For the right fee the church can provide:
Church service: $50
Corporate banquet: $970
Car wash: $100
Laundry and dry cleaning: $160
There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
laundry-church
The church doesn’t pay taxes; it sells fine porcelain eggs and custom-made replicas of imperial medals. You can order one for 500 bucks. You can also order a miniature copy of the church.
a $500 medal
A light machine; a sound machine; a soap-bubble machine; a snow machine; a heavy-fog machine; a light-fog machine. These are all for hire in the event halls of the cathedral. Because you’re worth it.
All kind of things happen in this church that shouldn’t. It’s just another successful corporation.
‘At present, there are no other large spaces in the capital that might be used for such community-church events.’
actually – no
‘Let’s perform there.’
‘In the church?’
‘You call that a church?’
‘In a church?’
‘Sure.’
The kitchen door flew open. Petya rushed in; he had heard us from the next room.
‘Do you know what the reaction will be?’
‘What?’
‘Hatred.’
I didn’t believe in hate. No one believed in hate. ‘Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,’ someone said to Petya. Nadya, I think.
We decided it was just the place.
virgin mary, banish putin
Virgin Mary, Mother of God, banish Putin!
Banish Putin, banish Putin!
Black cassocks, gold epaulettes
The parishioners all crawl and bow.
The ghost of freedom is in the heavens,
Gay Pride sent to Siberia in chains.
The head of the KGB, their chief saint,
Leads protesters to prison under escort.
So as not to offend the Most Sainted One,
Women must give birth and love.
Shit, shit, holy shit!
Shit, shit, holy shit!
Virgin Mary, Mother of God,
Be a feminist!
Be a feminist!
Bless our festering bastard-bosses.
Let black cars parade the cross.
The missionary’s in class for cash,
Meet him there, and pay his stash
Patriarch Gundiai believes in Putin.
It’d be better to believe in God, you bitch!
The Belt of the Virgin won’t deter the demonstrations.
The Virgin Mary is with us at the protests.
Virgin Mary, Mother of God, banish Putin, banish Putin!
Virgin Mary, Mother of God, banish Putin!
pussy riot church
We rehearsed for a long time. Every day for about a month. At an art gallery surrounded by a large park with benches. It was cold, and I was wearing my grandma’s coat, which had huge shoulders. A badass military officer in a badass Cossack’s hat. I loved it! It wasn’t that I didn’t have regular clothes, I just liked dressing that way.
‘And so, Nadya Tolokonnikova, Ekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina, and undetermined other persons, at a place and time also undetermined by the investigation, but no later than 17 February 2012, in circumstances undetermined by the investigation, entered into a criminal conspiracy.’
criminal conspiracy
The night before arrived. We agreed to meet the following morning, 21 February, 9 a.m., at Kropotinskaya station. I couldn’t sleep that night. I was chatting with the Bass Player, who was coming, too. The closer Day X came, the more I questioned my right to do what we planned to do. I tried to make sense of it from a religious perspective. I asked the Bass Player, do I have the right to do this? Maybe I’m just a barbarian? She persuaded me that I most likely did have the right to do it – after all, ‘you’re not going to murder an old woman’. I definitely wasn’t going there to kill anyone. I was going to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
do I have the right?
‘You have the right to do this,’ the Bass Player said. And in the morning, she refused to go.
A February morning – gloomy, cloudy, cold. You don’t want to go outside. It’s not a winter’s day, with snow crunching under your feet, or a day of spring sun, with a fresh wind and rivulets of melting ice gleaming on the asphalt. February is weird. Neither fish, nor fowl. Impossible to tell when the days begin, and when they end.
21/2/12
Music – I decided – would help me wake up. An old CD player and several CDs in the kitchen. I put the coffee on, inserted a CD, plugged in the player. The outlet exploded.
Naturally. It had to happen on this, of all days.
music and electricity
The kitchen, the hallway, the street, one metro stop after the other – after the electric shock I’d had, I saw all this through blurred vision and white splotches. I thought maybe I could catch some sleep on the train. I had a long way to go and had to change train, though I suspected that at this time of the morning the metro would be packed with people on their way to work. And it was. Jam packed. I was only able to sit down before my last stop, for all of two minutes.
transfer at lenin library station
Maybe I did sleep a bit. The dreams I had were also marked by white spots, like icy giraffes.
Serafima was the one I saw first. She was sitting on the ground, dozing by a huge column. Tiny Serafima next to an enormous column. Wearing headphones. Later, that’s how I remembered seeing her. Just then, Katya and Nadya jumped off another train, tons of stuff in their arms: backpacks, bags, parcels. We left the station. Kropotkinskaya station – named in honour of the anarchist Peter Kropotkin.
