Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot by Masha Gessen is a book that follows the story of the Russian feminist punk band called Pussy Riot. The plot focuses on the band members Nadya Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, and their fight against the Putin regime through punk resistance art while dressed in their iconic neon tights, dresses, and balaclavas (an identity-concealing face mask that covers all of the face except the eyes and mouth). Gessen illustrates how the story of the three Pussy Riot band members exemplifies the horrors of Russia’s dictatorial regime, and how little has changed in terms of Russia’s authoritarianism since the Communist era.
Pussy Riot staged their concerts in public spaces with historic significance, culminating in a performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. They performed songs beseeching the Virgin Mary—and anyone else listening—to become a feminist, and demanded an end to human rights abuses by the Putin administration. This particular location emphasized the corrupt connection between Putin’s regime and the Russian Orthodox Church, an ally of Russian dictators throughout the centuries, and it spotlighted how the influential Church promoted followers to comply exactly with Putin’s regime. The Church has traditionally emphasized that noncompliance with the government would make Russians bad citizens and bad Christians, and Pussy Riot attempts to challenge this notion. Of the five young women in Pussy Riot, three were arrested at the Cathedral and sent to detention facilities in remote areas of Russia to await trial. After months in detention centers, they were tried in what were essentially show trials and were sentenced to remote prisons, convicted of “felony hooliganism” (or in other words, political dissidence against the regime). The courage of these young women captured international support and brought worldwide media attention to the Russian totalitarian regime.
The women of Pussy Riot began to see themselves as modern incarnations of the political dissidents of Russia’s Soviet past, and their letters from prison camps and detention facilities are just as heartbreakingly sad. Tolokonnikova, Samutsevich, and Alyokhina were subjugated to a collective show trial to determine their fate after arrest from the Cathedral performance, aided by inarticulate lawyers and tried by a judge predisposed against them. Nominally, they were prosecuted for moral and theological offenses, and the court refused to acknowledge Pussy Riot as political, although the trial was in actuality used as an example of the state’s power to crush opposition against the regime.
Over the many days of the trial, the women were permitted virtually no sleep, food, or water; they were also given no time to discuss their defense strategy with their lawyers. The trial’s unfairness and obvious orchestration by the Russian government drew international outrage. Support came especially from the music community, most notably from Madonna, who held a performance in Moscow during the trial with the words “Pussy Riot” emblazoned on her back. Despite this international support and the three women’s moving speeches, they were convicted. Gessen illustrates Pussy Riot as a perfect example of the human rights’ abuses, and the fear- and propaganda-enforced ideologies that constitute Russia’s reality today.
Since the publication of this book, the Pussy Riot members have finished their prison time and been released. In prison they endured countless humiliations and horrific violence that violates international human rights law, such as round-the-clock hour work days, no hot water, and two-stall bathrooms for five hundred inmates that often had sinks that spewed urine and feces due to prison authorities’ negligence to fix the broken drainage system. Regardless, the Pussy Riot women made some meaning out of the experience to study and become better human rights advocates. The three women documented human rights abuses within the prisons, at high risk to themselves from both the institution and fellow prisoners. Multiple times, they compromised their own safety to bring lawsuits against the prisons’ gross human rights abuses. Maria Alyokhina immersed herself in the legal system, becoming more eloquent and knowledgeable than even her lawyers. When they could find no other option, they compromised their health and physical safety through the use of hunger strikes in protest.
Since getting out of prison, the women have focused worldwide media attention on the inhumanity of Russia’s regime through interviews and new songs. As tensions between the West and Russia worsened, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina took their activism and radical anti-Putin messages outside Russia. They were particularly embraced in the United States. They met with 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who Tweeted that they were “strong and brave.” They spoke at Harvard University about the difficulties of engaging in political activism in Russia.
In New York, they participated in street protests following the 2014 murder of Eric Garner, who was put in a chokehold by police who ignored his repeated cries of “I can’t breathe,” and the band created a subsequent music video expressing their solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Following the election of President Donald Trump, Pussy Riot released several music videos advocating for the rights of women, gender and sexual minorities, and communities of color. Despite opposition from the strongest powers, the women of Pussy Riot will not be stopped.