Ord kan krossa betong: Berättelsen om Pussy Riot

by Masha Gessen, Thomas Grundberg (Translator), Nille Lindgren (Translator)

Journalisten Masha Gessen ger en unik inblick i fenomenet Pussy Riot, det feministiska punkkollektivet som fick en hel värld att vända sina blickar mot det ryska samhället och dess brist på demokratiska rättigheter.

Den 21 februari 2012 äntrade fem unga kvinnor Kristus Frälsarens Katedral i Moskva iförda neonfärgade kläder, rånarluvor och framförde den nu historiska punkbönen till Jungfru Maria om att frälsa det ryska folket från Vladimir Putin. Den efterföljande rättgången bevakades intensivt av internationell press och fick stor spridning på nätet. Människor över hela världen, däribland celebriteter som Madonna och Paul McCartney, visade sitt stöd för Pussy Riot.

Det som hyllades var inte bara den modig politisk konfrontationen gruppen genomförde, utan aktionen sågs också som ett inspirerande konstfenomen som skapade ett nytt sätt att uttrycka protester på i ett samhälle där yttrandefriheten är hårt kringskuren.

Journalisten Masha Gessen skildrar ingående hur Pussy Riot kom till och vilken inflytelse punkkollektivet har fått inte bara i Ryssland, utan i hela världen. Genom exklusiva intervjuer och samtal Pussy Riots medlemmar och deras familjer rekonstruerar hon medlemmarnas fascinerande och personliga resor som kom att leda fram till den sammanslutning av konstnärer som med en gemensam politisk vision och ett ursinnigt mod har satt sina spår i historieböckerna.

Genres: Nonfiction, Russia, Feminism, Politics, Music, History, Biography

333 pages, Hardcover

First published January 8, 2014

About the author

Masha Gessen (born 1967) is an American-Russian journalist, translator, and nonfiction author. They identify as non-binary and use they/them pronouns.

Born into an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Russia, in 1981 they moved with their family to the United States to escape anti-Semitism. They returned in 1991 to Moscow, where they worked as a journalist, and covered Russian military activities during the Chechen Wars. In 2013, they were publicly threatened by prominent Russian politicians for their political activism and were forced to leave Russia for the United States.

They write in both Russian and English, and has contributed to The New Republic, New Statesman, Granta and Slate. Gessen is a staff writer at The New Yorker, covering international politics, Russia, LGBT rights, and gender issues.

Reviews

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Basically they got what was coming to them. In order to understand WHY they got their terms of 2 years in jail per person (they got out way earlier!), one has to realize that these gals were repeat offenders. And they did a lot of alien grade shit apart from scaring a bunch of grannies, priests and some underpaid churchyard security officer in one of the churches with richest religious and cultural history in Russia. Pussy Riot members were initially part of an art group Voina (which in English means 'War') which was responsible for a number of blatant public misdemeanors: Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voina, http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Война_(а....

Would YOU like to wake up and see the doors of your restaurant welded shut? All in the sake of some presumably political action protest performed by some crazy neighbourhood kids?

Or maybe it is the dream of your life to be able to gaze at your leisure at a giant dick painted across a street where your children might walk? Again done by the same crazies?

What about seeing a scene of public play of hanging a gay man and a couple of illegal immigrants of certain nationality performed by the same kids? Huh? Nice start to a working day?

Or maybe you would consider getting a faceful of live cats to be a nice break of drudgery of a working day? Yes, live cats were being thrown over the counter at McDonalds 'to break up the drudgery of workers' routine day' by these very 'artists'.

How about taking a quiet walk with your family to a supermarket only to witness some crazy gal whore first shoplifting a chicken and then stuffing it into her vagina? All done in public while her associates keep shouting f-words about 'whorring' and 'antiwhorring'? Nice end to a dull working day? Huh?

Hm... Maybe you would like to witness live sex in the Moscow Zoological Museum - 'Fuck for the heir Puppy Bear!' 'action'? You sure it should be considered normal public conduct to fuck with your friends in your nearest museum with about 50 witnesses to it? I would like to see you do it for whatever political or any other reason and get away with it, in your country, however liberal it might be.

How about attacking police cars, overturning them or setting them on fire with Molotov cocktails? Sounds like reasonable public conduct? Would it be considered an allowed form of protest/art in your country?

Bringing 3000 Madagaskaran live giant cockroaches to a court with intention to set them free there? I'm sure people loved the experience... NOT. A 2-minute 'Dick in the Ass'-themed punk concert was presented in a yet another courtroom where they went into detail as to just why 'All Cops are Bаstards, Remember This'?

