‘All rise! This court is in session!’ a bailiff announces, and everyone stands up.
bulletproof
‘The defendants pose a danger to society and might disrupt the judicial investigation. For this reason, they must be held in custody during the trial.’
The dog vomits at the entrance to the courtroom; the judge steps over the puddle.
‘I am sickened by what they did, by their appearance, and by the hysteria surrounding everything that has happened.’
– Medvedev, former president, current prime minister
hysteria
‘Masha, Masha! Get up!’ says Aya, my cellmate and friend, yanking the sheet off me. I protest, and wrap myself tighter in the yellowing flannel rag, like a caterpillar.
‘Masha, you’ll sleep through the trial!’ she shouts.
It’s half past five in the morning.
5.30 a.m.
The mattress has to be rolled up and taken to another room. Prison regulations. So that if they release you, your mattress can be reassigned. But they won’t release me.
I throw everything I might need into a bag. Dried fruit – prunes, apricots – walnuts for Katya; a fresh newspaper to read in the autozak; Deleuze’s Capitalism and Schizophrenia for Nadya. Instant coffee in a clear plastic bag, cigarettes, carrot salad.
When you’re leaving on a journey, you do the same thing. You try to fit your whole life into one backpack.
journey
I cut up some black tights to make laces for my sneakers. I put on a black dress.
They take me downstairs and put me next to Nadya in a cramped container in the basement – a glass and iron box resembling an elevator that doesn’t go up or down. I smoke and read the newspaper: first about ourselves, then Putin, and then everything else. The smoke fills up the container so fast you nearly choke on it.
coffee and cigarettes
‘Their only crime was being young, arrogant, and beautiful.’
– Patti Smith
‘The punishment for their actions must be such that it would be terrifying to repeat them.’
– Sokologorskaya, the candle-tender and injured party
‘You know,’ I say to Nadya while we’re sitting in the cage inside the autozak, ‘everything that is happening to us is just unbelievable!’
‘What, exactly?’ asks Nadya, who prefers precise formulations.
‘All of it. The whole thing!’ I say, waving my arms around the smoky cage in excitement. ‘The trial is like a show. If only we had a camera, we could film it, and it would be amazing!’
‘They are members of a band with a name that is very unattractive in Russian: Pussy Riot.’
– Pavlova, the injured party’s attorney
motor
The autozak stops. The barred door opens. A woman convoy escort in a blue uniform reaches her hand out to me, and I hold my hand out to her. She claps on the handcuffs.
On the right, a fierce black Rottweiler is barking. On the left, people call out, ‘Be strong, girls!’ The convoy escort is wearing dangly earrings.
‘Hurry up, move on through,’ she whispers. ‘What are you looking at over there?’ And she leads me, handcuffed to her wrist, to the building’s basement. There are several holding rooms there. She puts me in one of them, frisking me lightly. The door closes with a gentle smack.
4, 3, 2, 1
‘Get ready. You go up in five minutes!’ the court guard shouts from behind the iron door. ‘Don’t dawdle – no one’s going to wait for you.’
We walk through the deserted building, up three flights of stairs, then along a corridor straight into the aquarium, the bulletproof cage. This is where we will be prosecuted.
We hear the clicking of cameras. At first, the hundreds of clicks seem to ring out like rifles.
shutter clicks
The courtroom is full of familiar faces. Friends I used to read poetry with, journalists I admire. Activists who joined us at demonstrations. My parents, who hadn’t seen each other since their divorce, are sitting in the front row, faces frozen, revealing what looks like horror or some sort of strange rapture.
All the people I know stop being themselves and are transformed into spectators at a play in which the roles are predetermined. A play in which I, by force of absurdity, am the lead.
‘In the best of circumstances, honesty is perceived as heroism; in the worst of circumstances, as mental illness.’
– Vladimir Bukovsky, dissident
action!
Prosecutor: ‘The defendants are being charged with hooliganism, committed for reasons of religious hatred and enmity, for reasons of hatred towards a social group, perpetrated by a number of people who conspired together.’
‘Defendants, please stand,’ says the judge. She is wearing a black robe, exuding a quiet haughtiness. We stand.
alyokhina, do you understand the charges?
‘In his statements, the patriarch has made us understand that Orthodox Christians should vote for Putin. I am an Orthodox Christian, but I hold other political views. What am I to do?’
i don’t understand
‘I thought the Church loved all its children, but it seems to love only the children who believe in Putin.’
what do you not understand?
‘I don’t understand why the prosecutor thinks I hate someone.’
Judge: ‘The prosecutor will then explain why he thinks this.’
Prosecutor: ‘The charge was read in clear, accessible, literary Russian.’
The judge, who until now has spoken in a quiet voice, begins to shout, ‘What don’t you understand?’
