Words Will Break Cement. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova quotes the line in her final statement before the court that will convict her of hooliganism in the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Christ Our Savior in Moscow on February 21, So the word is more sincere than concrete? So the word is not a trifle? Then may noble people begin to grow, and their words will break cement. Her friends and co-defendants, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, also leaned heavily on the dissident legacy of Soviet prison survivors like Anatoly Marchenko.
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A show trial like in the days of Stalin?
In the West, and in English, today's verdict in the Pussy Riot trial —guilty of hooliganism to inspire religious hatred, with two years in jail for the band's three members—is about measuring Putin's tolerance for free speech. Inside Russia, the story is a little more complicated. To help understand the events, we turned to Kevin M. Petersburg, Russia. Pacific Standard: Where did Pussy Riot come from? Kevin M.
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We are clowns and we engage in buffoonery. We are kind of crazy. But we do not convey any evil. On Friday, the three Pussy Riot girls were sentenced to two years in jail for singing the wrong song in church. AP Photo:Ivan Sekretarev.
This article was published more than 7 years ago. Some information may no longer be current. Maria Alyokhina, left, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova have become celebrities — and political darlings — in Russia. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova isn't a woman who is easily rattled. The year-old has smacked heads with Russia's two most powerful institutions — the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church — and come away still smiling her crooked grin. She left jail in December after a month sentence emphatically unbowed by the experience, chanting "Russia without Putin! But after an interview with The Globe and Mail this week, a worried look crosses Ms. Tolokonnikova's face. She's realized that she dropped the F-bomb, in English, during our recorded conversation. The subject following the verb was Russian President Vladimir Putin, and she's worried I will use the quote in the newspaper.
