Yekaterina Samutsevich, defendant in the criminal case against the feminist punk group Pussy Riot: In the closing

statement, the defendant is expected to repent, express regret for their deeds or enumerate attenuating circumstances. In my case, as in the case of my colleagues in the group, this is completely unnecessary. Instead, I want to voice my thoughts about the reasons behind what has happened to us. That Christ the Savior Cathedral had become a significant symbol in the political strategy of the authorities was clear to many thinking people when Vladimir Putins former [KGB] colleague Kirill Gundyayev took over as leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. After this happened, Christ the Savior Cathedral began to be openly used as a flashy backdrop for the politics of the security forces, which are the main source of power [in Russia]. Why did Putin feel the need to exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetic? After all, he could have employed his own, far more secular tools of powerfor example, the state-controlled corporations, or his menacing police system, or his obedient judiciary system. It may be that the harsh, failed policies of Putins government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced him to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign; that otherwise, the citizens of Russia would help him do this. Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more persuasive, transcendental guarantees of his long tenure at the pinnacle of power. It was then that it became necessary to make use of the aesthetic of the Orthodox religion, which is historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself. How did he succeed in doing this? After all, we still have a secular state, and any intersection of the religious and political spheres should be dealt with severely by our vigilant and critically minded society, shouldnt it? Here, apparently, the authorities took advantage of a certain deficit of the Orthodox aesthetic in Soviet times, when the Orthodox religion had an aura of lost history, of something that had been crushed and damaged by the Soviet totalitarian regime, and was thus an opposition culture. The authorities decided to appropriate this historical effect of loss and present a new political project to restore Russias lost spiritual values, a project that has little to do with a genuine concern for the preservation of Russian Orthodoxys history and culture. It was also fairly logical that the Russian Orthodox Church, given its long mystical ties to power, emerged as the projects principal exponent in the media. It was decided that, unlike in the Soviet era, when the church opposed, above all, the brutality of the authorities towards history itself, the Russian Orthodox Church should now confront all pernicious manifestations of contemporary mass culture with its concept of diversity and tolerance. Implementing this thoroughly interesting political project has required considerable quantities of professional lighting and video equipment, air time on national TV channels for hours-long live broadcasts, and numerous background shoots for morally and ethically edifying news stories, where the Patriarchs well-constructed speeches would in fact be presented, thus helping

the faithful make the correct political choice during the difficult time for Putin preceding the election. Moreover, the filming must be continuous; the necessary images must be burned into the memory and constantly updated; they must create the impression of something natural, constant and compulsory. Our sudden musical appearance in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior with the song Mother of God, Drive Putin Out violated the integrity of the media image that the authorities had spent such a long time generating and maintaining, and revealed its falsity. In our performance we dared, without the Patriarchs blessing, to unite the visual imagery of Orthodox culture and that of protest culture, thus suggesting to smart people that Orthodox culture belongs not only to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch and Putin, that it could also ally itself with civic rebellion and the spirit of protest in Russia. Perhaps the unpleasant, far-reaching effect from our media intrusion into the cathedral was a surprise to the authorities themselves. At first, they tried to present our performance as a prank pulled by heartless, militant atheists. This was a serious blunder on their part, because by then we were already known as an anti-Putin feminist punk band that carried out their media assaults on the countrys major political symbols. In the end, considering all the irreversible political and symbolic losses caused by our innocent creativity, the authorities decided to protect the public from us and our nonconformist thinking. Thus ended our complicated punk adventure in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. I now have mixed feelings about this trial. On the one hand, we expect a guilty verdict. Compared to the judicial machine, we are nobodies, and we have lost. On the other hand, we have won. The whole world now sees that the criminal case against us has been fabricated. The system cannot conceal the repressive nature of this trial. Once again, the world sees Russia differently from the way Putin tries to present it at his daily international meetings. Clearly, none of the steps Putin promised to take toward instituting the rule of law have been taken. And his statement that this court will be objective and hand down a fair verdict is yet another deception of the entire country and the international community. That is all. Thank you. Photo courtesy of Alexandra Astakhova. Original text in Russian publishedhere. You can view video of the closing statements by Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova here and here (in Russian). This translation was slightly revised on August 13 for republication elsewhere.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova Closing Statement 8 August 2012, Khamovnichesky Courthouse, Moscow Essentially, it is not three singers from Pussy Riot who are on trial here. If that were the case, whats happening would be totally insignificant. It is the entire state system of the Russian Federation which is on trial and which, unfortunately for itself, thoroughly enjoys advertising its cruelty towards human beings, its indifference to their honour and dignity, the very worst that has happened in Russian history to date. To my deepest regret, this mock trial is close to the standards of the Stalinist troikas. Thus, we have our investigator, lawyer and judge. And then, whats more, what all three of them do and say and decide is determined by a political demand for repression. Who is to blame for the performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and for our being put on trial after the concert? The authoritarian political system is to blame. What Pussy Riot does is oppositional art or politics that draws upon the forms art has established. In any event, it is a form of civil action in circumstances where basic human rights, civil and political freedoms are suppressed by the corporate state system.

