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[Life Is Beautiful 2014]

Life Is Beautiful: Pussy Riot talks human rights and prison humor

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Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova at Life Is Beautiful 2014.
Photo: Mona Shield Payne

A line was snaking out the door of the Western and down Fremont Street when I arrived before Pussy Riot’s Speaker Series session, The Good, the Bad and the Gray. By the time I got to the front, the small room was out of seats, and I managed to grab a square of carpet by the stage before they shut the doors entirely.

Next to me on the floor sat a thin, striking young woman with loose curls tinted black and green and a mouth painted bright red. It wasn’t until she started whispering in Russian to the man next to her that I realized she was Nadya Tolokonnikova, a member of Russian punk activist group Pussy Riot.

Joining her on the grass-lined stage was fellow Pussy Rioter Masha Alyokhina, a translator (who’s also Tolokonnikova’s husband) and NPR’s Neda Ulaby, serving as moderator and trying to navigate the sometimes awkward conversation, which ranged from prisoners’ rights to surveillance to Orange is the New Black.

1. Human rights. The women said one of their goals is to make human rights a fashionable topic in Russia the way it is in the U.S. In America, they said, people think of Angelina Jolie when you say “human rights.” In Russia, they think of an old guy in a sweater—“And he is not a hipster.”

Pussy Riot's Masha Alyokhina

Pussy Riot's Masha Alyokhina

2. Are they scared? would seem a reasonable question for the women, who were jailed in Russia after filming an anti-Putin protest video. But Tolokonnikova laughed it off, saying, “We’re more worried about being poisoned by bad milk than being poisoned.” As for surveillance, they griped that sometimes the government reads their emails and steals their ideas.

3. Prison is … funny? Ulaby mentioned that the women had talked about finding humor in their imprisonment before the session. How was it funny? Alyokhina pointed to the prison bosses and their total lack of sense of humor. Tolokonnikova said that after sentencing they were put in an impressive motorcade usually reserved for Putin himself, “So that was funny.” Handcuffed to military policemen inside a car, one of the guards said, “Girls, I’m with you,” and told them he was just getting job training so he would be ready when the revolution comes. And the first autograph that Tolokonnikova signed? It was for a guard on the prison train.

4. Orange is the New Black. “I’m a fan,” said Alyokhina, adding that she’d only seen the first season.

5. Halloween a la activism. “Apparently a popular costume is Pussy Riot,” said Ulaby at the end of the session, “which makes a lot of sense to me, because these women are superheroes.”

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