Words Will Break Cement

by Masha Gessen

  “No.”

  “All right. Did they say, ‘Mother of God, become a feminist’?”

  “It’s all mixed up with the video clip now. You know, I don’t remember.”

  “Did they mention Patriarch Kirill’s last name?”

  “I was standing there and praying as hard as I could so I wouldn’t hear these words. I definitely heard the word ‘patriarch.’ And we only have the one patriarch.”

  “You said you were praying. When you pray, do you hear what other people are saying to you? Do you take in information, wholly or in part?”

  “I didn’t say that and I won’t. I want to say that praying normally and praying in that setting are different things. It was enough that I heard the word ‘patriarch.’ I’m not going to tell you which grammatical case it was used in.”

  “So you can’t say what you heard exactly?”

  “No.”

  “So you didn’t hear anything!”

  “Sure I didn’t!”

  “You keep asking the victim the same question,” said the judge. “She’s already answered. I’m disallowing it.”

  “You mean the court doesn’t need to know what the victim heard?” asked Volkova.

  “I said, I’m disallowing the question!” the judge squealed.

  “Tell me then what kind of moral suffering you experienced when you heard their show,” said Feigin.

  “I am disallowing the question!” the judge screamed again. “The victim already answered it. You should have been paying attention.”

  “I didn’t get an answer.”

  “But everyone else did,” said the judge.

  “All right. Who told you that the young women you saw at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the women in the clip you watched were the same people? They were wearing balaclavas.”

  “I can put two and two together,” said Sokologorskaya. “I’m not the stupidest person there is.”

  “You said the defendants performed bodily movements that you called ‘devilish jerkings.’ Could you explain what devilish jerkings are?”

  “I am disallowing the question.”

  “Why?” Volkova stood up again. “Is the court curtailing our rights?”

  “No one is curtailing anything,” said the judge.

  “The victim’s statement is part of the record,” insisted Volkova. “We would like to know what ‘devilish jerkings’ are. How does the victim know how the devil jerks? Has she seen the devil?”

  “I demand respect for the victim,” said the judge. “I am reprimanding you.”

  “We would like to know why the court is disallowing our questions. On what basis?”

  “Continue the cross-examination,” said the judge.

  The lawyers had run out of questions. The defendants themselves stepped in.

  “We stand accused of publicly expressing hatred and enmity toward Orthodox believers,” said Maria. “I want to understand the difference between a personal insult and the public expression of hatred for believers.”

  “I said that what happened in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was a personal insult for everyone who came there with deep pain,” responded Sokologorskaya. “Your behavior showed that you want publicity, that’s all.”

  “Do you believe a personal insult of that sort is a crime punishable by law?” asked Kat.

  “I am disallowing the question,” said the judge.

  “Was my clothing inappropriate for being in a church?” asked Kat.

  “You had on the longest dress, and your shoulders were covered,” admitted Sokologorskaya. “But you had bright stripes and a mask.”

  “I am aware that the cathedral’s internal rules dictate that women should cover their heads,” said Volkova, “but I don’t know that they say women can’t wear masks. Do they say that?”

  “I am disallowing the question,” said the judge, visibly angry. “Stop this mockery!”

  “What mockery? I insist that if this is part of the charges, then we need to see the rules that forbid it.”

  “Continue with the cross-examination.”

  Kat rose again. “I would like to know what you heard me say, if I said anything.”

  “You are lucky that you were detained by security right away and didn’t have time to say anything!”

  “Oh my God,” said Nikolai Polozov.

  “So did Samutsevich say anything or not?” asked Volkova.

  “At first they were all saying stuff and then I don’t remember,” said the victim.

  “Why do you think that if I break the cathedral’s internal rules of behavior, that means I do it out of hatred and enmity toward believers?” Kat insisted. “What makes you say that?”

  “I am disallowing the question!” said the judge.

  “Still, I would like to know what you heard me say, if you think I was expressing hatred toward believers.”

  “You are trying to force me to say bad words and curse words. I’m not going to do it.”

  “By law they cannot be said in court,” added the judge.

  “But unprintable words and ‘bad words’ are two different things,” said Volkova. “If we don’t know what she said, we cannot tell whether the charges are warranted.”

  “The victim has already informed us that her religious convictions preclude her from saying these words,” said the judge. “She has that right. I have disallowed the question. Continue the cross-examination.”

  “I have no more questions until I get answers to the ones I already asked,” said Kat.

  “Is it only the defendants who are not allowed to be in the cathedral dressed like this?” asked Volkova. “Considering that the parts of the body that women tend to cover—they had those covered. And their dresses were below the knee.”

  “But that is why they tried to raise their legs as high as possible—because their skirts weren’t short enough. Plus I’d like to note that the length of the dress is not the only criterion of appropriateness.”

  “Not short enough?” Volkova said. “With all due respect to the court, I studied logic in college, and the responses we are getting today seem to me entirely unconnected to the questions. I want to know all the criteria of appropriateness, and I would also like to understand if other women, women who are not on trial today, are allowed to enter the Cathedral of Christ the Savior wearing a brightly colored dress. I am wearing a dress right now, and it has flowers on it. Would I be able to enter a church in it?”

