Pussy Riot:
Living on a prayer

“Revolution starts from your heart,” says Maria Alyokhina, uncomfortably perched on a steel chair outside a London café, knees pulled tight to her body. “And I believe in the revolution that is going on inside every person. For me, punk is a way of life – not a music genre.”

She lights up the latest in a long line of cigarettes. “It’s no secret that breaking the rules is a large part of my life. Not just any rules. But I believe that those who create the rules and create the laws are not acting on behalf of the people. And if the authorities just copy old rules without any explanation for them, we should break them.”

“Every person, in each moment of his or her life, has this choice: to fight for truth.”

As one of the world’s most famous political activists, Alyokhina – or Masha, as she prefers to be called – is not afraid to back up the rhetoric with action. Five years ago, her name was little known outside her home country of Russia. Then, one cold day in February 2012, on the eve of the Russian presidential elections, Alyokhina and several other members of radical art collective Pussy Riot smuggled a guitar, amplifier and some microphones into Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, climbed onto the altar wearing brightly coloured balaclavas and began performing Punk Prayer – an urgent, if rudimentary protest song with the lyrics “Virgin Mary, mother of God, banish Putin” and “Crap, crap, this godliness crap”.

Shaky handheld footage of the guerrilla gig, which was carried out in protest against the Orthodox Church leaders’ collusion with Putin, was immediately published online, drawing the attention of the world’s media. In hiding, Pussy Riot members conducted Skype interviews with international journalists, before being tracked down by police and charged with “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred and hostility”. After a high profile trial, Alyokhina and co-conspirators Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich were sentenced to two years in an unforgiving Siberian penal colony.

“I don’t have regrets. I don’t have any regrets at all,” repeats Alyokhina, who endured five months of solitary confinement, hunger strikes and humiliating gynaecological examinations (inmates called it “going through the chair”) during her 21 month incarceration.

Riot Days, her debut book/punk manifesto, vividly recounts her arrest, trial and imprisonment with the same urgency that fuels Pussy Riot, juxtaposing diary extracts, graffiti doodles, court transcripts, song lyrics and newspaper accounts with the author’s own laser-sharp reflections on protest, censorship, art, freedom and religion.

“When I first heard from the TV in our cell that I was a witch and enemy of the state, I was quite surprised. After the tenth time, I was like: ‘Okay. Next news please,’” recalls the now 29 year old, herself a member of the Orthodox Church.

“Our Punk Prayer is about Christianity. The main statement of the song is that we must banish Putin and we are still living with him. I believe that a country which lost Christianity for a century, when thousands of people went to prison because of their beliefs and a lot of priests and preachers were murdered, should not take back a church which is represented by ex-KGB agents who promote anti-Christian beliefs.

“A lot of priests who wrote about Punk Prayer and said that we were not enemies, that we didn’t have any hatred, were fired. It’s a pure example of the hypocrisy that exists now in Russia. All that we’ve done is show this. Yes, the price paid was strong, but that is the price of truth.”

Alyokhina says she wrote Riot Days – which is being released in her home country samizdat style, as an underground publication – as hers is a story that “needs to be told, especially now” in these highly politicised times. “This is not only my book. It’s a book of all the people that I met and all the people who believed in me. There were a lot of people who thought that I should forget it – that it was a nightmare and should be forgotten. But for me, it’s not a nightmare. For me, it is like a fairy tale, which is upsetting and dark at some points and was something that shouldn’t have happened, but it did happen and should be told.

“The story started in Russia, but it’s not only about Russia. It’s about choice and about how I made a choice. I believe every person, in each moment of his or her life, has this choice: to fight for truth, to stand up for yourself, to speak up, to act. That is the goal.”

“I prefer to show results – feelings are not the things which make history.”

Since being released from prison in late 2013, Alyokhina has travelled the world, speaking out against Putin, spreading the message of protest as a member of Pussy Riot and continuing to stage what she terms as “actions”. Last month, she was one of three activists detained by police for protesting against the imprisonment of Ukrainian film maker Oleg Sentsov, who was sentenced to 20 years for terrorism offences in 2015 in what Amnesty International has likened to a Stalinist-era show trial. More actions will follow, although as Alyokhina points out, “plans in Russia are very hard to make. We just feel and act.”

Since 2014, the activist has also dedicated her energies to Zona Prava, a charitable organisation she co-founded with Pussy Riot bandmate Tolokonnikova that provides legal support to prisoners and criminal defendants caught up in the Russian justice system. MediaZona, its media arm, has quickly become established as one of the country’s leading independent news outlets, helping shine a rare light on the courts and Russian prison system.

“Now not only us but almost all the media, even governmental, are writing about what is happening in Russian prisons. This is a big victory because one of our first goals after release was to show that this border between prison and freedom does not exist and prison is just a mirror of how the government relates with a person in our country.”

During her incarceration, Alyokhina successfully sued the penal colony where she was being held for infringing her human rights. She also fought for and won working telephones and warm shawls for inmates. “If you hear someone talking about ‘humane’ treatment in Russian prisons,” she writes in Riot Days, “challenge it as the lie that it is”.

Her son Filip, who was five when she was arrested and is now 10, is already displaying the same headstrong defiant attitude, she notes. “He is the main trouble maker,” jokes Alyokhina. “All that I’m doing, I’m doing for him and all our children. He is proud of what I’m doing and that is the most important thing for me. The only thing I want is that he should be himself.”

Asked what her hopes and fears for the future are, she laughs at what she says sounds like the name of a Guns N’ Roses album. “All my hopes and fears exist in what I’m doing. I prefer to show the results because feelings are not the things which make history. History is made by facts. Who gives a fuck what Putin felt when he started a war with Ukraine? Maybe he just didn’t have sex? Who cares? If I fear something, I think: ‘What will I do about it?’ I’m a really practical person.”

Does she think that Pussy Riot could have been born anywhere else other than Russia? Say, in the UK, for instance? “Why not?” she snaps, throwing the question back. “It’s a lifestyle. In art and political acts there are no borders. In the UK you have an amazing history of resistance, especially among the working class. I was brought up watching a lot of films made in the UK and we all know about punk. I love a lot of punk.”

Alyokhina cites the tradition of art, protest and dissent forged in Paris, the UK and wider Europe in the late 1960s as a potent reminder of what people can achieve if they pull together. “Freedom does not exist unless you fight for it every day,” she declares in Riot Days, which carries the message: “We are all Pussy Riot. And actions break fear.”

The book and accompanying Pussy Riot UK tour, which will mix impassioned monologues, film footage, performance art and frenetic live music, is a “wake up” to everyone who cares about society, believes Alyokhina. “The question is not why did Trump happen? Or why did Brexit happen?” she states with an unflinching stare. “The question is what can we do? Because it’s us who are making history, not them. Not the leaders. We are.”

Riot Days by Maria Alyokhina is out now on Penguin Books. Pussy Riot: Riot Days is at Manchester Gorilla on 20 November