[Illegal Underage Pussy Pics
Iberio Ralda
Pussy Riot is a Russian feminist protest and performance art group based in Moscow that became popular for its provocative punk rock music which later turned into a more accessible style. Founded in the fall of 2011 by 22 year old Nadya Tolokonnikova, it has had a membership of approximately 11 women.[2][3] The group staged unauthorized, provocative guerrilla gigs in public places. These performances were filmed as music videos and posted on the internet.[4] The group's lyrical themes included feminism, LGBT rights, opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his policies,[5] and Putin's links to the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church.[6]
The group gained global notoriety when five members of the group staged a performance inside Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour on February 21, 2012.[7][8] The group's actions were condemned as sacrilegious by the Orthodox clergy and eventually stopped by church security officials. The women said their protest was directed at the Orthodox Church leaders' support for Putin during his election campaign. On March 3, 2012, two of the group's members, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, were arrested and charged with hooliganism. A third member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was arrested on March 16. Denied bail, the three were held in custody until their trial began in late July. On August 17, 2012, Alyokhina, Samutsevich and Tolokonnikova were all convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" and each sentenced to two years' imprisonment.[9][10] On October 10, following an appeal, Samutsevich was freed on probation and her sentence suspended. The sentences of the other two women were upheld.[11]
The trial and sentence attracted considerable attention and criticism,[12] particularly in the West. The case was taken up by human rights groups, including Amnesty International, which designated the women as prisoners of conscience,[13] and by a number of prominent entertainers.[14] Public opinion in Russia was generally less sympathetic towards the band members.[15][16] Having served 21 months, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were released on December 23, 2013, after the State Duma approved an amnesty.[17]
In February 2014, a statement was made anonymously on behalf of some Pussy Riot members that Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were no longer members.[18] However, both were among the group that performed as Pussy Riot during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, where group members were attacked with whips and pepper spray by Cossacks employed as security guards.[19] On March 6, 2014, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were assaulted and sprayed with green dye by local youths in Nizhny Novgorod.[20]
Speaking as much to western European and North American audiences as to Russian ones, Pussy Riot anticipated Donald Trump's victory two weeks before the outcome of the 2016 United States presidential election was declared and released "Make America Great Again", depicting a dystopian world where President Trump enforced his values through beatings, shaming, and branding by stormtroopers. In describing the video, Rolling Stone magazine noted that "jaunty, carefree music contrasts with the brutal events depicted on screen."[21]
Pussy Riot is a collective formed in late 2011 in response to national politics in Russia.[22] Its name, consisting of two English-language words[23] written in the Latin alphabet, usually appears that way in the Russian press, though it is sometimes transliterated into Cyrillic as "Пусси Райот". The group consisted of around a dozen performers and about 15 people who handled the technical work of shooting and editing videos that were posted on the Internet.
Tolokonnikova, her husband, Pyotr Verzilov, and Samutsevich were members of the anarchist art collective "Voina" from the group's early days in 2007,[24] until an acrimonious split in 2009.[25] Following the split, they formed a separate Moscow-based group, also named "Voina", saying that they had as much right to use the name as Voina founder Oleg Vorotnikov.[26]
Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich gave a lecture on punk feminism in 2011, in which they refer to the "Pisya Riot" band as a striking example of punk feminist art in Russia, but did not reveal their relation to the band until their arrest in 2012.[27]
The group was started by 15 women, several of whom were previously involved in Voina.[22] While there is no official line-up and the band says anyone can join, it usually has between 10 and 20 members.[28] The members prefer anonymity and are known for wearing brightly coloured balaclavas when performing and using aliases when giving interviews.[29] At the start, the group was relatively unknown, but this changed following a February 2012 performance in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.[30] Following the performance, three women, Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, were publicly identified and eventually convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.[31] Two other women involved fled the country and have never been named.[32]