  “Now that you mention it, your dress is kind of like that color.” The brownness of Volkova’s dress notwithstanding, the exchange had already exceeded the limits of absurdity.

  “You are being asked to define the criteria of appropriate dress,” said Polozov.

  “I want to hear you address the length of every individual dress,” said Volkova. “You are not answering our questions.”

  “Appropriateness of dress is determined by a set of criteria, including length and extent of exposure. I noticed that Alyokhina’s dress was a bit long as well, and this must be why she was trying to raise her legs so high.”

  “Any other questions?” asked the judge.

  The defense huddled for a minute.

  “We have no more questions,” said Feigin, “because our clients require a break.”

  “You have given them no food or water since five in the morning,” added Volkova.

  “By international law, this constitutes torture,” said Polozov.

  The journalists present scribbled furiously; this was the first quotable quote from the defense all afternoon. The judge called a break.

  ———

  CALLING IT “TORTURE” was not an overstatement. They had been up at five; on days when they had hearings, inmates had to be dressed and ready before breakfast because the order to report to the door could come at any point in the morning. Some days, the call came before breakfast and this meant they got none. Once out of the building, they were placed in a prisoner transport equipped with what they called “glasse
s”—vertical enclosures about three feet square and five feet three inches high (that is, high enough for Kat and Maria but not for Nadya to stand up straight) that served to isolate them from one another. There were stools in the glasses to sit on, uncomfortably. Nadya, Maria, and Kat had food with them, if you could call it that, a plastic box that contained several packets of soup, tea bags, some crackers, and several plastic cups. During breaks, they could ask the marshals for hot water—and they did, and they ate the soups, but the soups turned out to be absurdly salty and they wanted to ask for water, but, mindful of the fact that the marshals did not always heed their requests to be taken to the bathroom, they thought better of it. So in the afternoon, they were dehydrated and still hungry.

  Their aquarium was an airless stall; it had been built in retaliation after Khodorkovsky’s lawyers secured a European Court of Human Rights ruling that deemed holding defendants in steel cages inside courtrooms inhumane. For their second trial, Khodorkovsky and his codefendant got a shiny new unventilated Plexiglas cube. This was the very enclosure in which Pussy Riot sat now. It engulfed them like a nightmare; now the picture was clear and now it was obscured by the fogged-up walls of the aquarium, the heavy air inside, the haze of hunger and sleep deprivation, and the general sense that none of this could be real.

  The judge denied their request for a break. “We’ll stay here until morning if we need to,” she declared. She called Denis Istomin to the stand. He was a tall handsome blond young man with a gym body. An activist of a Russian Orthodox nationalist movement, he had testified a couple of years earlier at the trial of a curator accused of organizing a show that offended the believers; Istomin had seen Nadya protesting during that trial, and his testimony had been essential to the women’s arrest. Now he testified that what he saw on February 21 had hurt his feelings so much that he cried. He said he had come to the cathedral that morning to buy a ring at the gift shop, but, happening upon the kerfuffle, had helped remove Maria from the cathedral.

  “You said you were in a state of shock as a result of our performance. Tell me, what did you do after you handed me over to the police?” Maria said, likely meaning security.

  “I went back inside the cathedral. I wanted to leave, because I had done a good deed, I’d helped clean up the cathedral, so I could leave, but there was a force holding me back. So I went inside and into the shop.”

  “You were in a state of shock and you went into the shop. I see, thank you. One more question. Did you hear that after lunch today I apologized for our ethical violation?”

  “Yes, I heard.” Istomin sighed. “But all things should be done in their time. As Stanislavsky used to say, I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you have repented.”

  “Let’s discuss their apologies later,” said the judge. “Maybe they’ll find a more repentant way of saying them.”

  After Istomin testified that he had found the words holy shit offensive and sacrilegious, Volkova asked him what else struck him the same way.

  “The phrase ‘Mother of God, become a feminist.’ I believe this is unacceptable disparagement.”

  “Disparagement of Jesus Christ?”

  “Disparagement of Jesus Christ.”

  It was after eight when Istomin finished testifying. The judge called a ten-minute break, enough to go to the bathroom but not enough to get anything to eat.

  ———

  AT HALF-PAST EIGHT, the judge was livid. “I called a ten-minute break! Ten minutes! Why is everyone here except for the defense attorneys? What do they need, a special invitation?”

  “Your honor, this kind of attitude is called contempt of court,” the prosecutor suggested helpfully.

  “Let’s not talk about attitude,” said Volkova, the only defense attorney in the room. “We see who’s got attitude.”

  “Where are your colleagues?” the judge demanded to know.

  “And so we return to the scene of our disgrace,” said Polozov to Feigin as they walked in.

  “I am reprimanding the defense,” said the judge. “Whom are you going to cross-examine now?”

  “We are not going to cross-examine anyone,” said Volkova. “We are demanding that the judge recuse herself. The judge is clearly prejudiced against the defendants.”

