Pussy Riot divides Russian
society By Mikhail A Molchanov
The Moscow court's August 17 decision to
sentence three members of the Russian punk-rock
group Pussy Riot to two years in prison for an
anti-Putin "punk prayer" in Moscow's main
cathedral caused little sensation in Russia.
In light of President Vladimir Putin's
recent tongue-in-cheek appeal "not to judge them
too harshly" and the Russian Orthodox Church
refusal to forgive the women before their honest
public repentance, the guilty verdict was not hard
to predict. The punishment was carefully
calibrated not to create the impression of undue
severity, on the one hand, while sticking to the
letter of law on the other.
According to
Russian law, the punishment for a criminal act of
hooliganism aimed
against a particular social group and conducted in
a public place could range from a hefty fine up to
seven years of forced labor in a penal colony. The
higher plank of seven years was not even mentioned
by the prosecution, which demanded three years'
imprisonment.
At the same time, a more
lenient interpretation of the women's act of
hooliganism as an administrative, rather than
criminal, violation - which would set them free
upon payment of a fine - was made impossible by
Russia's current social and political climate, as
well as a deep-seated tradition of conservatism
and loyalty to the Christian Orthodox tradition
that the band seemingly mocked in its
controversial performance.
As the father
of one of the accused glumly noted, there were two
Russias present in the courtroom, and they clearly
hated each other's guts.
The Russia of
liberal opponents of the regime's collusion with
the church had few problems with the sacrilegious
performance of a song referring to the supreme
head of the Russian Orthodox Church as a "bitch"
and to the Orthodox faithful as those who "crawl
to bow" to both the priests and the state.
The traditionalist, nationalist Russia
instead called for the Pussy Riot members to be
jailed, thrown out of the country, physically
punished and the like. This part of society, while
not necessarily opposed to freedom of expression,
clearly does not see it as a paramount value that
must take precedence over the right to religious
freedom or the state's obligation to protect a
religious association from assault and indignity.
For Russian traditionalists, many of whom
might well agree with a critical assessment of
Putin's regime, the crime of blasphemy,
desacralization of the sacred ground of the
temple, cannot be easily forgiven or forgotten,
and the secular state should fulfill its
obligations to all - and not just secular - parts
of the society, and to protect the right of
undisturbed worship for the believers. The most
militant segment of the traditionalists is
radically opposed to any leniency: according to
one representation, "these people are certain, if
Pussy Riot were to be forgiven, the next step will
be even harsher blasphemies: they'll start
practicing sex on the altar". [1]
Which
part of society is more representative of the
Russian nation today? According to a survey of
public opinion, 44% of thos polled considered the
trial of Pussy Riot as just, impartial and
objective, while only 17% disagreed with that
statement. [2] It seems traditionalists are in the
majority. However, one-third of the respondents
had no definite answer to the question, which is
representative of the state of minds in Russia
today.
While 70% of all Russians call
themselves Christian Orthodox, one in three of
those doubts God's existence, and 60% call
themselves "non-religious" people. Fewer than half
of Russian Orthodox believers attend church
services, and only 20% take part in the Holy
Communion, according to a recent report by
Levada-Tsentr, a Russian pollster. Thus Russian
Orthodoxy today is much less of a religious
phenomenon, and much more of an ethno-political
orientation, which chimes well with Russian
traditional values of conservatism, national
patriotism, social order, and traditional
reverence to the church as a moral authority in a
fast-changing, volatile and often ruthless world.
For the larger part of the Russian people,
regular church attendance is less important than
showing respect to the traditional role that
Orthodox Christianity played, and continues to
play, in the consolidation of the nation.
Self-identification as a Russian Orthodox believer
restores national pride and gives a sense of
communal belonging to the people disunited by the
end of the USSR and dispossessed by the
post-communist thievery of the state.
These people take desacralization of the
sacred especially painfully, since the nation
suffered such acts twice in a very recent history
- first, during the Stalinist campaign of pogroms
against the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1930s
and second, during the state-sponsored campaign of
vilifying of the whole Soviet era in the 1990s.
While the Bolshevik vandals cleared the road to
Josef Stalin's totalitarianism, vilification of
the communist past in its totality served as a
smokescreen for stealing of the nation's treasures
and their subsequent redistribution to the new
Russian oligarchs.
Against such a
backdrop, desacralization of the last islands of
refuge from profanity and cruelty of Russia's new
capitalism - the private spaces for prayer that
belong to the Church - may not be taken lightly by
the Russian street. And this is something that
Pussy Riot sympathizers in the West fail to
appreciate: while in the happier, more affluent,
post-religious societies the national unity is not
under threat, and the struggle for individual
human dignity has long been won, in Russia neither
task has been accomplished.
Pussy Riot's
sacrilegious performance was not just an affront
to a particular group of parishioners; a good half
of the population perceives it as spitting in the
face to the whole nation still reeling from a
series of catastrophes that started back in 1917.
Fully 47% of those polled by the Levada Center in
April believed that seven years' imprisonment for
Pussy Riot members would be an appropriate
punishment for the act, while only 10% found no
criminal content in the women's actions.
Neither a particular loyalty to Putin's
regime nor personal views on proper relationship
between the church and the state motivates such a
response. However, an outrage at personal
indignity, inflicted, as so many times before, by
someone with a sense of impunity and powerful
protectors far and near could have been a factor
in this demonstrable lack of sympathy to the
libertarian activism that the Russian public
showed on the occasion.
Notes: 1. Sergei Markov, Why
they cannot be forgiven, Vedomosti.ru, Aug 17,
'12. The suggestion sounds less outlandish given
the fact that one of the sentenced Pussy Riot
members, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, had actually
participated in a group sex performance in public,
at Moscow's zoological museum, while in the last
days of her pregnancy. 2. Almost
half of those polled confirm impartiality of the
Pussy Riot trial, Pervyi Kanal.
Mikhail A Molchanov is a
professor of political science at St Thomas
University in Fredericton, New Brunswick. He has
published several books and articles on Russia's
politics and society, Russian-Ukrainian relations
and international problems of Eurasia, and
co-edited The Ashgate Research Companion to
Political Leadership.
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