You sure no prosecution would follow such actions in YOUR country? Still there was NO prosecution for all these misdemeanors to these people, initially. Then they just had to go to a church and have histrionics there. And finally they were nailed... Is it really such a big surprise that such behaviour would and should someday be punished? There is some breaking point in any society tolerance.

There is no topic to have writen this book about. Major minus to this author.

PS. And trust me, it was pure and unadulterated attention-seeking, not political protest of any intelligible kind. They are freaking space cadets not political opposition. And their performances are an ongoing escalating depravity fair. If I decide to, I don't know, steal something or use Molotov cocktails against police or create public disorder in, say, NY, won't I be arrested even if I scream about half the world's leaders? Basically, had they been allowed off the hook due to their screams about political leaders and whatnot, any miscreant could afterwards use this precedent and cover their misdemeanors with screams about politics or whatever...

PS. And 2018 we had a 'wonderful' opportunity to enjoy these same birds interrupting the World Football Cup final...

[reading is my hustle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update; b/c whoever did this, i love thee:




This is an excellent bit of reporting by Masha Gessen. For those of you who are interested in the background of the Pussy Riot collective this book will not disappoint. The three young women who were convicted for their performance art (in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior) are remarkable. Their art dared to criticize Putin and his government policies and they paid the ultimate price. Their bravery and belief in their convictions shine throughout this account.

If you are not interested in the book as a whole at least read it for their court speeches. The speeches they give in the Russian kangaroo court tell you exactly who they are :: smart, educated, articulate, and philosophical.

As an aside (currently) I am visiting Barcelona as a tourist and before that I was in Toulouse & Lourdes. I mention this because I have seen many cathedrals in the last weeks. Today I visited Basilica de Santa Maria Del Pi and having just finished this book viewed the cathedrals with the Pussy Riot performance art in mind. The acoustics in these cathedrals are incredible. It is a bit mind blowing to think of them performing/singing punk style screaming in such a quiet and contemplative space. This is the point- I get that- and so I imagined it was akin to watching a riot grrrl concert in the cathedral I visited today.

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I began this book I was a little put off by the lack of distance between the journalist and her subjects. It is unusual (but not unheard of) for a reporter to so obviously take sides in a debate. By the end of the book, however, this lack of distance no longer troubled me. Gessen had no access to Nadya or Maria, two of Pussy Riot’s leading members who had been jailed in early 2012. Gessen was reduced to compiling information about their thinking and living conditions through their lawyers, family, friends, and televised court appearances. Considering the extraordinary nature of Pussy Riot’s protest against the Putin regime in Russia, and their ability to articulate their protests, it is far better we understand in detail as much as we can of these brave and unusual women who are seemingly willing to die for freedom to speak, vote, protest.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Ekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina are three women of Pussy Riot jailed for their role performing punk music in the Church of Christ the Savior in Moscow in February 2012. There were others there that night, but these three formed the core of the group before they were separated in jail. They are speaking out against the abuses in the Putin regime: political, judicial and legislative fraud, corruption, manipulation of public opinion, use of force to regulate social processes. Their “actions” which in the early days were punk songs staged in public spaces, were accompanied by pointed lyrics often spiked with swear words criticizing the powerful. They were, however, as a group extremely articulate and well-spoken, as evidenced by statements made at their trials, some of which are recounted in detail in this book.

Several clips of their “actions” are shown at least in part on YouTube, as are interviews with journalists around the world. It is hard to imagine that these young protesters were very nearly killed in jail, mostly because the conditions were such that they decided hunger strike was the only way to stop the pressure being put on them from prison officials.

Though given two-year sentences in August 2012, Nadya and Maria were released eight months early in December 2013 before the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi in January 2014. They decided to work for prisoners’ rights upon their release. A September 2014 Guardian article excerpts the open letter Nadya published from jail that is printed in full in Gessen’s book describing the conditions in the women’s jail at Mordovia, a gulag prison some eleven hours by car southeast of Moscow.

In 2015 Pussy Riot were Grand Marshalls of the Toronto Gay Pride Parade. Nadya’s English is better--she can now curse Putin in English as well as Russian. Her words have had some effect on the citizenry in Russia, though it is said Putin still enjoys the support of the voting public.

Extraordinary voices, extraordinary bravery.

[Rayme]

Worth reading just for the speeches Maria and Nadzha give in court.

[Alan Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book shows what happens when church and state are not separated. There are two classic forms of church-state combination. The most familiar to us is theocracy, when religious clergy control the state or have the state do their dirty work, as in Calvin's Geneva (where Calvin, by his own admission, instigated the trial and execution of Servetus for heresy) and in seventeenth-century Massachusetts Bay (where four Quakers were hanged, Baptists were whipped, and Roger Williams and others were banished, all because of their religious beliefs and nonviolent religious practices), My book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience discusses these examples and issues of church-state separation and liberty of conscience in depth.