Many people, relentlessly and methodically flayed alive by the destruction of liberties since the turn of the century, have rebelled. We were looking for authentic genuineness and simplicity and we found them in our punk performances. Passion, openness and naivety are superior to hypocrisy, cunning and a contrived decency that conceals crimes. The states leaders stand with saintly expressions in church, but their sins are far greater than ours. Weve put on our political punk concerts because the Russian

state system is dominated by rigidity, closedness and caste. nd the policies pursued serve only narrow corporate interests to the extent that even the air of Russia makes us ill. We are absolutely not happy withand have been forced into living politically bythe use of coercive, strong-arm measures to handle social processes, a situation in which the most important political institutions are the disciplinary structures of the statethe security agencies, the army, the police, the special forces and the accompanying means of ensuring political stability: prisons, preventive detention and mechanisms to closely control public behaviour. Nor are we happy with the enforced civic passivity of the bulk of the population or the complete domination of executive structures over the legislature and judiciary. Moreover, we are genuinely angered by the fearbased and scandalously low standard of political culture, which is constantly and knowingly maintained by the state system and its accomplices. Look at what Patriarch Kirill has to say: The Orthodox dont go to rallies. We are angered by the appalling weakness of horizontal relationships within society. We dont like the way in which the state system easily manipulates public opinion through its tight control of the overwhelming majority of media outlets. A perfect example is the unprecedentedly shameless campaign against Pussy Riot, based on the distortion of facts and words, which has appeared in nearly all the Russian media, apart from the few independent media there are in this political system.

Even so, I can now statedespite the fact that we currently have an authoritarian political situationthat I am seeing this political system collapse to a certain extent when it comes to the three members of Pussy Riot, because what the system was counting on, unfortunately for that system, has not come to pass. Russia as a whole does not condemn us. Every day more and more people believe us and believe in us, and think we should be free rather than behind bars. I can see this from the people I meet. I meet people who represent the system, who work for the relevant agencies. I see people who are in prison. And every day there are more and more people who support us, who hope for our success and especially for our release, who say our political act was justified. People tell us, To start with, we werent sure you could have done this, but every day there are more and more people who say, Time is proving to us that your political gesture was correct. You have exposed the cancer in this political system and dealt a blow to a nest of vipers, who then turned on you. These people are trying to make life easier for us in whatever way they can and we are very grateful to them for that We are grateful to all those who, free themselves, speak out in our support. There are a vast number, I know. I know that a huge number of Orthodox people are standing up for us. They are praying for us outside the courtroom, for the members of Pussy Riot who are incarcerated. Weve seen the little booklets Orthodox people are handing out with prayers for those in prison. This shows that there isnt a unified social group of Orthodox believers as the prosecution is endeavouring to say. No such thing exists. More and more believers are starting to defend Pussy Riot. They dont think what we did deserves even five months in detention, much less the three years in prison the prosecutor would like. And every day, more and more people realize that if this political system has ganged up to this extent against three girls for a 30-second performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, it means the system is afraid of the truth and afraid of our sincerity and directness. We havent dissembled, not for a second, not for a minute during this trial, but the other side is dissembling too much and people can sense it. People can sense the truth. Truth really does have some kind of ontological, existential superiority over lies and this is written in the Bible, in the Old Testament in particular. In the end, the ways of truth always triumph over the ways of wickedness, guile and lies. And with each day that passes, the ways of truth are more and more triumphant even though we are still behind bars and are likely to be here a lot longer yet. Madonna performed yesterday (7 August). She appeared with Pussy Riot written on her back. More and more people can see that we are being held here unlawfully and on a completely false chargeIm overwhelmed by this. I am overwhelmed that truth really does triumph over lies even though physically we are here in a cage. We are freer than the people sitting opposite us for the prosecution because we can say everything we like, and we do, but those people sitting there say only what political censorship allows them to say. They cant speak words like punk prayer or Virgin Mary, Banish Putin! They cant say the lines from our punk prayer that have to do with the political system. Perhaps they think it wouldnt be a bad thing to send us to jail because we are

