The Women have all made closing statementsand have shown great courage. It is clear that they are very political and represent an important phase int he struggle for democracy, socialism and womens rights in Russia. One of them, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22 in her closing statement equated the whole trial with the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. She said the trial was "a political order for repression [that meets] the standards of Stalinist troikas," and predicted "the collapse of this political system"
Also she regularly wears a T-shirt emblazoned with the revolutionary words "No Pasaran". It was used by the Left during the Spanish Civil War and by British anti-fascists during the 1936 Battle of Cable Street and more recently against the English Defense League, as well as in Germany by left groups during anti-Nazi protests.
She also said: "Do you remember why the young Dostoyevsky was given the death sentence? All he had done was to spend all his time with Socialists—"
And on the Russian ruling class she adds, "the Russian state system is dominated by rigidity, closedness and caste. Аnd the policies pursued serve only narrow corporate interests to the extent that even the air of Russia makes us ill."
On the State: "the most important political institutions are the disciplinary structures of the state - the 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 behavior.
"Who would have thought that history and Stalin’s Great Terror, in particular, not so very long ago, would not be taught at all?"
Katya, Masha and I are in jail but I don’t consider that we’ve been defeated. Just as the dissidents weren’t defeated. When they disappeared into psychiatric hospitals and prisons, they passed judgement on the country. The era’s 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.
Pussy Riot are Vvedensky’s disciples and his heirs......the Oberiu poets, their search for meaning on the edge of sense was ultimately realized at the cost of their lives, swept away in the senseless Great Terror that’s impossible to explain. At the cost of their own lives, the Oberiu poets unintentionally demonstrated that the feeling of meaninglessness and analogy, 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."
Other statements are here
Ideas that correspond to reality will find their way to the surface. I see that Pussy Riot refer to the Stalinist terror. Hundreds of millions of people misled by the mass Stalinist regimes and parties supported the Stalinist terror and counter revolution. Trotsky was slandered as a counter revolutionary. Then he and his family and his supporters were slaughtered by the Stalinist murderers. But now the healthiest of the new forces in Russia are resurrecting his name and his ideas. These heroic young women mention artists and writers who were murdered by the Stalinist terror. Lenin and Trotsky were always seeking to keep abreast of the most recent and progressive developments in art and literature. When Trotsky was murdered by the Stalinist assassin he had a book of the poems of Langston Hughes on his desk.
These women are courageous women who deserve our support. We must ensure that Putin, the Russian state and the former KGB thugs that run it and were given the property of the former Soviet people by Gorbachev do not imprison these women who represent a positive and real future for Russian workers and workers throughout the world. We urge our readers to send messages of support and if you are in a Union urge your Union to do so. It would be important for organizations to send messages to Russian embassies demanding their release.
You can send a letter of protest here http://bit.ly/IFjrWu
You can sign a petition here http://bit.ly/OpYXFJ
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