The second classic form of church-state combination is what scholars call Erastianism: the state controls the church and all religious doctrine and practice for political purposes. The bible of Erastianism is Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651), a work that Vladimir Putin must keep at his bedside. As described in Gessen's book, Putin installed one of his KGB buddies as the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the most important cathedral in Russia was turned into a propaganda vehicle for Putin's political regime, including televised appeals to vote for Putin in the name of God. It is this same church that Pussy Riot turned into its own media platform in an effort to protest the Putin regime's emerging theologico-political dictatorship. Pussy Riot's activity might have been a technical criminal trespass under American law, but it was certainly less of a violation of others' rights than the original Boston Tea Party, from which a popular right-wing movement in the United States currently takes its name. The Pussy Riot contingent waited until a time when no services were being held in the cathedral in order to perform their protest song-and-dance routine. Of course, the Putin regime brought the full power of the one-party Russian state on them, and the state-controlled church and media mischaracterized the Pussy Riot action as an antireligious criminal act. Three Pussy Riot performers were tried (in a good imitation of Soviet-style judicial proceedings), convicted, and sentenced to two years imprisonment. The sentence of one of them was later suspended, because she had been grabbed by security before she could participate in the performance. The other two were consigned to prison colonies, where they were forced to live and work under intolerable conditions until December of 2013, when Putin freed them shortly before the expiration of their sentences in order to avoid adverse media publicity at the imminent Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Gessen's portrayal of the current Russian criminal justice system provides the reader with a chilling reminder that due process of law and other constitutional protections we take for granted in the West have not prevailed everywhere. Like its predecessor Soviet constitutions, the current Constitution of the Russian Federation pays lip service to these concepts, but the practice of the Russian government is far different. Although individual examples of lack of due process exist even in the United States, Gessen's book shows that due process is systemically denied in Russia, at least when the power of the Putin regime is threatened in any way. Moreover, the Pussy Riot performers well understood the nature of their protest. At their trial it was the defendants themselves who made their own closing arguments, and Gessen faithfully reproduces these arguments from written transcripts made by independent observers. The logic and eloquence of the Pussy Riot performers' closing statements are themselves sufficient to warrant the price of this book and sufficient justification to read it.

(Originally posted 6/21/2014; revised 8/23/2015)

[Deborah Markus · Rating 3 out of 5]

“How did our performance, a small and somewhat absurd act to begin with, balloon into a full-fledged catastrophe?”

That’s the question this book struggles to answer. It largely succeeds.

If I sound as if I’m hedging a bit, it’s because I’m still in shock from the very end of this book. I didn’t realize it had been written while the convicted members of Pussy Riot were still in prison. Not only is there no mention of Putin’s oh-so-magnanimous pre-Olympics order to release them early (such a sweetie!), but the book very nearly ends with no resolution given of Nadya’s 26-day disappearance during her hunger strike. (A hasty postscript is added, updating the reader slightly on Nadya’s location and physical state as of December 2013.)

I was going to discuss the story this book tells: how several young women started a feminist punk band in Russia, which a British journalist accurately describes as “the land women’s rights forgot.” This is worth quoting Gessen at depressing length about:

The fact, though, was that feminism had never taken root in Russia. It had been part of Bolshevik ideology in the 1920s, when “revolutionary morality” replaced bourgeois morality, abolishing marriage and monogamy and introducing free love, communal children, and full gender equality. The USSR even introduced the world’s very first laws against sexual harassment in the workplace. But the egalitarian spirit did not last.

...Virtually all Soviet women held two full-time jobs – one for pay and one, at home, for nothing but hardship, which in light of constant food shortages, could be extreme – and this was called “full gender equality.” Even after the Soviet Union collapsed, the tradition of reviling and ridiculing feminism proved surprisingly resilient. A few feminist organizations that appeared in the late 1980s, on the glasnost-and-perestroika wave, either stayed small or disappeared. Feminism was an academic pursuit, and an unpopular one.

Small wonder, then, that Pussy Riot seems initially to have struggled with exactly what feminist activism should look like. An early action was to approach female police officers, ask them for simple directions, and “if the officer responded helpfully, one of the actors would go into paroxysms of gratitude, culminating in a kiss – on the lips, when possible.” These interactions were filmed, and the video clip went viral.

After this strange event, Pussy Riot decided to focus on punk rock-oriented actions. They came up with ferociously feminist lyrics, and found musicians to help them perform. They filmed themselves performing at playgrounds, at Metro stations, on top of an electric bus. They crafted lyrics for a performance outside a detention center, and the prisoners inside roared along with them. They staged a particularly daring performance in Red Square – Masha Gessen’s description of this is deeply entertaining.

