‘What’s that yellow scarf for?’
‘Huh?’
‘You know, that yellow scarf. What is it? Are you some kind of gang?’
‘Sometimes a scarf is just a scarf.’
rule #9: say nothing without a lawyer
The chief investigator, Artyom Ranchenkov, was extremely nervous. Journalists crowded at the gate of the building where he intended to begin questioning us, which clearly unsettled him. He walked and kept repeating, ‘This was just banal hooliganism, straightforward ordinary hooliganism.’
banal hooliganism
Later – much later – he took me to the questioning room.
‘Well, let’s begin. Were you in the cathedral on 21 February?’ he said.
‘You have no right to begin the interrogation without my lawyer,’ I said.
‘So you were in the cathedral on 21 February?’
‘I need to use the toilet.’
Our lawyer arrived while I was flushing the SIM card with the contact information of the other Pussy Riot members who had been in the church down the loo.
The investigator said, ‘You will be detained for forty-eight hours. For the time being. The court will then decide whether you may remain free during the trial.’
The lawyer and I went out into the stairwell. We sat together on a windowsill and smoked. It was 4.30 in the morning.
48 hours
‘Were you ever inside?’ I asked him, referring to prison.
‘Yep.’
‘So, is it as frightening as they say it is?’
‘Not really. Soon you’ll see that the doors have a mind of their own. They open and they close. They open and they close. Then they’re locked.’
He was joking. He was probably trying to get me to relax. You’re already on your way there, and that’s that. It’s happened; you can’t change it. Before the arrest, when we asked him for advice, he said, ‘Best eat your evidence.’ Also joking.
I looked out the window. There were woods. White stars. And red sparks from a bonfire.
‘Out you go. The convoy has arrived.’
And they took us to a holding cell. Petrovka Street.
i committed no crime, and so i declare a hunger strike
The first stop – a holding cell – in the temporary detention centre on Petrovka Street. They can’t keep you there for more than a week. That explains why everything is disposable and why it’s so filthy. Synthetic sheets that constantly give off static electricity. The shocks hurt. Especially when you’re lying down, and I was lying down a lot, since we immediately went on hunger strike.
not more than a week
I wrote: ‘I have been arrested illegally. I have committed no crime. Therefore, I am on hunger strike.’ In prison, it’s not enough simply to announce something. You have to declare it in writing.
The insomnia starts almost straight away when you’re on hunger strike. The second night. You are awake and want to eat something. You lie there and stare at the ceiling. The windows are covered with iron eyelashes, like blinds. Black and very thick, so the light can’t pierce through. A window through which you can never look.
black window
Bask in your glory, free Fatherland of ours,
Eternal union of fraternal peoples,
Popular wisdom granted by our forebears!
Bask in your glory, our country! We are proud of you!
Broad latitudes for dreams and for life,
The future years open up before us.
Our faith in our Native Land gives us strength.
So it was, so it is, and so it will always be.
standard procedure
Do you know what happens in the first hours in prison?
A search.
They take you out of the dark autozak in handcuffs and bring you to a room. Two bright fluorescent lights hang from the ceiling. The paint is peeling from the walls, and in the corner there is a small cage. This is where they do the search. Two women in uniform take away all your things: phone, watch, books. These things are prohibited. Then they tell you to get into the cage.
‘Take off your clothes. All of them!’
get into the cage
I took off my skirt, which was patterned with loud blue checks, my T-shirt, and my underwear. I stood there naked. In a cage. On the cold stone floor.
‘Now do ten squats.’
‘Why?’
‘So we can make sure you don’t have anything hidden there.’
squats
I squatted. Ten times.
‘Now bend over.’
‘What?’
‘Too many questions.’
Just imagine.
You think it’s nice to stand naked in front of cops? I think anyone would have the same reaction in this situation. But once I gave an interview to someone who insisted that, for most people, it’s no big deal. That people are not as sensitive to humiliation as I think. That once a person is in jail, nothing surprises you. Well, that’s simply not true.
If you stop being surprised by such things, you’ll be turning your backside to them and bending over for the rest of your life.
turn your backside and bend over for the rest of your life?
We have the right to refuse. This is our right, yours and mine. You can’t know all the laws by heart, you don’t know what will happen if you refuse. But you have to try.
I asked a lot of questions. They don’t like questions. They answer: ‘These are our orders.’ You learn the particulars of those orders as you go along. You learn it on your own skin. The law can be bent, and the degree of flexibility is something you can only test in practice.
its flexibility depends on you
Every time you refuse, it causes an uproar. You wouldn’t want to undress in front of them, would you? I didn’t. Why should I? So we have to say no. And see what happens.
saying no
Half a year went by before I realized I could say no when the guards said ‘Bend over.’ A whole year passed before I could justify my ‘no’ by citing Russian law and forcing a gasp from each person at a search who told me to take off my underwear or to squat naked. But on that first morning of captivity, in the holding cell at Petrovka, shaking from cold and lack of sleep, wanting to fall asleep right there in the cage, in the same room with women dressed in uniforms with epaulettes, I didn’t think that I could make a choice.