We waited in a café for the latecomers. For some reason, we drank ice-cold Cola. For an hour and a half.
let’s go
The time came. The church was 200 metres away. Or 300. Me in my Cossack hat, the girls in Orthodox headscarves – we walked towards the church as if we were floating. The entrance loomed up ahead.
‘To secure unhindered entry into the place of worship, the accused wore clothes fully in keeping with the requirements of such places of worship; thus, under the guise of ordinary visitors, they entered the church.’
An empty square in front of the church. There are no beggars. I don’t think the beggars were against sitting there, but the propriety of the church wouldn’t allow them.
church for the wealthy
Amid the clicks of cameras, tourists taking photos, we approached the iron gates of the metal detector.
‘Put your backpacks on the table and open them, girls.’ The morning faces of the guards are fatigued and lazy. I open my backpack.
One by one.
How do you smuggle an electric guitar into a secured tourist site? We had tried out various methods over the course of the previous month. First, the guards had demanded that I leave the guitar – in the case or out – under the window by the entrance. Then we decided to try out an enormous hiking backpack and a man who spoke perfect English, smuggling the guitar inside the church with the help of both.
‘Knives?’
‘No.’
‘Proceed.’
everything, but the knives
I close my backpack without glancing up and go in. The main thing is that they don’t find the guitar. Petya had the guitar.
‘Young man! Wait a moment.’
In our plan, Petya was the foreigner, the man who spoke perfect English.
‘What’s in your backpack?’
‘Nothing special,’ he answered in English.
Usually, Russian security guards get completely flustered by charming foreigners. It worked. The amp was also in that backpack.
nothing special
We left the cold weather outside the church. It was 11 a.m. The cathedral was nearly empty,
except for people in green uniforms tending the devotional candles.
‘We have to act like ordinary girls in church.’
What do ordinary girls do in church?
‘No idea.’
We decided to go up to one of the women tending the candles and ask where it would be best to light one.
‘Where can we place our candles?’
While she explained the procedure for lighting our candles, which we didn’t in fact have, I looked behind her and saw the low barrier surrounding the altar and the green carpet leading towards the altar gates.
The carpet is the same colour as her uniform, I thought.
‘Thank you,’ Nadya said.
green carpet to the altar
We walked around the edge of the church and reached a corner. The guards seemed alarmed. There was no time to lose.
We went up to the low barrier guarding the altar. Katya was the first to hop over. Because she’s Katya. She just hops over and she’s off. Nadya hopped after her, and then everyone else followed. I thought, I’m wearing this uncomfortable coat that weighs a ton, I’m going to get stuck on something, I’ll fall and bring the whole barrier down – it’s an accident waiting to happen. How am I going to jump around in this heavy thing? It is long, almost to my ankles. Why the hell did I wear this damn thing to an action? What was I thinking, – putting it on at a time like this?
And then I hopped over, too. I was the last one to jump, just as the candle-tender was running up to me looking a bit freaked out.
‘The careful planning and coordinated actions of the performance allowed the group to carry out their criminal intentions in their entirety.’
We needed to plug the guitar into the amp. Katya was responsible for that, for the guitar. She threw off her outer clothing and started taking the guitar out of the case. The security guards considered this to be particularly non-Orthodox.
the guitar is an un-orthodox instrument
‘Ms Samutsevich, carrying out her criminal role, with the knowledge and assent of all the participants, took out an electric guitar.’
The security guards grabbed Katya. She managed to distract them all, and this bought us 40 seconds to do our performance. 40 seconds of crime.
40 seconds
‘what was the music like?’
‘goodness me, I don’t know how to describe it’
‘was it church music?’
‘no, certainly not!’
‘you mean to say it was not church music?’
‘absolutely not’
‘what did the instrument sound like?’
‘I don’t know what to compare it to, but it wasn’t at all Orthodox’
‘what are Orthodox sounds?
‘I can’t answer that!’
judge: ‘you are obliged to answer the question’
We scramble up the stairs towards the altar, dropping our backpacks by the Holy Gates. They symbolize the gates to heaven. Women are only allowed to stand on the green walkway before the gates – the soleas – if they are cleaning women. Or brides. In Russia, there are no women priests. In Russia, there is Pussy Riot.
We shed our clothes. The outer layers.
We put on our balaclavas.
‘Alyokhina was wearing a blue mask. She wore a dress that was somewhere between pink and red, green tights, and a bra that was falling from her shoulders.’
I remember: I open my mouth to sing and everything around me – the whole church – seems to freeze. It is motionless. The sound dies away. There is only the echo of our uncoordinated screaming and shouting. Too many eyes on the icons.
time stood still
The security guards try to catch us.