rising up against Putin and his system as well but they cant say so because thats not allowed either. Their mouths are sewn shut. Unfortunately, they are mere puppets. I hope they realize this and also take the road to freedom, truth and sincerity because these are superior to stasis, contrived decency and hypocrisy. Stasis and the search for truth are always in opposition to one another and, in this case, at this trial, we can see people who are trying to find the truth and people who are trying to enslave those who want to find the truth. Humans are beings who always make mistakes. They are not perfect. They strive for wisdom but never actually have it. Thats precisely why philosophy came into being, precisely because philosophers are people who love wisdom and strive for it, but never actually possess it, and it is what makes them act and think and, ultimately, to live the way they do. This is what made us go into the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, and I think that Christianity, as Ive understood it from studying the Old and New Testaments, supports the search for truth and a constant overcoming of the self, overcoming what you used to be. Christ didnt associate with prostitutes for nothing. He said, I help those who have gone astray and forgive them but for some reason I cant see any of that at our trial, which is taking place under the banner of Christianity. I think the prosecutor is defying Christianity. The lawyer wants nothing to do with the injured parties. Heres how I understand this: Two days ago, Lawyer Taratukhin made a speech in which he wanted everyone to understand that he had no sympathy with the people he is representing. This means hes not ethically comfortable representing people who want to send the three members of Pussy Riot to jail. Why they want to do this, I dont know. Perhaps it is their right. The lawyer was embarrassed, the shouts of Shame! Executioners! had got to him, which goes to show that truth and goodness always triumph over lies and evil. I think some higher powers are guiding the speeches of the lawyers for the other side when, time after time, they make mistakes in what they say and call us the injured parties. Almost all the lawyers are doing it, including Lawyer Pavlova who is very negatively disposed towards us. Nevertheless, some higher powers are causing her to say the injured parties about us rather than the people shes defending. I wouldnt give people labels. I dont think there are winners or losers here, injured parties or accused. We just need to make contact, to establish a dialogue and a joint search for truth, to seek wisdom together, to be philosophers together, rather than stigmatizing and labelling people. This is one of the worst things people can do and Christ condemned it.

We have been subjected to abuse during this trial. Who would have thought that a person and the state system he controls would be repeatedly capable of entirely wanton evil? Who would have thought that history and Stalins fairly recent Great Terror, in particular, not so very long ago, would not be taught at all? It makes you want to weep to see how the methods of the medieval inquisition are brought out by the law-enforcement and judicial system of the Russian Federation, which is our country. Since the time of our arrest, however, we can no longer weep. Weve forgotten how to cry. At our punk concerts we used to shout as best we could about the iniquities of the authorities and now weve been robbed of our voice. This whole trial refuses to hear us and I mean hear us, which involves understanding and, moreover, thinking. I think every individual wants to attain wisdom, to be a philosopher, not just people who happen to have studied philosophy. Thats nothing. Formal education is nothing in itself and Lawyer Pavlova is constantly accusing us of not being sufficiently well-educated. I think though that the most important thing is the desire to know and to understand, and thats something people can do for themselves outside of educational establishments, and the trappings of academic degrees dont mean anything in this instance. Someone can have a vast fund of knowledge and for all that not be human. Pythagoras said that the learning of many things does not teach understanding. Unfortunately, thats something we are forced to observe here. Its just

