Before the absurd prosecution and sentencing to two years in
prison camp of three punk rockers for their brief “performance” on
the altar Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the world had
seemed largely indifferent to repressive new laws implemented in
the early days of Vladimir Putin’s third term as Russian president.
These laws severely hamper public protests, force NGO’s to register
as foreign agents, censor the Internet, and criminalize libel and
slander.
As a lawyer who has worked with the Russian judicial system, I
find it ironic that these troubling laws passed almost unnoticed,
while the whole world is up in arms over the authorities’
hysterical over-reaction to what was basically a girlish prank.
The rockers at the center of the controversy seem unlikely
candidates for global adulation. As is clear from the name of their
band — Pussy Riot — their intent was always provocation and
maximum PR through scandal. To this end, they did not shrink from
what many call pornography. Two band members starred in filmed
performances of group sex in Moscow’s Biology Museum, of groping
and kissing random police officers on Moscow’s subway system, of
copulating while stuffing chickens in their private parts, and
releasing live cockroaches in public institutions. Then, before
their final event in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, they did a
“punk prayer” on the altar of the Epiphany Cathedral.
The rockers said that the point of their “performance” was to
protest what they saw as the Russian Orthodox Church’s servility to
President Putin. Yet their method of protest — invading cathedral
altars, not once but twice — went beyond performance art and was
deeply disrespectful. Everyone knows cathedrals are places where
people go for confession, communion, prayer and meditation.
If punk rockers jumped onto the altars of our cathedrals,
cavorting uninvited in tights and balaclavas, we’d be offended too.
In the Orthodox faith, only priests are allowed on the altar, which
is considered sacred space.
Invading others’ shrines and disrupting others’ rituals is
properly against the law, and would be anywhere. However, the
maximum sanction for such trespass should have been a fine and a
fortnight in jail. Instead, the ham-fisted prosecution of these
women for “blasphemy, motivated by religious hatred” effectively
criminalized their song lyrics, which they didn’t actually sing in
the church (in church the rockers lip-synched, their anti-Putin
lyrics were dubbed into the video later).
The court’s harsh ruling and conduct of the trial (using
“psychiatric reports” of “experts” that the defense was not allowed
to cross-examine to determine that the singers are “threats to
society” based on their “feminism” and “disdain for authority”)
seemed to many to be more guided by what Russians call “telephone
law” — i.e. by ex parte pressure on judicial authorities,
communicated from above by telephone — than by the actual language
of Art. 213 of the Criminal Code for hate crimes.
Now that the trial court’s ruling is being appealed the
appellate court would be wise to reduce the sentence, even if
“telephone law” is applied, because the case has proved a PR
disaster for Putin. In the wired world of the 21st century,
punishing “blasphemy” cannot help sounding medieval, and if
anything, it makes the “blasphemers” look like the martyrs. So it
has proved.
Amnesty International termed them prisoners of conscience, and
rock stars such as Bryan Adams, Björk, Peter Gabriel, Madonna, Paul
McCartney, Pete Townshend and others spread the word that Putin
jailed them just for a song. It was their prosecution, not their
surprisingly sophomoric musical skills, which made the rockers
international pop icons.
But having garnered foreign support far beyond their wildest
dreams, did Pussy Riot really advance the cause of Russian civil
liberties? According to an independent poll, although 54 percent of
Russians disapprove of the band’s imprisonment, 65 percent actually
agree with Putin that Pussy Riot’s “punk prayers” on cathedral
altars were “nothing good.” I fear that now reasoned criticism of
the government may get tarred with “godless hooliganism” and
contempt for the faith of the vast majority, justifying further
crackdowns. “Hard cases make bad law” as the saying goes.
In his 1818 poem “To Chaadayev” (one of Russia’s first
dissidents), Russia’s national bard Alexander Pushkin
wrote:
But in us still desire’s burning,
Oppressed by power’s deadly yoke,
Impatiently our souls are yearning:
We hear the calling of our folk.
We wait each minute, longing, longing,
For Freedom’s sacred fleeting bliss
The way young lovers fret while counting
The minutes to a secret tryst.
Under the tsars, such sentiments earned the young poet two terms
of exile. Perhaps what’s changed most is what passes for “art”
nowadays. Call me old-fashioned, but punk rock in a cathedral
hardly seems as inspiring. Time will tell, but “Pussy Riot”
probably did the cause of freedom no favors by confusing freedom of
expression with freedom of desecration.
