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Abstract
This article considers Pussy Riot as a feminist project, placing their actions and the regime's reactions in the context of three post-9/11 developments in gender and sexuality politics in Russia. First, I assert that Pussy Riot's stunts are a logical reaction to the Kremlin's masculinity-based nation-rebuilding scheme, which was a cover for crude homophobic misogyny. Second, Pussy Riot is part of the informal feminism emerging in Russia, a response to nongovernmental organization (NGO) feminism and the regime's repression of NGO feminism, albeit likely to be outflanked by regime-supported thuggery. Third, the members of Pussy Riot were so harshly prosecuted because they – swearing, covered up and disloyal – violated the political cleaner role that the Kremlin has given women in the last few years. Feminist social scientists have long looked for politics outside of formal institutions and processes. The Pussy Riot affair makes clear how much gender is central to the informal politics that gender-blind observers of Russia have come to see as crucial to understanding Russia's regime.
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Acknowledgements
The author thanks Maija Jäppinen, Ekaterina Krasavina, Meri Kulmala, Olga Lyapounova and Alexandra Novitskaya, all of whom participated in some of the research for this project. For their comments, questions and suggestions, the author also thanks Elena Bachina and members on the roundtable on “Implications of the Pussy Riot Affair,” Association for the Study of Nationalities, New York, 18 April 2013.
Funding
This work was supported in part by a PSC-CUNY Award (# 65055-00 43), jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York, and the Academy of Finland-funded Finnish Centre of Excellence in Russian Studies – Choices of Russian Modernisation coordinated by the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki (http://www.helsinki.fi/aleksanteri/crm/index.html).