a stage setting and bits of the natural world, bodies brought into the courtroom. If, after many days of asking, talking and doing battle our petitions are examined, they are inevitably rejected. The court, on the other handand unfortunately for us and for our countrylistens to the prosecutor who repeatedly distorts our comments and statements with impunity in a bid to neutralize them. There is no attempt to conceal this breach in an adversarial system. They even seem to be showing it off. On 30thJuly, the first day of the trial, we presented our response to the accusations. Prior to that we were in prison, in confinement. We cant do anything there. We cant make statements. We cant make films. We dont have the internet in there. We cant even give our lawyer a bit of paper because thats banned too. Our first chance to speak came on 30th July. The document wed written was read out by defence lawyer Volkova because the court refused outright to let the defendants speak. We called for contact and dialogue rather than conflict and opposition. We reached out a hand to those who, for some reason, assume we are their enemies. In response they laughed at us and spat in our outstretched hands. Youre disingenuous, they told us. But they neednt have bothered. Dont judge others by your own standards. We were always sincere in what we said, saying exactly what we thought, out of childish navety, sure, but we dont regret anything we said, even on that day. We are reviled but we do not intend to speak evil in return. We are in desperate straits but do not despair. We are persecuted but not forsaken. Its easy to humiliate and crush people who are open, but when I am weak, then I am strong. Listen to us rather than to Arkady Mamontov talking about us. Dont twist and distort everything we say. Let us enter into dialogue and contact with the country, which is ours too, not just Putins and the Patriarchs. Like Solzhenitsyn, I believe that in the end, words will crush concrete. Solzhenitsyn wrote, the word is more sincere than concrete, so words are not trifles. Once noble people mobilize, their words will crush concrete. Katya, Masha and I are in jail but I dont consider that weve been defeated. Just as the dissidents werent defeated. When they disappeared into psychiatric hospitals and prisons, they passed judgement on the country. The eras art of creating an image knew no winners or losers. The Oberiu poets remained artists to the very end, something impossible to explain or understand since they were purged in 1937. Vvedensky wrote: We like what cant be understood, What cant be explained is our friend. According to the official report, Aleksandr Vvedensky died on 20 December 1941. We dont know the cause, whether it was dysentery in the train after his arrest or a bullet from a guard. It was somewhere on the railway line between Voronezh and Kazan. Pussy Riot are Vvedenskys disciples and his heirs. His principle of bad rhythm is our own. He wrote: It happens that two rhythms will come into your head, a good one and a bad one and I choose the bad one. It will be the right one. What cant be explained is our friend. The elitist, sophisticated occupations of the Oberiu poets, their search for meaning at the edge of sense was ultimately realized at the cost of their lives, swept away in the senseless Great Terror thats impossible to explain. At the cost of their own lives, the Oberiu poets unintentionally demonstrated that the feeling of meaninglessness and alogism, like a pain in the backside, was correct, but at the same time led art into the realm of history. The cost of taking part in creating history is always

staggeringly high for people. But that taking part is the very spice of human life. Being poor while bestowing riches on many, having nothing but possessing everything. It is believed that the Oberiu dissidents are dead, but they live on. They are persecuted but they do not die. Do you remember why the young Dostoyevsky was given the death sentence? All he had done was to spend all his time with Socialistsand at the Friday meetings of a friendly circle of free thinkers at Petrushevskys, he became acquainted with Charles Fourier and George Sand. At one of the last meetings, he read out Gogols letter to Belinsky, which was packed, according to the court, and, please note, with childish utterances against the Orthodox Church and the supreme authorities. After all his preparations for the death penalty and ten dreadful, impossibly frightening minutes waiting to die, as Dostoyevsky himself put it, the announcement came that his sentence had been commuted to four years hard labour followed by military service. Socrates was accused of corrupting youth through his philosophical discourses and of not recognizing the gods of Athens. Socrates had a connection to a divine inner voice and was by no means a theomachist, something he often said himself. What did that matter, however, when he had angered the city with his critical, dialectical and unprejudiced thinking? Socrates was sentenced to death and, refusing to run away, although he was given that option, he drank down a cup of poison in cold blood, hemlock. Have you forgotten the circumstances under which Stephen, follower of the Apostles, ended his earthly life? Then they secretly induced men to say, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God. And they stirred up the people, the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and dragged him away, and brought him before the Council. And they put forward false witnesses who said, This man incessantly speaks against this holy place, and the Law. He was found guilty and stoned to death. And I hope everyone remembers what the Jews said to Jesus: Were stoning you not for any good work, but for blasphemy. And finally it would be well worth remembering this description of Christ: He is possessed of a demon and out of his mind. I believe that if leaders, tsars, elders, presidents and prime ministers, the people and the judges really understood what I desire mercy not sacrifice meant, they would not condemn the innocent. Our leaders are currently in a hurry only to condemn and not at all to show mercy. Incidentally, we thank Dmitry Anatolievich Medvedev for his latest wonderful aphorism. If Medvedev gave his presidency the slogan: Freedom is better than non-freedom, then, thanks to Medvedevs felicitous saying, Putins third term has a good chance of being known by a new aphorism: Prison is better than stoning. I would like you to think carefully about the following reflection by Montaigne from his Essays written in the 16th century. He wrote: You are holding your opinions in too high a