Tolokonnikova is seen as the face of the group.[33] She was born in Norilsk and studied at Moscow State University. Tolokonnikova and then-husband Pyotr Verzilov were members of Voina from 2007.[34] They were involved in provocative art performances that included drawing a 65 m (210 foot) penis on a bridge and having public sex in a Moscow biological museum.[35] Ailyokhina is a single mother, poet[34] and previously did work as an environmental activist.[35] She was a student at the Institute of Journalism and Creative Writing in Moscow.[36]
Following release, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina said they were no longer members of the group, although they appeared at various events around the world using the name Pussy Riot. Other members tried to distance themselves from the two, saying that although they were glad for their release, the members were anti-capitalistic and did not support their use of Pussy Riot to make money from songs and tours. After failing to prevent them from using the Pussy Riot name, they declared the group dead.[37]
In 2015, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina went their own ways and although they still follow similar paths and keep in touch, Pussy Riot is seen by some as more Tolokonnikova's project than the collective it started out as.[37] Ailyokhinasai created her own show, Pussy Riot: Riot Days, which recounts her life as a Russian activist, and tours various fringe festivals.[39]
During the 2018 FIFA World Cup Final, members identifying with the group invaded the pitch wearing police uniforms to protest wrongful arrests. They were Verzilov, economics student Veronika Nikulshina, journalist Olga Kurachyova and Olga Pakhtusova.[34]
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Maria Alyokhina and Lucy Shtein, who are in a relationship, were able to escape house arrest in Russia, and each of them fled the country disguised as delivery drivers, a month apart, to Lithuania.[40] They were proposed for fast-track citizenship in Iceland by parliament decree in May 2023.[41] Shtein was later sentenced in absentia to six years in prison for her online anti-war posts.[42]
In an interview with Gazeta.ru, a band member described their two-minute concerts as performance art, creating images of "pure protest, saying: super heroes in balaclavas and acid bright tights seize public space in Moscow." Another band member, who went by the pseudonym Garadzha, told the Moskovskiye Novosti newspaper that the group was open to women recruits with limited musical talents. She said: "You don't have to sing very well. It's punk. You just scream a lot."[43]
The group cited British punk rock and oi! bands Angelic Upstarts, Cockney Rejects, Sham 69 and The 4-Skins as their main musical influences.[4][44] The band also cited American punk rock band Bikini Kill, performance artist Karen Finley and the riot grrrl movement of the 1990s as inspirations. They stated:[45]
What we have in common is impudence, politically loaded lyrics, the importance of feminist discourse and a non-standard female image. The difference is that Bikini Kill performed at specific music venues, while we hold unsanctioned concerts. On the whole, Riot Grrrl was closely linked to Western cultural institutions, whose equivalents don't exist in Russia.
Pussy Riot's performances can either be called dissident art or political action that engages art forms. Either way, our performances are a kind of civic activity amidst the repressions of a corporate political system that directs its power against basic human rights and civil and political liberties.[47]
Costumes usually consisted of brightly colored dresses and tights, even in bitterly cold weather, with faces hidden by balaclavas. During interviews, band members used nicknames such as "Balaclava", "Cat", "Seraph", "Terminator", and "Blondie".[48]
In an email interview with The St. Petersburg Times, the group explained their political positions further, saying that members' perspectives ranged from anarchist to liberal left, but that all were united by feminism, anti-authoritarianism and opposition to Putin, whom members regard as continuing the "aggressive imperial politics" of the Soviet Union. Group concerns include education, health care, and the centralization of power, and the group supports regional autonomy and grass-roots organizing. Members regard unsanctioned rallies as a core principle, saying that authorities do not see rallies that they have sanctioned as a threat and simply ignore them. For this reason, all of Pussy Riot's performances were illegal and used co-opted public space.[45] Interviewed by the BBC during rehearsals the day before the Cathedral of Christ the Savior performance, band members argued that only vivid, illegal actions brought media attention.[49] In an interview with Slate in the spring of 2018 during the band's first North American tour, Tolokonnikova stated that economic inequality "is a big issue for Pussy Riot", highlighting that such inequality was a notable feature of both Russian and American society, and that discussion of inequality was absent from mainstream political discourse in both the US and Europe.[50]
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