But Pussy Riot was by no means the only group of people trying to shake things up in Russia. The so-called Snow Revolution of December 2011 was the beginning of a Russian protest movement, which Gessen did much more than just observe and report on:

Protest had gone mainstream in Russia, taking Pussy Riot with it. Creative direct action was not enough if everyone was doing it. And everyone was; there was even a clearinghouse for direct action now, with hundreds of people coming to weekly meetings to propose dozens of actions, find collaborators, and start to organize on the spot. (I started the Protest Workshop, as it was called, and facilitated its meetings from December 2011 through June 2012.) These included flashmobs on the Metro, performative acts of art, and small-scale, unsanctioned protests.

So: Why have we heard of Pussy Riot when most of us probably haven’t heard of any other activist Russian groups (or even of the Snow Revolution itself)?

If Pussy Riot hadn’t staged an action at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, few people outside of Russia would have heard of them. They did, and now people all over the world have an opinion of what they did, even when they don’t quite know what it was.

The cathedral was open, for the record. Many people I’ve spoken to were under the impression that Pussy Riot had to “break in” in order to stage their performance. They didn’t. They simply walked in.

They were also not brought up on the kind of charges they’d have faced in America. I don’t know enough about the law to say for sure, but I’m guessing it would be something like disturbing the peace, public nuisance – maybe even some kind of trespassing charge, since although the cathedral was open, it’s not as if Pussy Riot got permission to perform in there.

This is Russia, so they were charged with “hooliganism and hatred toward Orthodox believers.” And, this being Russia, the court managed, even while playing clips of the recording, to skip the refrain that calls for the Mother of God to “chase Putin out.” Instead, Pussy Riot was presented as having simply urged the Virgin Mary to “become a feminist.” Heaven forbid that this be seen by the Russian public as a political action.

As long as you weren’t one of the accused, the trial was hilarious in its way. The members of a feminist group were chided for having chosen to perform in a certain area of the cathedral, since “parishioners of the female sex cannot go up on the soleas.” The cleaning lady later blew that by admitting that yes, “she cleaned the soleas despite being female. The prosecutor grabbed his head with his hands. The judge directed the court marshals to remove anyone who laughed.”

The young women were also “accused” of performing “bodily movements that [a witness] called ‘devilish jerkings.’” This was accepted as part of the evidence of their “hatred toward Orthodox believers” until the defense attorneys asked what exactly devilish jerkings were. “How does the victim know how the devil jerks?” the lawyer asked with a straight face. “Has she seen the devil?”

“I am disallowing the question,” the judge replied. (The judge said that many times during the course of this trial. She wasn’t the kind of judge who worries too much about that pesky “innocent until proven guilty” nonsense.)

Another laughable-if-it’s-not-you-on-trial moment occurred when an altar man “testified that Pussy Riot had acted as though they were possessed”:

”Those who are possessed can act in a variety of ways,” he explained. “They can scream, thrash around on the floor, sometimes they jump.”

“Do they dance?” asked [a lawyer].

“Well, no.”

A security guard solemnly testified that he’d been so traumatized by the performance, he had to miss two months of work. I don’t know how Pussy Riot felt about this, but I’d take it as a huge compliment.

As I mentioned in an update, this book would be worth reading just for the closing statements of the members of Pussy Riot. Gessen’s writing is skillful and unobtrusive, but it can’t compete with this brilliant passion.

And that’s where we reach what I consider the sole flaw of this book. It begins with a visit to one of the prisoners. The prison sounds deeply unpleasant, but survivable. Only in the epilogue do we learn that the conditions there are nothing short of torture.

Nadya managed to write and release an open letter about this just before she declared a hunger strike. Prisoners are forced to work from 7:30 in the morning to twelve-thirty at night. They’re allowed to wash their hair once a week, but often even this is cancelled – and the plumbing is constantly breaking down, toilets as well as sinks and showers. The food is stale bread, watered-down milk, rancid millet, and rotten potatoes. “This summer, sacks of slimy black potato bulbs were brought to the prison in bulk. And they were fed to us.”

Any prisoner who complains will suffer for it doubly, because collective punishment is meted out – and prisoners are encouraged to beat troublemakers. The only violence that’s interfered with are suicide attempts.

This book, as I said, began with a visit to this prison, but makes no mention of the true horror of conditions there. I think the book should have started with Nadya’s letter. Her story, and that of Pussy Riot itself, should have been told in the shadow of the kind of punishment Russian dissenters can expect to face. (Soviet gulags: gone, but not forgotten!)

This book is short and engaging. Read it if you’re interested in global feminism, punk rock activism, Russia in general, and/or the plight of Russian women in particular.