regard if you burn people alive for them. Is it worth accusing people and putting them in jail on the basis of totally unfounded conjectures by the prosecution? Since in actual fact we never were, and are not, motivated by religious hatred and hostility, there is nothing left for our accusers to do other than to draw on the aid of false witnesses. One of them, Motilda Ivashchenko, was ashamed and didnt show up in court. That left the false witness of the expert examination by [Vsevolod] Troitsky, [Igor] Ponkin and Mrs [Vera] Abramenkova. And there is no evidence of any hatred or enmity on our part other than this expert examination. For this reason, if it is honourable and just, the court must rule the evidence inadmissible because it is not a strictly scientific or objective text but a filthy, lying bit of paper from the medieval days of the inquisition. There is no other evidence that remotely hints at a motive. The prosecution is reluctant to produce excerpts from the texts of Pussy Riot interviews because they are primary evidence of this lack of motive. For the umpteenth time, I will quote this excerpt. I think its important. It was from an interview with Russky Reporter, given the day after the concert at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour: Our attitude toward religion, and toward Orthodoxy in particular, is one of respect, and for this very reason we are distressed that the great and luminous Christian philosophy is being used so shabbily. We are very angry that something beautiful is being spoiled. It still makes us angry and we find it very painful to watch.

The lack on our part of any show of hatred or enmity has been attested by all the witnesses examined by the defence. And by the evidence of our characters. In addition to all the other character statements, Id like you to consider the findings of the psychiatric and psychological tests the investigator ordered me to undergo in detention. The experts findings were as follows: the values to which I am committed in my life are justice, mutual respect, humanity, equality and freedom. Thats what the expert said, someone who doesnt know me and Investigator Ranchenko would probably have very much liked him to write something different. It would appear, however, that there are more people who live and value the truth, and the Bibles right about that.

Finally, Id like to quote a Pussy Riot song because, strange as it may seem, all our songs have turned out to be prophetic, including the one that says: The KGB chief, their number one saint, will escort protestors off to jailthats us. What Id like to quote now, however, is the next line: Open the doors, off with the military insignia, join us in a taste of freedom. (Agnes Parker: translation/Eja Werner: coordination) Editors Note. Wed like to express our gratitude to the translators for sending this to us and permission to reprint it here.

Maria Alyokhina This trial is highly typical and speaks volumes. The current government will have occasion to feel shame and embarrassment because of it for a long time to come. At each stage it has embodied a travesty of justice. As it turned out, our performance, at first a small and somewhat absurd act, snowballed into an enormous catastrophe. This would obviously not happen in a healthy society. Russia, as a state, has long resembled an organism sick to the core. And the sickness explodes out into the open when you rub up against its inflamed abscesses. At first and for a long time this sickness gets hushed up in public, but eventually it always finds resolution through dialogue. And lookthis is the kind of dialogue that our government is capable of. This trial is not only a malignant and grotesque mask, it is the face of the governments dialogue with the people of our country. To prompt discussion about a problem on the societal level, you often need the right conditionsan impetus. And it is interesting that our situation was depersonalized from the start. This is because when we talk about Putin, we have in mind first and foremost not Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin but Putin the system that he himself createdthe power vertical, where all control is carried out effectively by one person. And that power vertical is uninterested, completely uninterested, in the opinion of the masses. And what worries me most of all is that the opinion of the younger generations is not taken into consideration. We believe that the ineffectiveness of this administration is evident in practically everything. And right here, in this closing statement, I would like to describe my firsthand experience of running afoul of this system. Our schooling, which is where the personality begins to form in a social context, effectively ignores any particularities of the individual. There is no individual approach, no study of culture, of philosophy, of basic knowledge about civic society. Officially, these subjects do exist, but they are still taught according to the Soviet model. And as a result, we see the marginalization of contemporary art in the public consciousness, a lack of motivation for philosophical thought, and gender stereotyping. The concept of the human being as a citizen gets swept away into a distant corner. Todays educational institutions teach people, from childhood, to live as automatons. Not to pose the crucial questions consistent with their age. They inculcate cruelty and intolerance of nonconformity. Beginning in childhood, we forget our freedom. I have personal experience with psychiatric clinics for minors. And I can say with conviction that any teenager who shows any signs of active nonconformity can end up in such a place. A certain percentage of the kids there are from orphanages.