  An hour later, after everyone had weighed in on Volkova’s motion, the judge refused to recuse herself and called the next victim, Vasily Tsyganyuk, an altar man. He was wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with a large Dolce & Gabbana logo. He also testified that he had been deeply hurt by the performance and that he had heard no political statements, only sacrilegious and hateful ones. He stopped testifying at ten, the hour past which Russian law forbids conducting court hearings.

  With the waiting in the basement isolation rooms, the requisite searches, and the circuitous routes prisoner transports always seemed to take, Nadya, Maria, and Kat would be back in their cells at two in the morning. Three hours later, they would need to be ready to begin a new day of their trial.

  All the days would be similar to the first one. They would be interminable. The lawyers would veer from fumbling to speechifying, and there would be no time or opportunity to discuss, much less change, their defense strategy. Feigin, Polozov, and Volkova had decided they would focus their efforts only on drawing attention to the outrages of the trial and would not speak to the court on the court’s terms. Indeed, they would sometimes act in ways that exacerbated the travesty to make it that much more obvious. Months later, after things had gone wrong and then very wrong, they still believed they had chosen the right approach; there was, after all, no waging battle against a judge who clearly relished running a witch trial. The lawyers believed their public statements, endless Tweets, and tireless media work had mobilized unparalleled support for the women on trial, and this, in turn, gave them the best chance they had of going free.

  “But what made you think the Russian authorities would listen to these people?” I asked them much later. “You’d seen them put Khodorkovsky away for ten years—and there had been a major international campaign to support him.”

  “This was different,” said Polozov. “These were the very people they invite to sing at their parties!”

  This was not entirely illogical; at least the Russian elite listened to these people when they sang.

  Faith No More had invited Pussy Riot members to join them onstage during a July concert in Moscow—and five women in balaclavas did and lit sparklers and chanted that “Putin pissed himself.” The Red Hot Chili Peppers spoke out when they came to town three weeks later. Franz Ferdinand and Sting issued statements of support. Then came Radiohead, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Arcade Fire, Portishead, Björk, and hundreds of others. Never had the worldwide music industry mobilized on this scale and at this speed to support a colleague—especially colleagues who were not, in fact, musicians in any traditional sense.

  Judge Syrova’s court plowed on. A small crowd continued to keep vigil in front of the courthouse. A middle-aged man in glasses stood at the entrance with a sign that read YOUR HONOR, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR HONOR? Whenever Nadya, Maria, and Kat were delivered to the courthouse, the crowd managed to let them know they were there. When the victims walked in and out of the building, the crowd shouted, “Shame!” Some of the victims responded by making the sign of the cross toward the crowd.

  On Day Two, altar man Tsyganyuk testified that Pussy Riot had acted as though they were possessed.

  “Those who are possessed can act in a variety of ways,” he explained. “They can scream, thrash around on the floor, sometimes they jump.”

  “Do they dance?” asked Polozov.

  “Well, no.”

  “That’s enough of this talk about who is possessed,” said the judge. “Tsyganyuk is not a medical doctor and is not qualified to render a diagnosis.”

  Security guard Sergei Beloglazov testified he had been so traumatized by the performance that he had been unable to work for the last two months (almost six months had passed sinc
e the performance).

  “But as far as myself, I forgive them,” he said. “I do not hold grudges. But as for God, the sanctuary, and other believers, I can’t decide that—that would be God’s will and the court’s decision.”

  The court managed to fit all the victims into the first two days of hearings. Day Two even ended by nine, which meant Nadya, Maria, and Kat might be in their cells by midnight.

  ———

  DAY THREE BEGAN with an ambulance. The hearing was scheduled to start at one, but Nadya, Maria, and Kat were installed in their basement rooms in the morning; such was the way of prison transports, which functioned a bit like buses, delivering inmates from various jails to different courts in the morning and taking them back in the evening. By midday, all three were close to fainting. Nadya was in her third day of debilitating headaches. Underweight Maria was simply depleted, as was Kat. They demanded a doctor repeatedly, until an ambulance was finally called. The doctors examined them and said they were fit to stand trial. Two hours later, Nadya moved for a continuance because she felt too ill to go on. The judge banged her gavel furiously and said the ambulance doctors had cleared them. It was so hot and stifling in the courtroom that day that at one point Volkova left the courtroom to get some air. In the late afternoon, ambulances were called again, this time for Volkova and the three defendants. In between, several witnesses for the prosecution testified that they had seen the defendants jumping, jerking, and insulting the Orthodox faith.

  On Day Four, there was a bomb threat. The building was evacuated while the mine squad swept it, but Nadya, Maria, and Kat spent that time in the isolation rooms in the basement. Once the building was declared bomb-free, the court heard from the cathedral’s cleaning lady, who testified that Pussy Riot had danced to music that was “neither classical nor Orthodox.” Pressed by the defense, the cleaning lady admitted that she cleaned the soleas despite being female. The prosecutor grabbed his head with his hands. The judge directed the court marshals to remove anyone who laughed.