Places of Protest in Putin’s Russia: Pussy Riot’s Punk Prayer and Show Trial

Abstract

In spring 2012 the Russian feminist art collective Pussy Riot became world famous when five of its members were arrested for their “Punk Prayer for Freedom” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in central Moscow. Western media swiftly embraced the group and celebrated it as an icon of youthful female rebellion against Putin’s authoritarian regime. Yet the Western reception largely obscured the “regional accent” of the group’s protest rhetoric. This article seeks to restore this regional accent by foregrounding the rhetorical significance of place in Pussy Riot’s acts of protest.

Notes

1. See Seal (2013); Steinholt (2013); and Street (2013).

2. For a history of the riot grrrl movement, see Marcus (2010). On Guerrilla Girls’ “comic politics of subversion,” see Demo (2000).

3. For a study of protests in support of Pussy Riot, see Bruce (2015).

4. For a more exhaustive account of this controversy and the cathedral’s history, see Haskins (2009).

5. The controversy over the rebuilding the Cathedral of Christ the Savior reveals that there is a difference in the minds of the Orthodox faithful between their religion and the Russian Orthodox Church as an institution. See Knox (2005).

6. For the most accurate and comprehensive account of the persecution of dissidents and political trials from 1968 to 1983, see samizdat publication Khronika Tekushchikh Sobytii (Chronicle of Current Events).