Revolting Women, slight return: Russia’s Pussy Riot

They decline to reveal the smallest details, aiming to maintain total secrecy. They will say only that most of the band members met at the small protests held by Russia’s once-feeble opposition, from monthly illegal demonstrations calling for the right to assembly to banned gay pride marches. Their average age is 25. They are hardcore feminists. Most studied the humanities in university. They won’t detail their day jobs.
– Guardian, 2nd February 2012

Pussy Riot, like the Sex Pistols, have a name designed to make headlines, and a bit more political substance to back up the sensationalism. Formed in Moscow last September, this offshoot of Russia’s complex and fractured political scene has come to prominence in the UK media in the context of protests against political corruption which have been gaining in volume and intensity after parliamentary elections last December. In mid-January, one of the collective’s impromptu guerrilla gigs, taking place on Red Square opposite the Kremlin, ended with its members detained by police.

Laura Barton in the Guardian, picking up on the band’s citing of Bikini Kill as an inspiration, offers a slightly short-sighted view of 90s Riot Grrrl as an antecedent for the expression of ‘an alternative female voice’. While the group clearly do reference Riot Grrrl’s ‘tone of wild irreverence’, it also makes sense to consider Pussy Riot in the context of the former Soviet Union’s long and fascinating history of political protest coalescing around avant garde art and music, especially punk. Adam Curtis’ recent blog is an interesting attempt to make sense of this sort of determinedly oppositional culture which has been notable by its relative absence from the UK’s current wave of socio-political protest. Similarly, the clash of sartorial signifiers which Pussy Riot provide by combining miniskirts and stockings with ski-masks and balaclavas could be a legacy of Riot Grrl too, but as a practical measure it has as much in common with other Anonymous-style contemporary protest movements, not to mention the general history of masking and disguise in protest.

Russia does have a long tradition of women in protest, notably the 1917 revolution in which women played a prominent part, encouraged by the intersection of socialism with many of the goals of women’s liberation. Pussy Riot cite this ‘deep tradition… of gender and revolution – we’ve had amazing women revolutionaries.’ They add that ‘the revolution should be done by women… For now, they don’t beat or jail us as much’. This assertion ties in with historical debates on the ability of women to take part in protest or civil disobedience with a greater degree of impunity than men – an ideal which isn’t always borne out by the treatment of female protesters.

Contemporary Russian politics – like any – are not a straightforward matter, and the extent of Pussy Riot’s relevance and representativeness remains to be seen. But in a context where growing and disparate opposition groups are encountering heavy and often violent repression across the world, the ways in which women participate in protest, and the styles of self-expression they employ, are always worth noting.