The prosecutor, Nikiforov, turns red. His chameleon glasses also change colour. Sweat shows on his forehead. This prosecutor has tried other artists before. For an exhibition called ‘Warning! Religion.’
warning, religion!
The judge has a neat square cap of brown hair and rectangular glasses. She sits at her podium under our country’s coat of arms. The Russian Federation.
‘Summon the plaintiff,’ the judge says.
The first plaintiff is the candle-tender from the cathedral. She has long hair covered with a kerchief and is about forty years old. She likes morality and the patriarch. She does not like us.
it happens
She said she entered the church, began to wipe off the candle holders and saw ‘some kind of activity’.
‘What kind of activity?’ the prosecutor asks.
‘Leaping and hopping around – clearly planned leaping and hopping,’ the candle-tender said.
planned leaping and hopping
This offended her greatly, as a result of which she had suffered terribly and was still suffering, even now. She said: ‘Yes, it’s a crime.’
Lawyer for the defence: ‘Have you seen a doctor?’
‘The divine energy of the holy spirit is stronger than any doctor,’ the candle-tender said.
‘Why hasn’t the divine energy of the holy spirit healed you?’ the lawyer asked.
‘Strike the question,’ the judge said.
You would have had to be in the courtroom to see how absurd the whole thing was: three girls restrained in a bulletproof plexiglass cage. All three in handcuffs (in spite of the cage). Outside, the cage is surrounded by nine (!) police and Spetsnaz officers, watching the girls’ every move. Two police dogs. It’s like a movie about a dangerous serial killer plotting his escape.
next!
The next plaintiff is a worshipper who happened to be in the church. A blond nationalist. Other nationalists beat up our supporters outside the court. This is a young guy, my age. After the performance, he was one of the men who dragged me by my arms from the altar. The name of his organization is the People’s Council.
‘I saw the girls jumping around the altar, and I knew right away that I had to intervene. I rushed over and grabbed one of them – she fell on her knees; I grabbed another one, and she wouldn’t give up, either.’
‘Were you shocked?’
The nationalist doesn’t face the judge; he looks directly at us, at me. And I can’t hear very well, since I’m in the cage. I stare back at him. I wink.
‘The girls wouldn’t give themselves up to you,’ I say sympathetically.
‘They wouldn’t,’ the plaintiff says sadly.
sympathy for the plaintiffs
In front of the courthouse, lone picketers were protesting in support of Pussy Riot. The Bass Player was there, holding up a poster that read ‘Crush Putin!’ It showed a furious woman in a balaclava kicking a small grey man. A gang of Orthodox thugs surrounded the Bass Player and ripped up the poster. Later, she wrote, ‘The main thing was that although I’m shy and not too confident, afraid of conflict and thugs, from all these events I understood for the first time that you can’t allow yourself to be afraid, and I felt confident and justified in my actions.’
The August sun was shining through the window. The afternoon was hot and the air conditioning wasn’t working.
crush putin
It’s impossible to sit on the bench, the bench of the accused. My feet don’t reach the floor and they turn numb after half an hour. I can’t stand up, either, because if I do, it means I want to make a statement, and they immediately say, ‘Sit down, Alyokhina’ or ‘What do you want, Alyokhina?’ The bench is not really meant for people, it’s meant for potted plants.
i’m not a potted plant
If the faithful were insulted that we went up on the altar, taking it for a stage, I ask their forgiveness.
‘I don’t believe you’: plaintiff Istomin, a nationalist
‘The apology is not sufficiently sincere’: plaintiff Zhelezov, an altar-keeper
‘You shouldn’t smile when you apologize’: plaintiff Beloglazok, a security guard
‘Beat yourself with chains or join a convent, that would show true repentance’: plaintiff Vinogradov, an electrician
You mustn’t cry. Look at your hands, and silently order them: ‘Do not tremble.’
i don’t believe
Nadya: ‘You told the investigator I was wearing a white dress.’
Security guard: ‘Yes.’
Katya: ‘But it was me wearing a white dress!’
Security guard: ‘So I got you two mixed up.’
He didn’t know which one of us had been wearing the white dress.
A giant needle seemed to have pierced the courtroom and all the air to have been drawn out with a syringe.
choke
The lawyers of the Orthodox victims of our crime wipe drops of sweat from their plump, sweaty foreheads. The prosecutor dries his glasses.
‘Give us a break,’ I call, standing up and swaying slightly on my feet.
‘Sit down, Alyokhina,’ the judge orders.
‘There’s an ambulance here,’ the court bailiff says.
‘Then we’ll call a recess,’ the judge announces. The courtroom is cleared, the guards bind our wrists to theirs with handcuffs, and we go back down to the basement.