The memory of that morning stayed with me throughout my sentence.
4. Isolation
‘You can’t joke about national symbols. I’d take a good belt and whip them with it.’
– Leader of the Russian Communist Party on Pussy Riot’s ‘Punk Prayer’
The door opens, a guard says, ‘Come out,’ and handcuffs me. I can easily pull my hands through them, even when they are tightened all the way.
‘Look who they’ve dragged in! You call this a criminal?’ the guard grumbles as he leads me up a flight of stairs. We enter a small room.
arrest someone like you
A round-faced detective with hair like a ginger cat is sitting there, surrounded by smoke and wearing a white sweater.
‘May I call you Masha?’ he begins, leaning back in his chair.
The weak March sun is shining through the window.
There’s a short pause. I’m tired. I remain silent. I sit and rest my head against the wall.
‘You have a son, don’t you, Masha? You want to be free? Here’s the deal: you tell me the names of the other members of Pussy Riot, and there’s a chance the court won’t hold you in custody after tomorrow but place you under house arrest instead.’
initial offer
‘May I have a cigarette?’
‘Sure. Here, take as many as you like.’ He smiles.
I light up and start to smoke. The first, best cigarette of the day. I grab a few more.
‘I think I might need to sleep a bit,’ I say finally. ‘Tomorrow’s going to be a long day. Call the guard, if you don’t mind.’
; There’s not much hope that the trial will be called off. They’ll go through with it. They’re unlikely to give me seven years, but they could easily give me two or three. My son’s birthday is coming up in two months. I hope he has a proper celebration.
– My diary, Petrovka, March 2012
presidential elections
I will be voting in handcuffs. It’s 4 March. Downtown Moscow, temporary detention centre on Petrovka. A room with windows completely sealed by wooden boards, a dim lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Two cellmates. One weeps; the other rocks back and forth silently in the corner, chain-smoking. She has smoked the last one from her pack and now she will take mine. On hunger strike, insomnia, lingering headache. In the middle of all this, the clatter of an iron key in the lock of the iron door, and someone roars: ‘You want to vote?’
I jump up from the bed.
‘So get going!’
Downstairs, there’s a large room, elegantly appointed. A podium with wooden panelling, the national coat of arms, a large portrait of Putin.
‘Where do we vote?’
A guard leads me to a small cubicle. I take a ballot, draw a large X across it, and write ‘Russia will be free.’
russia will be free
‘What’s taking you so long in there?’ the guard asks.
I walk out proudly, and we return to the cell. My stomach is cramping from hunger. Our toilet, a small hole in the floor on a raised platform, has a terrible stench. I can’t rid my mind of the parallel between the podium in the hall and the podium in our cell with the stinking hole. Radio Russia drones on the whole day, talking about how Putin is winning from the Far East to central Russia. Someone pounds on a door with a fist, shouting, ‘Turn that crap off!’ But no one turns it off.
will someone turn that crap off?
The guard makes the rounds of four cells and examines us through the peephole. Now he looks even more often, as though my writing is putting my life in danger. He walks from cell to cell, bending down to look in each peephole. He works his shift every three days. So he has a one-in-three chance of developing scoliosis. He is either a brave man or he has read Victor Hugo, or, on the two days when he stays home, he makes sure to bend in the other direction.
the rounds
Every guard is being polite. They lead me down the short corridor twice a day, without tightening the iron bracelet, without shouting, ‘Face the wall!’ as they did on the first day, when I was more frightened than I am now.
8 March: International Women’s Day. My fifth in prison. One Pussy Riot girl who took part in the ‘Punk Prayer’ but had not been captured by the police came to protest in front of the detention centre, wearing her balaclava.
Orthodox activists came to break up the protest.
Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny, opposition politicians, also came. Exactly three years later, Nemtsov was murdered. By that time four criminal cases had been opened against Navalny.
38 petrovka street
Twice a day, they take me to see a nurse.
‘Now, why did you girls have to go on a hunger strike?’ she asks, leaning over me. (She is as cold as her stethoscope. She has red, permanent, chemical curls.) ‘I read in the paper this morning that they were going to release you today.’ And she smiles.
release!
‘It’s time you started eating again. Shall we?’ she suggests, as kindly as she can, and asks her assistant for a thermometer. Epaulettes gleam beneath her white lab coat.
I say: ‘Go to hell!’
go to hell!
