Two Years Too Many
Two years in a labor colony for forty seconds of song. That’s what a Russian court decided three women deserved—Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Maria Alyokhina from the punk band Pussy Riot. They performed an anti-Putin prayer in a church, and the state decided that was reason enough to lock them up. The trial itself was obscene—they spent over two hours just reading the verdict for what amounts to a public disturbance charge.
Everyone with any reach was talking about it by the time the sentence came down. Every major news outlet, musicians, politicians, human rights groups—all watching a court that had made up its mind before the trial even started. The Russian government had wanted to make an example of them, to show that you don’t get away with this kind of thing in their country. They miscalculated completely.
The response was almost unanimous in its judgment. A major Russian musician, someone who’d left the country decades before, spoke up about how this proved that the dream of freedom was finally breaking through. European figures, German officials, major international organizations all issued statements saying this violated everything Russia claimed to believe about human rights. Even the Chancellor called it out directly for what it was: a fundamental violation of rule of law. The numbers piled up—all the major outlets, all the important voices.
But numbers and statements are abstract. What wasn’t abstract was the clarity of what had happened. Three young artists said what they thought. The state decided that was intolerable. So it crushed them for it. And in crushing them, it proved everything they’d said about power and freedom and the state’s fear of dissent.
The thing that’s hard to square with is the actual courage required for what they did. Not the symbolic gesture—that’s almost easy if you’re angry enough. But the knowledge, absolute and complete, of what a state apparatus can do to you, and the decision to act anyway. To sing your actual beliefs in front of that machinery. To know that prison is a real possibility and perform anyway. I think about whether I’d have that. I don’t think I would. Most people wouldn’t. You can talk about your principles all you want, but they’re abstract until you’re facing years locked up for them. Then the calculation changes. These three women made the choice without that luxury. They knew exactly what was coming.
What happened after was predictable in a way. The government thought it was making an example. Instead it had created something impossible to ignore. They’d taken three musicians and turned them into symbols, but not the kind they wanted. Every attempt to silence them just made what they’d said louder. An entire generation watched this and learned what their government would do to you for speaking. That’s the opposite of what they wanted.
I keep coming back to that clarity. There’s no ambiguity here, no gray area that lets anyone off the hook. Power was threatened and it struck back. In striking back, it confirmed every word these women had sung. You can lock up bodies. You can’t lock up ideas. The more brutally you try, the more people understand what’s actually at stake.