A team of medics in white coats sweeps into the dingy room. I lie down on a bench, they get out their stethoscopes and begin checking my pulse, my temperature, my blood pressure. ‘Lift up your dress and take off your underwear,’ one of the orderlies tells me. The door is wide open. The guards’ dark-red lips spit out sharp orders, and the heavily built bailiffs answer with the same.
dark-red lips
‘Is it possible to close the door?’ I ask, getting up from the bench.
‘No,’ they reply. ‘You didn’t mind opening your legs in the church, but here you can’t?’
‘Okay,’ I say, and lift up my dress.
The cold surface of the stethoscope touches various spots on my ribcage. ‘We’ll put her on a drip,’ they conclude.
The needle pierces my skin in the crease of my arm. Droplets of summer rain are falling into my body. The lines on the orderlies’ faces become more distinct; the tiny pockmarks on the surface of the concrete wall reach out to me. The world seems to be coming into focus.
show must go on
‘They were looking for a bomb up there.’
‘What?’
‘A bomb! While you were in the basement, someone called the police and said there was a bomb in the courtroom. Didn’t they evacuate you from the building?’
‘No.’
ugrik the real-estate agent
‘Call the witness,’ the judge says. A scrap of white polka-dotted dress peeks out from under her black robe.
pus-filled orgy
‘… that’s how they should translate the band’s name into Russian,’ the witness begins. Our supporters in the courtroom try not to laugh. ‘But it’s more than a band, it’s a whole movement.’
Ugrik the real-estate agent saw the ‘Punk Prayer’ on the internet and concluded that we worship Satan.
So he is now a witness in the Pussy Riot trial. He’s wearing a rumpled polyester shirt.
The judge tries to ascertain whether Ugrik was present in the church on 21 February.
‘Were you in the church on 21 February?’
‘No, but I saw the video. I was horrified – the girls were heading straight to hell. I had the feeling they didn’t know what they were doing. For a Christian, heaven and hell are as real and obvious as the Moscow metro.’
are you heading straight to hell?
The judge studies the case.
fuck culture, we’ll call the prosecution
The prosecutor walks to the centre of the courtroom and puts on disposable white gloves.
‘We have material evidence,’ he says, and puts a cardboard box on the podium in front of the judge. The prosecutor takes out two hats with cut-out holes for eyes and mouth, pulls them over her hands, and holds them up to the court. The judge starts playing with a jackknife.
‘a snake, a stinker, a grey cloud …’
… the judge reads out from Nadya’s protest writings as evidence. The prosecutor pulls a yellow dress from the box. Holds it by the shoulders. Shows it to the courtroom.
‘But where’s the video?’ we say. ‘Where are the song lyrics?’ The judge bangs on the podium with her hammer: Quiet! Order in court!
you’ll be kicked out for laughing in the courtroom,
Defence lawyer: ‘I summon the witnesses for the defence.’
Prosecutor: ‘Objection. I request that the summons be denied.’
Judge: ‘Every one of them?’
Prosecutor: ‘Every one of them.’
The judge bars the witnesses for the defence from entering the courtroom and orders that those who are already present be removed by the Spetsnaz team. Our witnesses are led out. One of them is shoved down the stairs, and they beat him around his kidneys. The courtroom doors are closed.
‘If the world is turned upside down, the truth will become a lie.’
– Guy Debord
deny the defence
The Rottweiler strains at the leash, jumping and barking.
Defence lawyer: ‘Remove the dog.’
Court bailiff: ‘He won’t bark if you speak more softly.’
Defence lawyer: ‘It says “No Dogs Allowed” at the entrance.’
Judge: ‘This is not a dog, it’s a means of protection.’
‘This is fucked up,’ the lawyer remarks. The journalists take notes.
remove the dog
The secretary stops recording the proceedings. The judge bows her head and starts doodling.
‘Your Honour, please stop doodling!’ the lawyer shouts.
‘Don’t look at my desk!’ the judge shouts back.
stop doodling
‘What do you expect from the trial? What are you hoping for?’ a guest in a grey suit asks me. They brought him to see me in the cell before the session. It’s 6 a.m.
final offer
‘I have no expectations.’
‘Do you want to go to prison?’
‘Not really.’
‘Well, then, there’s a way to prevent it. You hire another lawyer and he begins anew –’
‘Why?’
‘To change the defence strategy. They’ll put in a guilty plea. No, no – not you yourself. The lawyer will say it in some way.’
‘But I’m not pleading guilty.’
‘Don’t you understand that you’re behaving like a revolutionary? Like a 1968 dissident?’
‘I’m proud of that.’
revolutionary
‘Welcome to hell,’ the court secretary says after the break. It has grown dark. The stores and cafés have closed, and all the other courtrooms and their judges have finished work for the day, but our trial continues.
The prosecution: ‘Not only are they not sorry, they have the temerity to claim in court that they were taking a moral stand, that it’s part of their culture, in line with their views.’
Defence lawyer: ‘There is more Christianity in these girls than in all of you.’
Riot Days Page 7