used for public executions. It did, however, beg to be exposed as a stage. A dozen steps led up to the top of the platform, but they were covered with snow, as was the stage itself, and one suspected that under the snow there was ice. Pussy Riot figured out a way to position themselves so they could not be removed. A stone barrier ran most of the perimeter of the platform, about a foot wide and about three feet high. If they climbed on the barrier, they would be more than ten feet off the ground and it would be virtually impossible to remove them forcibly without risking killing them in the process.
There was, in fact, ice on the barrier, and they discussed the need to wear nonslippery boots. They also needed a ladder, smaller than their old one, to get up onto the barrier quickly, and they bought that at the Auchan hypermarket. And then they rehearsed—a lot, because they knew this one had to be fast. Now was not like the old times, a couple of months ago, when no one suspected them of anything unusual until an action was already under way: now the police expected protest everywhere, and in Red Square they expected it most of all.
———
WHEN PUSSY RIOT WOKE UP on the morning of January 20, 2012, the day they planned to sing on Lobnoye Mesto, they found out that three gay activists had been detained in Red Square for coming out with a placard that said HOLD A GAY PRIDE PARADE IN RED SQUARE. Pussy Riot joked that they had been announced, and they went to Red Square.
A column of rebels is headed for the Kremlin.
FSB windows are blowing out.
The bitches piss themselves behind red walls.
Riot is aborting the System!
A Russian riot, the draw of protest.
A Russian riot, Putin has pissed himself.
A Russian riot means we exist.
A Russian riot riot riot.
Come out,
Live in the Red,
Show freedom,
Civic anger.
Fed up with the culture of male hysterics.
The cult of leadership is causing brain rot.
The Orthodox religion is a hard penis.
Patients are instructed to accept conformity.
The regime wants to censor your dreams.
Time to understand, time to confront.
A bunch of bitches from the sexist regime
Is begging the feminist army for forgiveness.
A Russian riot, the draw of protest.
A Russian riot, Putin has pissed himself.
A Russian riot means we exist.
A Russian riot riot riot.
Come out,
Live in the Red,
Show freedom,
Civic anger.
The Federal Guard—the presidential security service—surrounded Lobnoye Mesto as soon as the eight women started singing. But Pussy Riot’s idea worked: the men in civilian clothing dared not attempt to remove them, and just stood around watching as the women threw down their backpacks, which contained mostly warm clothing, sang, and even lit smoke bombs. It all took a while, and it was so cold it made some of the women wish the Federal Guard would move in on them just so they would not have to keep standing there with bare arms. Kat had worn her summer boots because they had a nonslip sole, and she was so cold that once the song was over, she started changing into her winter clothes right up there, on Ivan the Terrible’s stone platform. Then they climbed down and the patient men in civilian clothing said, “Come with us.”
They handed them over at the nearest police station. The cops leered at Pussy Riot’s outfits and then put the women in a cage. Pussy Riot gave their fake names. The cops lazily debated who they were: prostitutes, protesters, or perhaps even performers. A while later the men in civvies returned carrying pictures; they had been photographing during the action, and they had now made prints. Pussy Riot asked to see. They looked good: a red, a purple, a white, a dark green, a lighter green, a brighter red, a blue, and a yellow dress, perfectly mismatched balaclavas, cross-matched tights, snow, smoke from the smoke bombs, with candylike St. Basil’s Cathedral for their backdrop—they had never looked this good. There had never been so many of them either. They had waved a purple NO PASARAN flag with a fist in it. They had also had a portrait of Putin with Muammar Gaddafi, which Seraphima was supposed to douse with kerosene and set on fire, but she had bungled that part and failed to take out the portrait or to discover that kerosene is not particularly flammable—both the portrait and the liquid were in her backpack now. The portrait might have complicated the picture unduly. As it was, Pussy Riot had just performed its clearest and most spectacular action, and this was what they saw in the photographs.
It all felt almost friendly, so when the cops pressed them, seven of the eight women gave their real names. They were released, but Seraphima, who had the kerosene, insisted on her fake identity and the police kept her back. They browbeat, threatened, and cajoled her for about six hours. They emptied out her backpack, took her cigarettes, and ritually broke each of them in half. If this was their idea of scare tactics, she found it pretty funny. Then they gave up and even made like they believed her fake-name story. They reprimanded her for driving her Porsche Cayenne while drunk—this was apparently the offense that had landed her alias in the police database—and let her go. Seraphima had been given a mild preview of future Pussy Riot interrogations.
———
PUSSY RIOT WAS FAMOUS. Moscow magazines were interviewing them and commissioning photo shoots of their rehearsals. The world seemed to say it wanted to know what they would do next. So did Pussy Riot.