‘Alyokhina’s dress was longer than the others’, and she had to kick her legs higher.’
It looked like some bizarre folk dance: he runs up to you, you run backwards; he runs again, you run in a different direction.
‘Voice answered voice; word answered word,’ the candle-tender said during the trial.
Almost a compliment.
It was the most absurd prayer.
‘We tried to get them off the ambo. They wouldn’t leave, they resisted and ran back up again, then fell to their knees and started crossing themselves. This was humiliating and offensive to me.’
Two men take my hands and lead me to the exit. The balaclava slips sideways and restricts my breathing. It’s unclear who is leading whom. The church is still frozen, until one small figure, an old woman, starts to move. She screams, ‘Girls! Girls! What are you doing? You’re ruining yourselves!’ We kept walking, and I thought, What, am I now ruining myself?
They took us to the exit and let us go.
We stood there, looking at the street.
Not a single police car. Katya was waiting for us by the entrance.
We started to run. And I thought, Where are we running to?
Why are we running, if there’s no one after us?
Who are we running from?
Why can’t we just walk to wherever we’re going?
The security guards stayed on the job. There were no cops in sight.
why are we running?
Why are we running, then?
3. Operation ‘Escape’
riot mama
Right after our ‘Punk Prayer’ performance, I took the metro to my son’s kindergarten – it was noon.
I rushed inside, flying past the security guard. Green tights, raspberry-coloured dress. The balaclava sticking out of my pocket.
‘Goodness, you look like you’re going to a party!’ the teacher said.
‘Really?’ I answered. ‘I didn’t notice.’
‘Very pretty dress!’ the teacher said. ‘And Phillip has just woken up from his nap.’
15 days, at the most!
It was still light outside when I arrived at our conspiratorial headquarters. The editing of the ‘Punk Prayer’ video was in full swing. There was an argument about whether we should post it online – the quality of our performance did not inspire confidence. After all, we’d only managed to sing a single verse. The future of our group was also at stake. The Kolokol security guards had confiscated our guitar and given it to the police.
‘What are we going to do without a guitar?’ Katya said. ‘We have to go to the police and get it back. They’ll throw us in jail for 15 days, tops. I can live with that, no big deal.’
‘Are you crazy?’ Nadya said. ‘Go to the police?’
‘Sure. Fifteen days, at the most!’
We decided to post the video first and worry about the guitar later.
We never saw the guitar again.
an attack at dawn? i won’t complain
The next day I took Phillip home from kindergarten and we discussed dinner. Phillip wanted ice cream first and I objected. We started to argue as we got into the elevator. When the doors opened, I saw two men in leather jackets standing on the stairs, right outside our door.
‘You’ll have to come with us.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Police.’ They held up their badges in my face.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Yesterday some chicks were dancing in church.’
chicks dancing in church
The action in Red Square; the police station; my ID with my address; the raspberry-coloured dress – the events of the past month formed a chain, and this chain led right into my closet. The raspberry-coloured dress was hanging there.
What to do? I couldn’t remember anything from the manuals on how to behave when you’re being arrested. I couldn’t remember because I’d never read any of them. But they were all over the web. That thought stuck in my head like ‘?’ can on a keyboard.
unfamiliar with the manual
‘What chicks? What church?’ I said. ‘I know nothing about it. I have a small child and ice cream melting all over the place.’
I’d bought two minutes. I ran into the apartment and screamed into the phone at Nadya, ‘They’ve come t
o arrest me. We have to do something. We probably need to find a lawyer.’ After giving Phillip his ice cream, I returned to the front door.
rule #1: find a lawyer
‘Write that you’ll come tomorrow, and sign it.’
‘Do I have to?’
‘Sign!’
I signed a paper saying I would come to see them the next day. I gave it to a grumpy dude with a cheap-ass phone.
We immediately had a Pussy Riot meeting in a café. We decided not to go to the police and to stick together.
In the morning, Phillip watched cartoons. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ I said. I collected my bag. He was four years old. In three months, he would turn five. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ I said again, and locked the door. I came back two years later.
rule #2: after making a call, remove the sim card, and change your location
‘After you make a call, remove the SIM card and go to another metro station. This is for your safety,’ the lawyer said, and left to go to the police station in my place to find out what was going on.
That day, 23 February, central Moscow was almost empty. There were police everywhere downtown. People in camouflage uniforms were spread out in the side streets, hanging around the terraces of all the cafés. I had already taken apart my phone and put it back together again a hundred times. I was meeting the lawyer in ten minutes, and I was convinced I’d found the perfect hiding place – a café bathroom. I didn’t want to come out. The whole place was crawling with people in epaulettes and camouflage.
Riot Days Page 2