Something Wicked This Way Comes: Pussy Riot

Four women stride on stage. Fists clenched at their sides, chanting in Russian, in rhythm, words from Riot Days, the book by Maria ‘Masha’ Alyokhina. Masha is one of three members of Pussy Riot sent to prison for two years in 2012. A decade on, the Pussy Riot Russian feminist protest art collective has grown, and here at the Bottoom Lounge in Chicago on November 6th for their Riot Days tour, they spread the message: “WE WON’T DISAPPEAR.”

Pussy Riot formed in 2011 in response to Vladimir Putin ‘winning’ a third presidential term in an election widely condemned as rigged. Members had been involved in performance art collectives prior, but Putin’s power grab sparked their urgency to warn the world.

The world definitely noticed “Putin Has Pissed Himself,” Pussy Riot’s punk show performed in Moscow’s Red Square in January 2012, clad in neon balaclavas. Their subsequent protest, “Punk Prayer,” a 40-second disruption inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior in February 2012 sought to expose Putin’s embrace of the Russian Orthodox church and its Patriarch Kirill to solidify his regime. For their “hooliganism,” Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina “Kat” Samutsevich, and Nadezhda “Nadya” Tolokonnikova served two grueling years in penal colonies. 

This is the subject of the Riot Days tour — and it’s a cautionary tale.

“I warned the world that he will do more,” says Masha, “and there will be more blood. Now it’s not an authoritarian regime. It’s a terrorist state. I’ve seen how it works from the inside.” 

Pussy Riot members prophesied Putin becoming a dictator. They witnessed his seizure of Crimea in blatant violation of international law, the war in Ukraine, the war crimes in Bucha, the mass abduction of Ukrainian children, and, at home, his repression of the Russian LGBTQ community. 

But these crimes have only increased the volume of Pussy Riot members in exile, who use their voices and art to sound further warnings of nationalism on the rise and democracy threatened.

Masha escaped Russia to Lithuania in May 2022 by posing as a food courier, though she hesitates to call it an escape. She says she’s not afraid. She wants to return. She deeply loves her country. She has been imprisoned numerous times, but that doesn’t deter her from her mission, her “actions,” as she calls them, and the Riot Days tour is her way of speaking to “anyone who will see it.”

The tour began on November 1st. in Montreal, where Masha also opened Velvet Terrorism: Pussy Riot’s Russia art exhibition at the Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal (it runs through March 10, 2024). On stage, Masha was joined by group members Olga Borisova, an ex-policewoman in Russia who quit her job to protest against the regime; Diana Burkot who participated in the Punk Prayer but was never caught; and Alina Petrova, a multi-instrumentalist and co-founder of the Kymatic ensemble. The 22-city Riot Days tour is more than music, it’s a multi-media performance with subtitled video footage of their preparations for “Punk Prayer,” footage of their sham trial, and of their transport to the penal colony. There are photos of Putin embracing the Patriarch, dead bodies in the streets of Bucha, and quotes from the trial.

“I think it’s several missions,” says Masha when asked about the motivation for the tour. 

“First, it’s super important to us to bring Riot Days to United States now because we want people to do their own actions and we want to show our story. This story is an example of what can happen if people do not fight for democracy and for freedom. And I believe that stories like this, unfortunately, can happen anywhere. And current news unfortunately proves this. You will have elections next year and I already saw once how easily Donald Trump took the power. And by the way, Donald Trump was the only president during my life who was not covered by Russian propaganda as an enemy. He was super friends, he was super cool, and Russian propaganda is really working in very similar way to Nazi Germany propaganda. I just want to shout it as loud as I can, because I don’t want conservatives, Republicans, or people like Donald Trump to take the power in the United States and help Putin with this crazy wish to rebuild the dead body of Soviet Union, with rockets and tanks and bombs.” 

After her initial years in the penal colony and multiple subsequent prison terms, Pussy Riot creator Nadya Tolokonnikova makes art as a “geo-anonymous” person. The Russian Interior Ministry has placed her on its most wanted list.

She travels the world to speak and perform. “This full-scale invasion of Ukraine really put us back many steps as whole human civilization,” she says. “And we see consequences of Putin’s action all around the world today. I don’t think it will stop with just Russia’s war in Ukraine, unfortunately.” 

Nadya has seen the impact of Putin on Ukraine firsthand. “When the war in Ukraine started, my first reaction was devastation. I have a lot of friends in Ukraine, comrades, people I love dearly. And I saw streets that I was walking being destroyed and I couldn’t believe my eyes. So first reaction was just crying, as any other normal human being. And then I retreated into action,” she says. 

That action was an NFT art piece of the Ukrainian flag which raised $7.1 million to support Ukrainian defense efforts. “That numbed my pain because it showed me that much more people support Ukraine than I thought. They came not just with their word, but actually with their wallet, and it was really awesome to see.”

She also created an art performance and installation called “Putin’s Ashes” where a large photograph of Putin burns after balaclavaed Pussy Riot members push a button for him to be “neutralized.” Bottles of his ‘ashes’ result. 

“It’s a metaphor. He has to be stopped,” says Nadya.