“They don’t let you count sheep at a penal colony,” punk collective Pussy Riot co-founder Maria “Masha” Alyokhina tells me in the backroom of a dive bar. It’s a drafty, DIY music venue with neon red lights. The floor is slippery from lager and wet boots. Photography is forbidden and not all the regulars own a passport. There are truly no airs or graces about the place.
It seems inconceivable for this revolutionary – a woman famous for guerrilla gigs with names like “Putin’s Pissed Himself”, jailed for so-called hooliganism and still on Russia’s wanted list – to be hanging at my old local in London’s anarchistic Harringay Warehouse District. And yet it makes complete sense.
“I really did live through it. All of it,” Alyokhina says.
This is the face of a woman who was handed a shovel and spent two years digging holes at a forced labour camp. A rifle necklace from Kyiv swings from her neck. On each jacket sleeve a patch is sewn, gifted from loved ones fighting in Ukraine.
Pussy Riot were first shot to international acclaim with their viral 2012 video, “Punk Prayer”. In fluorescent dresses and balaclavas, the collective smuggled an electric guitar into a Moscow cathedral and let loose – the rest, as they say, is history. Alyokhina was imprisoned for two years on charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”. At the time, she was 25 – Putin said she should have been “at home doing the housework”. When the Russian government came under increased international pressure in the build-up to the Sochi Olympics two years later, Alyokhina was released.
She never wanted to exile herself from Moscow, but the city was like the belly of the beast. In 2022, she was placed under house arrest during a crackdown on anti-war protests. Astonishingly, she escaped disguised as a food courier and settled in Iceland. Now, she’s on tour promoting her second memoir, Political Girl, published in November.
“Don’t ask me where I live. Offer me a bed or sofa instead, that can be my address for a few days,” she says.
Between sound checks, Alyokhina joins me outside for a smoke and a swig of a Club-Mate. She’s so petite that the caffeinated drink bottle she drags around everywhere looks oversized. She might lead an “extremist” organisation, but she’s adorable. She still has her childhood teddies and even carried her toy owl in her Uber Eats-style backpack as she fled her country. Alyokhina asks the photographer to pause while she applies silver glitter to the eyelids of her companion, Eric – the long-haired drummer whose ambient music accompanies her readings.
At one point during the audience Q&A, a particularly sloshed and garrulous bloke pipes up and asks: “How do we know that Western media isn’t misportraying the situation, and that Ukraine isn’t actually full of Nazis?” An incredulous silence. Alyokhina shuts him down with absolute decorum then quotes a Russian media report that calls us “Gay Europe”.
The money fundraised from the event will go towards the legal team of Diana Loginova, an eighteen-year-old street musician who leads the St Petersburg street band Stoptime. In the same vein as Pussy Riot, Diana was jailed for singing anti-Kremlin songs that “discredited” the army. She fled Russia last month.
Alyokhina’s first memoir, 2017’s Riot Days, documented her trial and the broken prison system that has changed very little since the Soviet era. Russia’s penal colonies are deluged barracks struck by blizzards that reach -35C. For toilets, prisoners could choose from three holes in the floor.
Lesbian relationships, books, arguments and alliances forged by exchanging warm clothes kept inmates busy beyond the shovels and sewing machines. “Apart from my son, what I missed most was hot water,” Alyokhina tells me. This fact explains why they only bathed once a week. Now grown, her son received his Icelandic citizenship the same day as his Russian conscription letter.
When Alyokhina walked free, she wasted no time in donning the balaclava once more. Far from defeated, protesting is what makes this riot grrrl feel alive. So, to the Olympic stadium she went. There, she was beaten and pepper sprayed – this is the moment where Political Girl begins.
Among Pussy Riot’s recent releases is “Swan Lake” (2023). In the accompanying video, the band – in masks and white folkloric dresses – light a match on Ostankino Tower, a television and radio structure that disseminates state propaganda, “poison[ing] people’s hearts and brains with hatred.” The provocative video “Mama, Don’t Watch TV” (2022) features war footage, incendiary lyrics like “your death is no big deal, your family will be rewarded”, and a clip of a bandmate urinating on a portrait of Putin. For that performance, Alyokhina risks thirteen years in prison should she ever return to her motherland.
The COLD Magazine (CM): The colourful balaclavas and bright outfits from “Punk Prayer” have become a global symbol of resistance, with counterculture movements in other nations drawing inspiration from them. Where did this visual language come from?
Maria Alyokhina (MA): Putin is destroying everything bright. The life he has prepared for Russia is a grey uniform. So it was cool to counter this greyness with something bright and avant-garde. Some say our costumes are inspired by the paintings of Kazimir Malevich. I think so.
CM: You’ve written this memoir to spread your message. Are you still involved in music?
MA: I am a political artist and activist. For me, music is a tool for providing a message. And it is a powerful tool. For me, punk is the way of life, not a music genre. Over the past two years, we have produced two anti-war songs: “Mama, Don’t Watch TV” and “Swan Lake”. The former, we wrote immediately after leaving Russia. It is our protest against the monstrous war unleashed by Putin against the independent, proud country of Ukraine. It also became the basis for a new criminal case, where five Pussy Riot members – myself, Olya Borisova, Alina Petrova, Taso Pletner and Diana Burko – were sentenced in absentia to eight to 13 years in prison. I was given 13 years and 15 days. For all of us, appearing in Russia now will be tantamount to immediate imprisonment.
CM: When or where were you happiest?
MA: I was happy when Filipp was born after 19 hours of pain. I was happy when I saw that I won court against prison guards, I was happy when I was driving 200 km/h, I’m happy every time I see that my close people are not dead.
CM: What do you value most in a person? And what’s your favourite possession?
MA: What I value most in a person is a desire for justice, the ability for mercy and overcoming fear.
I was once asked during an interview to pick between family and homeland. This question broke my heart. I said I didn’t want to choose. In the end, my family, loved ones and friends chose for me – they helped me escape from a homeland where I now face thirteen years in prison, and where Russian soldiers are killing proud Ukrainians. When asked to choose between those I love and my country, I have to choose a third. Trinity is a blessing, as they say in Russia. I’ll choose something.
CM: You’ve been in and out of London promoting your book. How do you like the city?
MA:I adore London, but I don’t live here. I was so pleased to see people who came to listen to my reading of the book Political Girl, which just came out. This is my second book and I’m so glad we were able to put it together with Pussy Riot member Olga Borisova and the wonderful translator Emily Eccles. I’m also glad we were able to read it with Eric’s music. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the people who kept me safe during the month we lived in London.