As Pussy Riot’s trial begins, Putin’s opposition grows stronger

By Eva Charalambous
Notebook, Opinion
Thursday, 2 August 2012 at 4:54 pm

As opposition forces are slapped down by the cruel hand of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin is looking increasingly desperate and petulant.

This week we have seen the blogger and former lawyer turned opposition leader Alexei Navalyn taken into custody over spurious charges of theft. Navalyn is accused of stealing 10,000 cubic meters of timber products from the state-owned KirovLes Company between May and September 2009. If convicted he could face up to 10 years in prison. He has been told not to leave Moscow.

Navalyn is not the only one to face Putin’s political firing squad. The trial of the punk trio Pussy Riot has begun this week. The three young women could face up to seven years if convicted on charges of ‘hooliganism’ after their anti-Putin, anti-Orthodox sing along inside the Christ Saviour Cathedral in Moscow in February of this year.

All this in the same month that Putin kindly put his pen to a bill that demands that all Russian NGOs receiving funding from foreign sources must brand themselves as ‘foreign agents’.

But throwing the perpetrators in jail cannot stop what is making headlines the world over, if anything this Kremlin sponsored persecution is only adding fuel to the fires of international condemnation. The force behind this is the confidence of a burgeoning computer-savvy, gutsy, vigilante opposition is out of reach of Putin’s vengeful grasp.

Russian opposition in the 21^st century is becoming rapidly more fluid and out of the Kremlin’s reach. Within minutes acts of political provocation can go viral. Social media has the power to reach out to the world, and these seemingly unthreatening (even sometimes childish) jibes make Putin look ever more isolated.

The art collective Voina (‘War’ in Russian), along with the punk collective Pussy Riot are examples of an opposition movement which is growing ever more sophisticated in their acts of political ‘hooliganism’ which manages to grab the attention and support of artists around the world.

In June 2010 Voina spray-painted a sixty five-metre phallus on a drawbridge facing the local FSB (the Russian Secret Services) headquarters in St Petersburg. The group called the artwork ‘A Dick Held Prisoner at the FSB’ .Two members of the group, Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolaya were later arrested after another incident – a guerrilla performance in September 2010 in which the group turned over several police cars in St Petersburg. Banksy donated £80,000 to Voina from a print sale after hearing about the prosecution. The Kremlin reacted with what could only be described as a ‘see if I care’ attitude, by awarding The Innovation prize of the National Centre of Contemporary Arts in Moscow to the collective in April of last year.

It has been a stormy twelve months for the Kremlin. In December we witnessed possibly the biggest display of mass protest since the Bolshevik revolution as tens of thousands took to the streets in Moscow, and what was Putin’s reaction? To childishly mock and undermine a threat which is obviously becoming ever more intimidating. In his annual televised interview in December he stated that he thought the protests movement’s symbol (a white ribbon worn around the neck), were condoms, worn as ‘propaganda to fight Aids’. A let us not forget the ever concerning rise in the number of people testing positive for HIV in Russia since Putin first came into power in December 1999.

Little of that passive aggressive attitude remains in 2012, as the Pussy Riot punk collective trial runs this week. The severity of the Kremlin’s response has only increased the Russian, and international spotlight.

On 21 February, shortly before the reelection of Vladimir Putin, the three performed their song “Mother of God, Banish Putin” in a Moscow Cathedral. When the video of the performance was initially released on YouTube it was only viewed by a few hundred people, in the days following the girl’s arrests views shot up to over a million.

Within Russia the trial has caused a huge outcry and the Gadanski Court in Moscow, where the trial is taking place, is packed out, with some people having to be turned away. Pussy Riot is fast accumulating an international fan base. International superstars such as String, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Franz Ferdinand and Faith No More have voiced their support for the girls when performing in the Russian capital. This week the artist Petr Pavlensky sewed his mouth together in a gruesome display of support for pussy riot and protest against Putin’s intolerance.

The president is beginning to look less confident now, and there is no political judo move which he can use to battle an ever angrier and more despondent Russian nation.

Tagged in: Alexei Navalyn, banksy, foreign agents, Moscow, Pussy Riot, russia, Vladimir Putin, Voina

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