The problem with Red Square is that nothing can top it—except, perhaps, the Kremlin itself. But even getting much closer to the Kremlin than they had been at Lobnoye Mesto—about two hundred yards from an entrance to the Kremlin grounds—was most likely impossible. The Duma was proving to be difficult: Kat, Nadya, and Petya were denied temporary passes for a planned reconnaissance mission; apparently, they were on a list. In the end, they used fake student IDs to get in, but Terminator had gotten into trouble with her Duma deputy and all of this promised more trouble for the action. Plus, the Duma was no more than an approximation, a stand-in for the Kremlin, at whose pleasure it served.
The protest movement continued to snowball, making the Kremlin increasingly nervous. Putin had reshuffled his team, evidently marshaling the troops—including the Russian Orthodox Church, a reliable ally of Russian dictators through the centuries. On the eve of a large-scale opposition march planned for February 4, priests around the country instructed their parishioners to abstain from protesting. The patriarch himself addressed throngs gathered for a liturgy at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, that giant, gaudy structure where the Virgin’s Girdle had recently been displayed. “Orthodox people know not how to attend demonstrations,” said Patriarch Kirill. “They pray in the silence of monasteries, in their monks’ cells, in their homes, but their hearts are full of pain for the turmoil among our people today, so clearly similar to the desperate frenzy of the years immediately before the Revolution and the discord, disruption, and damage of the 1990s.” The patriarch, who, like many if not all highly placed clergy—and like the once and future president himself—had served in the KGB, was sending a two-part message. Putin, who became president in 2000, had brought the country back from the brink of disaster, and those who were rocking the bo
at now would put the country back on a path to destruction. It followed that true believers should not only refrain from attending protest marches but should also attend a counterprotest rally jointly organized by the Kremlin and the Church’s youth movements—and it went without saying that they should vote for Putin come March 4.
The following day—one of the coldest days of the year—more than fifty thousand people in Moscow came out to march against Putin. The protest movement was solidifying and becoming more clearly political; where earlier protests had called for fair elections, now people marched with explicit anti-Putin slogans. “Twelve more years?” asked one call-and-response chant. “No, thanks” was the answer. Another chant paraphrased a children’s rhyme: “A storm is gathering once, a storm is gathering twice, a storm is gathering thrice—time for Putin to prepare for prison.” Nadya marched with the rainbow flag contingent that day, and Petya tried, rather ineffectually, to help with organizing.
On February 8, Patriarch Kirill met with Putin. In the televised portion of their conversation, he described the flush aughts as “God’s miracle, greatly aided by the country’s leadership.” The message was clear again: Putin was next to God, and this was not just Putin’s election campaign—it was also the patriarch’s and that of the Church itself. And this meant that Pussy Riot’s next action should take place in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which was to the patriarch what the Kremlin was to Putin. It also represented the Putin era even better than the luxury boutiques did. This was where Putin and Medvedev came for holiday services, as seen on TV. It was a symbol of post-Soviet piousness, superficial and generously gilded. The cathedral was also home to some incongruous ventures, such as a luxury car wash and a banquet hall, the proceeds from which benefited the Cathedral of Christ the Savior Foundation, which had not been known for its charitable contributions, or for anything at all. And at the same time, the cathedral had attracted a million to see the Girdle, a sign of Russia’s ominous slide into the Dark Ages. Holding the next Pussy Riot action at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was perfect and it was right.
———
AFTER LOBNOYE MESTO, Seraphima’s astrologer told her to leave the country. She did not make much of an argument. She did not say, “Leave the country or else you will go to jail” or “Leave the country before things get bad,” she just said, “Leave the country.” Seraphima trusted her astrologer, but this was ridiculous. Seraphima was in the right place and she was doing the right thing. She had never felt this more than when Pussy Riot gave her the name Seraphima: she had a mystical certainty—she was not crazy, and she knew other people did not share it, but this knowledge just lived inside of her—that the Russian people had a special place and a special mission in the world, and she could feel that now was a time of transformation, and when she was given the very old-world Russian name Seraphima, she knew she had a special role to play in this transformation. Lobnoye Mesto, and her particular role at Lobnoye Mesto—even though the portrait had never gone up in flames—had felt like a part of her mission, perhaps only the beginning of it. But then again, she trusted her astrologer. So when at the first post–Lobnoye Mesto rehearsal, as Pussy Riot called it, the subject of their next location came up, Seraphima said, “Let’s do it on an airplane. And leave the country at the same time.”
Nadya and Kat said, “Let’s do it in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.”
Terminator said, “Let’s do it at the Duma.”