I try to fall asleep. I close my eyes and see tempting slices of pizza floating in front of me, one after another. I know that there are some sweets in the cell, in a metal locker, and no one will see if I eat them. The thought of it is nearly driving me crazy. It’s not chocolate, not a Snickers bar – just ordinary hard, sucking candy.
‘Ah, these little hands aren’t made for handcuffs,’ one of the convoy escorts muttered sweetly, and fastened the iron cuffs until they left red stripes on my wrists.
pizza
After some time, they bring in Old Nina, a wonderful person. She burnt her husband with an iron. Not to death, but severely. About eighty per cent of her speech consists of cursing. At night, she dreams about Stalin.
‘Eh, Stalin would’ve dealt with you all.’
Later, she admitted to being a Jew. ‘Just don’t tell anybody,’ Old Nina said.
red stripes
Nadya and I wait three hours before the first hearing. We sit in the basement, handcuffed to the bench. My legs are trembling from the effects of hunger. A group of coquettish convoy escorts surround us and offer some tea. Upstairs, a crowd of journalists and Orthodox activists mob our supporters.
‘Some guys appeared out of nowhere, camouflage jackets, sneakers. They started moving towards me. One of them grabbed my placard and wouldn’t let go. He punched me in the face, and I flew on to the asphalt. I realized that the whole protest was going to turn into a bloody mess. The police just stood there doing nothing. There were about fifty of them, and they didn’t make a single arrest.’
– Taisiya Krugovykh, film director, Pussy vs. Putin
‘What did you say to the journalists?’ I asked Nadya.
‘I said it didn’t matter to me whether they convict us or not. The idea of an individual is a function of society.’
function of society
Nadya said something about social function while I sat there for three hours thinking, Damn, my hair is a mess. My hair was a mess and there was no comb or brush. It was so frustrating. How could I think about society if I had no way to brush my hair?
hair
‘Forms of preventive punishment other than pre-trial detention allow the suspect to disrupt the investigation, to hide, to continue to engage in criminal activity.’
– The judge’s order for custody, Taganky Court, 5 March
under arrest, for 2 months
On the way back to Petrovka, Nadya and I rode side by side in an autozak for the last time. After that, under the investigator’s orders, they had to transport us in iron cages inside the autozak. These were the height of an average person. The cages were designed to prevent criminals from discussing the details of their trial or planning new crimes.
of course we were planning to commit new crimes
SIZO No. 6, the only women’s detention centre in Moscow, is located on the outskirts of the city, in an industrial district. A cruel-looking building made of yellow brick.
They unload us from the autozak; we’re carrying some sad plastic bags. I haven’t eaten in more than a week, and my legs start to buckle under me. I have some idea of what I must look like when I see Nadya, who has also not eaten in a week. A pale girl with dark circles under eyes that are swollen with weariness. Right away, she asks, ‘Masha, what’s up?’
sad plastic bags
They take us to the showers. Filth. Mildew on the walls. You have to bring your own soap, and we don’t have any. They give us sheets. I roll up the pillow inside the mattress and grab them with both arms. Then I walk down the corridor. After not eating for so long, the mattress feels unbelievably heavy. I am out of breath after taking a few slow steps and after every fourth stair climbing the flight of stairs.
stairs, stairs
‘My god, it’s so high up,’ I say to Nadya, who is bent over, lugging her own huge rolled-up mattress.
‘I don’t know how we’re going to make it.’
‘I don’t, either. And this is just the beginning. We have to walk and walk.’
all the things
The first hunger strike is like first love – very confusing. Later, you get used to it; but the first time there is only pain, leg cramps, nightmares. Still, it’s worth it. Otherwise, what will I tell you about?
quarantine
Nadya and I can’t stay in the same room because we’re partners in crime.
The mattress has blue and white stripes, like the colours of a police car. A long corridor,
one flight of stairs, a second, a third and, finally, the door of my cell. It slams shut, and with a clank and a clatter it’s locked behind me from outside.
striped mattress
‘Boss, it’s so cold in here! Please, give me a blanket!’ my new neighbour shouts to the officer on duty. ‘Boss, did you remember about the glasses? You promised!’
From behind the door, I hear the sound of steps fading away. Why do they speak to each another like this? I bend in weariness and throw the mattress on to the floor.
My only cellmate, Nina, and I sleep on the iron beds in our outdoor clothes. She wears a fur coat, and I wear an overcoat. It’s so cold in the cell that we walk around with red noses and frozen toes. You aren’t allowed to get into bed and under the covers until lights out. The gaps in the windows are plugged with sanitary pads and breadcrumbs. At night, the sky glows orange from the streetlights.
orange sky
I wrote that I had gone off the hunger strike; now I drink dark-coloured water (tea) with bread crusts three times a day. The iron bedside tables are so terrifying, they look like they could kill you if you banged your head on one of the corners.
Riot Days Page 4