[Lord Beardsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been pretty much fascinated with Pussy Riot since I first heard about their actions. As Russia is increasingly turning into an unabashed fascist state (rather than hiding under the guise of democracy), I am drawn more and more to those with the bravery to speak out against it. I don't know if I would be that brave, but I believe it my duty (and everyone else's for that matter) to give people such as Nadya, Maria, Kat and many others credence.

Reading this gave a very clear picture of what it is exactly that drove these brave young women to speak out: the terror, the lies, hypocrisy, fascism, and patriarchal state of things in Russia. It also illustrated how brilliant these women are. They are well-read autodidacts who can quote a slew of philosophers and poets, not to mention apply their learnings to critically judge the goings on around them. Their writings are of a caliber in and of themselves, and Gessen quotes amply from their own writings whilst their story of injustice and horror plays out.

Great attention is given to what they endured in prison, which could only be described as state-sanctioned terrorism. I applaud them for their strength and their ongoing efforts on global prison reform.

Gessen is a marvelous writer and journalist, and this is a must-read for anyone wanting to get a vivid, humane idea of what it is to be an intelligent, free-thinking individual in Putin Era Russia.

[da AL · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to say 'enjoyed' this book as its such a heartbreaking story, yet its a wonderful book. The reader frames it well. It tells of the humanity of Pussy Riot members, ordinary yet extraordinary women.

[Owlseyes]

Maybe this book is aiming at the Kremlin walls; maybe ,its cement. It’s a fact that Putin in X’mas 2013 dressed up as Santa Claus: he released from imprisonment Greenpeace people, and the once-richest Mikhail Khodorkovsky and: two of the Pussy Riot members. Commentators saw the move as strategic, aiming at something very different from compassion, much less justice. One of the Pussy Riot members said she preferred to stay in prison, showing clearly suspicion regarding the gift. Farcicality, at stake, in my view.



Masha Gessen told recently to The Economist several important points on her book.

(1) That the 5-members group after “gorilla” performances in several places, but especially in the cathedral of Christ the Savior, got arrested in 2011. Their words (the Punk Prayer asking the intervention of the Virgin Mary to put Putin down) were fatal.
(2) In August 2012, the group went to trial and got a sentence of 3 years, due to felony. Basically the group “disturbed the social order”; their words were “motivated by hatred”.
(3) Now, in 2014, two members of the group, released by the amnesty, are engaged in a movement in the defense of the rights of prisoners.
(4) Masha suggested something like “the last stage of the Putin regime”.


Walls crumbling? For the moment Khodorkovky is [in fact,was; he moved to Switzerland] in Germany*, maybe with his political career at a stalemate. But who knows: he and others may contribute to alter cement consistency…. For the moment he's been silenced, so, no words**.




UPDATES
Putin’s Russia: Don’t Walk, Don’t Eat, and Don’t Drink
BY MASHA GESSEN, 28th May 2015
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-de...


RUSSIAN PURGE
Putin Doesn’t Need to Censor Books. Publishers Do It for Him.

in: https://theintercept.com/2016/02/15/p...

*Former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky may seek asylum in Britain
in:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015...

**Update: now, he's publishing lots of words

FROM THE IRON CURTAIN TO A BROKEN WINDOW
Posted on March 11, 2016
http://www.khodorkovsky.com/from-the-...


The New Politics of Conspiracy
Masha Gessen
in: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/...

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really don't get much performance art; I'm sorry. Most of what I have seen strikes me as silly or just a desire to shock. Yet, I still think it is a legit form of protest or art. I just don't like it.

Let's be honest, some of the art that Pussy Riot undertook is not my thing at all. And like much performance and much street art, you can argue about breaking the law all day long. Regardless, Pussy Riot was also a protest group, and in many ways reaction to them was based on the protest.

Gessen, no fan of Putin herself, chronicles the group, and in particular the lives of the three women who were charged. It is rather even-handed, and regardless of how you feel about Riot's art in general, the trial should have you shaking your head.

At times the book gets a little slow, but it is well worth the read.

[Meg - A Bookish Affair · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Words Will Break Cement" is the story of Pussy Riot, a all-female punk band in Russia who dares to protest against Vladmir Putin, the Russian establishment, and the Russian government in a church. This gets some of the members sent to work camps and ignites passion for freedom of speech around the world. This book is by Masha Gessen, an author who whose previous work centers mostly on Russia. I have really enjoyed some of her previous work and was excited to see how she took on the subject of Pussy Riot.. For many of us, it's hard to imagine getting punished for protesting. It happens but it seems to be much less severe thann it is in places like Russia. Gessen covers the events leading up to the protest and the women behind the protest.