In our country, its considered entirely normal to commit a child who has tried to escape from an orphanage to a psychiatric clinic. And they treat them using extremely powerful sedatives like Aminazin, which was also used to subdue Soviet dissidents in the 70s. This is especially traumatizing given the overall punitive tendency and the absence of any real psychological assistance. All interactions are based on the exploitation of the childrens feelings of fear and forced submission. And as a result, their own cruelty increases many times over. Many children there are illiterate, but no one makes any effort to battle thisto the contrary, every last drop of motivation for personal development is discouraged. The individual closes off entirely and loses faith in the world. I would like to note that this method of personal development clearly impedes the awakening of both inner and religious freedoms, unfortunately, on a mass scale. The consequence of the process I have just described is ontological humility, existential humility, socialization. To me, this transition, or rupture, is noteworthy in that, if approached from the point of view of Christian culture, we see that meanings and symbols are being replaced by those that are diametrically opposed to them. Thus one of the most important Christian concepts, Humility, is now commonly understood not as a path towards the perception, fortification, and ultimate liberation of Man, but on the contrary as an instrument for his enslavement. To quote [Russian philosopher] Nikolai Berdyaev, one could say that the ontology of humility is the ontology of the slaves of God, and not the sons of God. When I was involved with organizing the ecological movement, I became fundamentally convinced of the priority of inner freedom as the foundation for taking action. As well as the importance, the direct importance, of taking action as such. To this day I find it astonishing that, in our country, we need the support of several thousands of individuals in order to put an end to the despotism of one or a handful of bureaucrats. I would like to note that our trial stands as a very eloquent confirmation of the fact that we need the support of thousands of individuals from all over the world in order to prove the obvious: that the three of us are not guilty. We are not guilty; the whole world says so. The whole world says it at concerts, the whole world says it on the internet, the whole world says it in the press. They say it in Parliament. The Prime Minister of England greets our President not with words about the Olympics, but with the question, Why are three innocent women sitting in prison? Its shameful. But I find it even more astonishing that people dont believe that they can have any influence on the regime. During the pickets and demonstrations [of the winter and spring], back when I was collecting signatures and organizing petitions, many people would ask meand ask me with sincere bewildermentwhy in the world they should care about, what business could they possibly have, with that little patch of forest in the Krasnodar regioneven though it is perhaps unique in Russia, perhaps primeval? Why should they care if the wife of our Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev wants to build an official residence there and destroy the only juniper preserve

in Russia? These people . . . this is yet another confirmation that people in our country have lost the sense that this country belongs to us, its citizens. They no longer have a sense of themselves as citizens. They have a sense of themselves simply as the automated masses. They dont feel that the forest belongs to them, even the forest located right next to their houses. I doubt they even feel a sense of ownership over their own houses. Because if someone were to drive up to their porch with a bulldozer and tell them that they need to evacuate, that, Excuse us, were going raze your house to make room for a bureaucrats residence, these people would obediently collect their belongings, collect their bags, and go out on the street. And then stay there precisely until the regime tells them what they should do next. They are completely shapeless, it is very sad. Having spent almost half a year in jail, I have come to understand that prison is just Russia in miniature. One could also begin with the system of governance. This is that very same power vertical, in which every decision takes place solely through the direct intervention of the man in charge. There is absolutely no horizontal delegation of duties, which would make everyones lives noticeably easier. And there is a lack of individual initiative. Denunciation thrives along with mutual suspicion. In jail, as in our country as a whole, everything is designed to strip man of his individuality, to identify him only with his function, whether that function is that of a worker or a prisoner. The strict framework of the daily schedule in prison (you get used to it quickly) resembles the framework of daily life that everyone is born into. In this framework, people begin to place high value on meaningless trifles. In prison these trifles are things like a tablecloth or plastic dishes that can only be procured with the personal permission of the head warden. Outside prison, accordingly, you have social status, which people also value a great deal. This has always been surprising to me. Another element [of this process] is becoming aware of this government functioning as a performance, a play. That in reality turns into chaos. The surface-level organization of the regime reveals the disorganization and inefficiency of most of its activities. And its obvious that this doesnt lead to any real governance. On the contrary, people start to feel an ever-stronger sense of being lostincluding in time and space. In jail and all over the country, people dont know where to turn with this or that question. Thats why they turn to the boss of the jail. And outside the prison, correspondingly, they go to Putin, the top boss. Expressing in a text a collective image of the system that . . . well, in general, I could say that we arent against . . . that we are against the Putin-engendered chaos, which can only superficially be called a government. Expressing a collective image of the system, in which, in our opinion, practically all the institutions are undergoing a kind of mutation, while still appearing nominally intact. And in which the civil society so dear to us is being destroyed. We are not making direct quotations in our texts; we only take the form of a direct quotation as an artistic formula. The only thing thats the same is our motivation. Our motivation is the same motiviation that goes with the use of a direct quotation. This motivation is best expressed in the Gospels: For everyone who

asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. [Matthew 7:8] Iall of ussincerely believe that for us the door will be opened. But alas, for now the only thing that has happened is that weve been locked up in prison. It is very strange that in their reaction to our actions, the authorities completely disregard the historical experience of dissent. [H]ow unfortunate is the country where simple honesty is understood, in the best case, as heroism. And in the worst case as a mental disorder, the dissident [Vladimir] Bukovsky wrote in the 1970s. And even though it hasnt been very long, now people are acting as if there was never any Great Terror nor any attempts to resist it. I believe that we are being accused by people without memory. Many of them have said, He is possessed by a demon and insane. Why do you listen to Him? These words belong to the Jews who accused Jesus Christ of blasphemy. They said, We are . . . stoning you . . . for blasphemy. [John 10:33] Interestingly enough, it is precisely this verse that the Russian Orthodox Church uses to express its opinion about blasphemy. This view is certified on paper, its attached to our criminal file. Expressing this opinion, the Russian Orthodox Church refers to the Gospels as static religious truth. The Gospels are no longer understood as revelation, which they have been from the very beginning, but rather as a monolithic chunk that can be disassembled into quotations to be shoved in wherever necessary in any of its documents, for any of their purposes. The Russian Orthodox Church did not even bother to look up the context in which blasphemy is mentioned herethat in this case, the word applies to Jesus Christ himself. I think that religious truth should not be static, that it is essential to understand the instances and paths of spiritual development, the trials of a human being, his duplicity, his splintering. That for ones self to form it is essential to experience these things. That you have to experience all these things in order to develop as a person. That religious truth is a process and not a finished product that can be shoved wherever and whenever. And all of these things Ive been talking about, all of these processesthey acquire meaning in art and in philosophy. Including contemporary art. An artistic situation can and, in my opinion, must contain its own internal conflict. And what really irritates me is how the prosecution uses the words so-called in reference to contemporary art. I would like to point out that very similar methods were used during the trial of the poet [Joseph] Brodsky. His poems were defined as so-called poems; the witnesses for the prosecution hadnt actually read themjust as a number of the witnesses in our case didnt see the performance itself and only watched the clip online. Our apologies, it seems, are also being defined by the collective prosecuting body as so-called apologies. Even though this is offensive. And I am overwhelmed with moral injury and psychological trauma. Because our apologies were sincere. I am sorry that so many words have been uttered and you all still havent understood this. Or it is calculated deviousness when you talk about our apologies as insincere. I dont know what you still need to hear from us. But for me this trial is a so-called trial. And I am not afraid of you. I am not afraid of falsehood and fictitiousness, of sloppily disguised deception, in the verdict of the so-called court.

Because all you can deprive me of is so-called freedom. This is the only kind that exists in Russia. But nobody can take away my inner freedom. It lives in the word, it will go on living thanks to openness [glasnost], when this will be read and heard by thousands of people. This freedom goes on living with every person who is not indifferent, who hears us in this country. With everyone who found shards of the trial in themselves, like in previous times they found them in Franz Kafka and Guy Debord. I believe that I have honesty and openness, I thirst for the truth; and these things will make all of us just a little bit more free. We will see this yet. Translated by Marijeta Bozovic, Maksim Hanukai, and Sasha Senderovich