Seraphima said, “We can’t do it in the cathedral. They’ll send us to jail.” She mentioned the arts curators who had been convicted of inciting religious enmity for organizing visual arts shows that were critical of the Church.
Still, none of the curators had actually gone to jail: their sentences were suspended. And that was before! Now was a time of change. Nadya and Kat dismissed the worry. “This is different,” said Kat. “And anyway, the authorities looked so bad in those cases, they know not to do that again.” Between them, they called this the “first-detention effect”: most women, after they were hauled into a police station for the first time, even if they were treated reasonably well and their alias was uncontested, would from that point on find a way to stay out of public actions. They would say things like “I’ll help with the rehearsals.” Seraphima was doing this now. She said, “I just can’t go to jail. I mean, no one, no human being, can go to a Russian jail.”
It was decided to hold the next action at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
The following day, Seraphima bought a plane ticket to India and left the country. It felt sad: Pussy Riot had felt like home, and Seraphima had felt a sort of love for each of the girls. Nadya, whom she had known the longest, was crazy. Crazy was not bad, and in Nadya’s case it was definitely a light-filled kind of crazy, crazy as a force for good. Nadya was a born leader, but this also meant she had an inborn sense of self-importance, which made Serpahima weary. She took herself as seriously as Seraphima had been able to take only religion. Seraphima had been a devout Orthodox for a couple of years a sort of long time ago, and she thought this was why now she had such a clear vision of how this action would end: it would end with jail. Sometimes Seraphima suspected that Nadya and Kat actually wanted to go to jail. At least they wanted to be the kind of people who had gone to jail. That said, Seraphima liked Kat. Maybe Kat just lacked the imagination to see what it would be like; she could probably visualize the solutions to mathematical equations a lot better than she could conjure up the reactions of people who would be deeply hurt by her actions and who had the power to do something about it.
And then there was Maria. She was new and no one knew much about her. She and Seraphima usually walked to the bus stop together, and Seraphima found herself thinking, How did a girl like this end up with the likes of us? There was something preternaturally pure about Maria. She probably had no idea what she was getting herself into either.
Nadya and Kat and, occasionally, some of the others, including Petya, began preparing for the action. They cased the cathedral. They discovered that security saw men and women through different optics: if a woman went in carrying a guitar case, she was stopped; a man was just a hippie or a weirdo with a guitar going to the cathedral. They set some ground rules. One, they would not disrupt the service. Showing such disrespect for parishioners would detract from Pussy Riot’s message and expose them to unnecessary risk. They could be charged like those curators had been, and Pussy Riot did not want to risk arrest; in fact, they had grown pretty sick of detention. Sure, it would be spectacular to disrupt a service with a Pussy Riot action, but people just would not understand. But if Pussy Riot desecrated the space during hours when it was used solely for the activities of its corrupt foundation (and the car wash)—that is, when it was already being desecrated—the message would be clear.
Admittedly, this required compromise. The lights at the cathedral shone brightly—brightly enough to film—only during services; the rest of the time the place was dim. But they were adamant about not taking excessive risk, so they asked a couple of videographers and photographers to check the place out ahead of time and be sure to bring light-appropriate equipment. They chose the videographers carefully. This action had to be kept quiet.
There was a spot in the cathedral that looked like it had been created especially for Pussy Riot. They had no idea what it was called or what its purpose was, but it looked incongruously like a stage in the middle of the church. It was in front of and sort of beneath the altar—one could see it as forming part of its pedestal—but it did not seem to be protected like the altar. The altar had full-height gates that were locked in between services, and Pussy Riot noticed that no one went in casually. The platform had a low ornate fence around it, easily stepped over, and it seemed to inspire no particular piety; the cleaning lady marched up there with her equipment every day. Plus, it had a microphone on a stand, hooked up to easily visible amplifiers. Pussy Riot would most likely be unable to use this equipment, but the whole thing looked like somebo
dy’s television-inspired idea of a parliamentary pulpit imposed on somebody’s television-inspired idea of a big official church. Pussy Riot laughed as they discussed this. Cathedral security gestured to them to stop laughing.
The fact was, there was a lot of security, burly guys, most of them without uniform but acting as they would in parliament, trailing anyone who seemed strange; this was, after all, the official church. Taking this in, Kat suggested the action would not work out: security would step in so soon, they would not even have time to set up.
The solution, once they hit on it, seemed simple enough: they would record the song ahead of time, then they would go to another, less central church and video-record there, and only then would they attempt an action at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Whatever they got at the cathedral—even if it was only a minute of footage—would be combined with previously recorded material to create a clip of an action at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, even if the action itself existed mostly in their imaginations.