This book is utterly fascinating from the perspective that it's really interesting to see women protesting in Russia. The episode with Pussy Riot opened up Russia to a lot of criticism both at home and abroad. While this marks the first time that Pussy Riot had ever sparked international headlines, the group and its members had been shaking things up for a long time in Russia through their music and their art. It was interesting to hear the history behind each of the women that were involved in the protest and their reasons for protesting even if it meant being punished to the point where they wouldn't be able to see their friends or family for long periods of time.

This book feels very much like long form journalism, which I love. It will be interesting to others who are interested in freedom of speech and international events!

[Rebekah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected a lot more from this book. I expected a compelling work of protest lit. I expected verve and fire, especially from Gessen, whose previous work has unabashedly challenged Putin and his regime. In short, I expected *Words Will Break Cement* to deliver on the promise of its subtitle. But there simply is no passion in Gessen's account of Pussy Riot. It's essentially a dry chronology of the events that led up to the detainment and trial of the three collective members who, thanks to substantial Western media attention, are already rather well-known. Gessen tries to give us insight into what drove each of these women, but there is simply no consistent narrative in this regard--even for Kat, with whom Gessen was able to conduct extensive, in-person interviews. And the book is oddly peppered with a plethora of seemingly random and unsubstantiated judgments regarding the motives of the friends, family members, and advocates (including their various attorneys) who play supporting roles in the narrative.

*Words Will Break Cement* is valuable as a basic backgrounder on the three most famous participants in Pussy Riot, but, disappointingly, not much more.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Things I already knew: Putin's Russia is scary AF

Things I didn't know:
-the extent to which Putin's Russia is scary AF
-that Pussy Riot was only a fledgling group when three of its members were arrested
-that the women involved in Pussy Riot are true punk rock intellectuals - so much admiration for these women and their resolve to fight totalitarianism, misogyny and homophobia

[Shelley Diamond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent history of Pussy Riot: the women's personal lives leading up to the event that got them arrested, and then the agony of their court cases and imprisonment. Shows the Russian reality behind the headlines....

I also really liked the eloquence of each woman's statement to the court. It was interesting to see each woman's unique perspective and how different they were from each other yet in sync enough to work together.

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book but it was heart breaking to read about how Russia is treating its citizens in the 21st century. It was especially horrible and upsetting to read about the conditions that women are subjected to in jail in Russia. I remember reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn when I was in my late teens or early twenties and I have never forgotten it. It seems that nothing has changed in Russian prisons, or work camps, between 90 and 100 years later. What an outrage and a terrible indictment of the current Russian Administration.

Regarding the two main members of Pussy Riot, Maria and Nadezhda, I really like the way they are such a contrast to one another and I feel that their styles of dealing with their imprisonment compliment each other.

I've been watching videoclips clips of interviews they've given since their release from prison and a speech they gave at an Amnesty International concert in New York in February this year after being introduced by Madonna. But controversy and criticism still follows them where ever they go and whatever they do as their appearance was poorly received by other members of Pussy Riot. (The ones who were not imprisoned as some members of the group have never been publicly identified and another member, Yekaterina, was later freed with a suspended sentence after a successful appeal and was not sent to a work camp.) The following is from an article published on The Sydney Morning Herald - World website on 6 February 2014. It includes excerpts from a letter other members of the group posted on their blog:

Selling concert tickets "is highly contradictory to the principles of Pussy Riot," said the letter, which was signed with six nicknames.
"We're a female separatist collective," it said. "We never accept money for our performances," and "we only stage illegal performances in unexpected public places".

The letter also took issue with posters for the concert that showed a male guitarist in a balaclava, a trademark of the feminist group.

However, Maria and Nadezdha have stated since their release that they would focus on campaigning for the rights of prisoners and that's what they seem to have been doing.

It's a great book and really interesting if you get a chance to read it.

[Virginprune · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this back-to-back with Gessen's Putin biography, and, although chronologically one follows the other, this is in no way a sequel. The pace and scope are completely different.
Coming down from the mini-epic "The Man Without A Face", with its atrocities and world impact, to this story of a bunch of naughty girls feels at first like stepping off a jet fighter onto a tricycle. (This book is also slightly longer!)
However, stick with it - the background stories are illuminating, particularly given that very little reporting, even in the "West", actually bothered to explain what they did, and why.
The high points for me were the statements made by those convicted, both during their trial and subsequently when there were incarcerated.
Pussy Riot may have seemed frivolous and childishly attention-seeking, prancing around to backing tracks by old English "Oi" bands, and wearing silly clothes, but they were not only well-read and able to coherently communicate - they also had a serious point.
The book was last updated in Dec 2013 - clearly, events have moved on significantly in the short space of time since then. However, that does not take away from what's here. It may be that it was published with some urgency - but there few rough edges or areas where another editorial sweep would have been desirable. The story is current, and is worth reading right now.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good "current events" type book about Pussy Riot, going into the personal backgrounds of the main members of the group (hard to call them a band, since they are much more about performance art than music) and the cultural and political context from which they arose. If you are interested in the state of contemporary Russia, and particularly its criminal justice and penal systems, it's well worth reading, but, stylistically, it's more like a long magazine piece than literature.

One thing I don't understand is why this book was rushed into print as Nadya and Masha were being released - even if the publisher was unaware of the early release that was coming down in December 2013 as part of Putin's attempt to polish his image, they knew that their sentence was up in March 2014. Why not wait until they could be interviewed, and able to add their own insight into their experiences?

[Olga · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you followed Pussy Riot's story (especially if you could follow Russian media and blogs around the case), then most of the details might be already known. But the book provides a great summary and highlights the absurdity of the soviet-style show trials. But most of all this is a story of three brave, articulate and critical young women, who are inspiration.

[Margie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Passion of Pussy Riot" indeed! I am amazed at the passion, the courage, and the will of Pussy Riot, particularly Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina in defying and exposing Putin for the repressive dictator that he is. Even after 2 years in prison - in hard labor camps where they often worked 12 hours or more a day and were served garbage for meals, these young women came back and defied Putin at the Sochi Olympics. They were jailed again and chased off with pepper spray and whips! This book tells their story from their beginnings to their prison time. It is remarkable to me that it even got written. As of this writing, they have now been jailed again for taking part in protests in Moscow of the trial of the eight Bolotnaya defendants who protested another stolen parliamentary election in Moscow in May 2012. Amnesty International called it a "show trial" which revealed "a criminal justice system which is entirely malleable to the dictates of its political masters." Putin may have the upper hand right now, but Pussy Riot and other courageous protestors have the passion and the international exposure to force his hand into either reform or face a revolution. These young women are astounding in their courage and inspirational in their refusal to give in to repression. Go Pussy Riot!

[Edward Rathke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Regardless of what you think of Pussy Riot, this book is fascinating and kind of a must read during a time when america has a burgeoning resistance movement facing down an increasing authoritarian executive branch.

Gessen covers who they were before Pussy Riot, how they found their way to activism and resistance, how they found themselves in prison, the absurdity of their trial, and the cruelty of their time in penal colonies.

Much of this reminds me of what Chelsea Manning and Barrett Brown went through during their trials and imprisonments. As damning as this is of the Putin regime, the similarities between the treatment of Pussy Riot and activists/whistleblowers in the US is startling.

But, yes, I only recently discovered Gessen's journalism and she's quickly becoming a must-read for me.

[Zora · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good though not great account of Pussy Riot from their formation through to Nadya's hunger strike in prison. Buy it for the chance to know more about three members of PR who lost their anonymity as soon as they were charged and for their unedited court room speeches. I remain in awe of them, even more so after finishing this book. Hence the four stars. The masterpiece on Pussy Riot will come eventually - maybe from Masha Gesson, clearly an impressive journalist with a strong grasp of the vagaries and peculiarities of Russian politics and culture, but more likely from Nadya, Maria or Kat. All power to them.

[Hank Stuever · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fine piece of analytical reporting and writing from Masha Gessen. This book is also an especially good companion piece to the Pussy Riot documentary that aired on HBO a year or so back. It's been a pleasure to discover Gessen's smart, bold, beautifully-written books on Russian society and culture -- I think I'm going to have to join her fan club. I came to this book because I enjoyed and learned so much from her book on the Tsarnaevs ("The Brothers"). Now looking forward to going back and reading her book about Vladimir Putin. It all goes together.

[Helen · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a nightmare.

Seriously, folks. How does punk jumping and screaming in Christ Savior Cathedral suddenly turn into art? How does sex performance in Museum of Natural Science get to be explained as a protest against regime? How does shoplifting and stuffing frozen chicken into...ok, let me omit the details here - how does it become an act of heroism?

And how does one defend it all?

And where does this elaborate defense of indefensible leave the people who actually protest the regime and risk their lives for it to change?

Go read Novodvorskaya's memoirs.

[Katie Boyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Close to 4.5 stars. These ladies are fearless, inspirational, and all about standing up for what's right. What's not to love?

I followed their trial when it happened but it was fascinating to read more about the women's backgrounds/upbringings as well as the formation of the group and life in Russia and Russian prisons too.

[Sandy Irwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly powerful book. The courage of these young Russian women to stand up for their beliefs, along with their attempt to bring a feminist movement to Russia, is captivating. Their lives in the Russian penal colonies is insanely horrific. I feel really lucky to live in the US.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great journalism about women who are brave as hell.

[Josh Bokor · Rating 5 out of 5]

To say that this book is very important would be an understatement. This book documents the inequalities, corruption, and lies that are indeed Putin's Russian regime through the lens of the members of punk protesting group Pussy Riot. Often times it doesn't even feel like I'm reading from the reporter's writing but through the members themselves. That statement is certainly true where Masha takes direct quotes from interviews and documentations they've collected and put it together in an authentic retelling of the events that led up to Nadya, Maria, and Kat's arrests. During the trial, each member's closing statements alone make this book worth reading. Reading about each member's origins and how they grew up really helped me understand where each member is coming from and how they relate and differ from one another. The book is incredibly heartbreaking as it is frustrating despite it being powerfully moving. It's essential when it comes to the Russian politics, feminism, rebellion, and the art of punk itself.

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated how timely this read felt given current events. That said, the distance of the journalist from the primary subjects of the book was challenging at times. There were multiple things ranging from small to significant left unresolved. It was also difficult to keep track of the folks involved at times. However, the book is an interesting read. It was an almost novel-like read at moments.

[Anna C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Show trials are, in my opinion, the clearest example of the individual vs. the state. The verdict is decided before the court even convenes. Corrupt judges will hamstring the defense and forbid the defendant from meeting with the counsel. Russia has a long history of show trials, and there is a certain procedure. The defense attorneys know that their clients can never go free, but they use every underhanded trick to at least reduce the sentences. As for the defendants, they know they face a penal colony, and they know that everything they say will enter the court record, and they know that posterity is watching. So while the defense searches for legal tidbits, the defendants talk. They already face the gulag, and the state holds no horrors for them now. Their speeches are passionate denunciations of the state, fiery polemics, and rousing battlecries. The closing arguments made all the more poignant since we know what fate the speakers are marching toward.

The Moscow Purges are over. But three young women of Pussy Riot did face a show trial. They made inspiring speeches heard across the world, and were then taken to a de facto gulag. Change the leader, change the setting, and we could be back under Stalin again. This is one of the main points of Masha Gessen's "Words will Break Cement." The Soviet Union may have fallen, but the old order never left.

"Words will Break Cement" is a fabulous bit of journalism. Gessen has insider access to the members of Pussy Riot and their families. Much of the book is compiled of court transcripts, interviews with family members, and letters the women wrote from prison. This thorough documentation lets the world bear witness to the horrors happening every day inside Russia. The court transcripts reveal the frustrating corruption of the so called justice system, while the letters from prison illuminate the hellish conditions within the camps.

Considering that English is her second language, Gessen is a stunning writer. However, she did not even write the best part of the book. The court transcripts are absolutely gripping. Pussy Riot joined that long tradition of Soviet dissidents who decided to make their show trials into a show. These women did not quietly wait for their fate. Kat fired her lawyers and maneuvered her way out of jail time. Maria cataloged the travesties of justice within her hearings and shared the veritable torture that regularly happened within the penal colonies. Nadya, rather than try to win herself a lighter sentence, used her closing argument to deliver a scorching denunciation of Putin-era Russia.

Though "Words will Break Cement" is a fabulous bit of journalism, it does not live up to Gessen's most famous work, "The Man without a Face." I suspect that since Gessen released her book early to coincide with Pussy Riot's release from prison, she did not have time to include the incisive commentary that made her biography of Putin so gripping. There is certainly so much to tackle. Why is feminism dead in Russia? Why is protest art the best tool to showcase the moral decay of the Putin reign? Why did the upper echelons feel so threatened by three young women screaming in a church? Gessen's explanation of how Putin re-appropriated the Orthodox Church (a symbol of resistance against Stalinism) is absolutely fascinating, and I would have liked to see more of it.

This is the moment where I remind everyone that I've met Masha Gessen, and had a quick conversation with her, and had her autograph my book. This is also where I remind everyone that Masha Gessen has met Putin. So this means I am two degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin.

[Meg · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wish there was a way to move a book off your shelf without putting "read"....or give it any stars.
This book was NOT what I wanted....I read the first 40 pages and just couldn't....

I expected a book explaining Pussy Riot and why they were put in jail...and what they were fighting for.
What I got....was some random opening explaining a trip to visit a singer(?) in jail with her kid and husband....at least that is what I assumed because NOT once was Pussy Riot mentioned or how the people introduced were connected to the group.
The author assumed the reader knew all the characters...and just jumped into an anecdote....I hoped that was just the prologue, but chapter one continued the confusion.

So, never mind. I give up...this is the year of no longer letting books frustrate me.
Read....don't. Just Google Pussy Riot (carefully).