Pussy Riot disowns Nadia and Maria!

By Stephen Morgan in Brussels

Pussy Riot have disowned their two formerly imprisoned comrades, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda (Nadia) Tolokonnikova in an open letter which makes it clear that the group can no longer be associated with them and no longer considers them to be members.

While congratulating them on their new work on prisoners' rights, the 6 members of the original group, Garadja, Fara, Shaiba, Cat, Seraphima and Schumacher, issued a public statement criticizing Maria and Nadia for having forsaken the "aspirations and ideals of our group" and asking that the two should no longer be referred to as members of Pussy Riot. The split appears to be both over ideology and tactics.

In the statement the groups says that Nadia and Maria are no longer pursuing the band's original aims of “feminism, separatist resistance, fight against authoritarianism and personality cult, all of which,” they add, “was the cause for their unjust punishment." Pussy Riot added that the remaining members are still committed to a "leftist anti-capitalist ideology" and criticize their former comrades for having become "institutionalised advocates of prisoners' rights."

I must say I wholeheartedly agree with what the band is saying. As someone who has continuously campaigned for their release over the last 16 months, the steps Nadia and Maria have taken and some of the political comments they have made, have been disheartening and downright disturbing.

Of course, I wouldn't expect them to immediately repeat an action like the Cathedral protest and get themselves sent back to prison, but I did hope that they would stay involved in the same radical politics they espoused before. Of course, their new work over prisoner rights is very important, but one wonders if this couldn't have been combined with more general activities on injustice over LGBTQI rights, womens issues, the rampant racism which infects Russia and the growing attacks on working class people, as a result of the deepening crisis of Russian capitalism.

That isn't to say that Nadia and Maria aren't responding to such things in interviews, but their orientation no longer seems to be inspired by their previously aggressive and rebellious opposition to all aspects of Russia's reactionary culture and mores. Reforming the prison system is great, but what happened to revolution?

My first misgivings about the direction they were taking arose when they issued a statement saying they were prepared to cooperate on a practical and “ideological” level with the recently released billionaire oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky - once the richest man in Russia and the virtual Don of the Mafia capitalists who plundered the country's assets to make fortunes from the suffering of ordinary people.

Apparently they justified this by saying the issue of prisoners' rights transcended questions of class. Unfortunately, the majority of prisoners in Russia come from the most downtrodden layers of the working class who have been forced into crime by a capitalist system which cannot meet their basic needs. Moreover, in general, the courts always act in the interests of the ruling class in any society. And, unlike members of the ruling elite and their children, ordinary people get far harsher sentences and have no chance of influencing or bribing the courts into annulling any of their convictions.

It is the likes of Khodorkovsky who are ultimately responsible for the imprisonment of so many people. His own imprisonment was a question of class, in as much that it resulted from a struggle within the ruling class itself over which group of exploiters should have the power to enrich themselves most.

It is indeed sad to see these once balaclavered revolutionaries reduced to "institutionalised advocates” as Pussy Riot calls them. Instead of the clandestine photos of once proud street-fighters, we now see pictures of them made-up like models, promoting designer clothes and acting like globe-trotting, celebrities bathing in the limelight of Hollywood-style stardom.

One now has to even ask oneself, did Putin win? Criticism of prison conditions is a crucial issue, but, on its own, it isn't something which Putin is going to loose sleep over. Perhaps, he even gave a sigh of relief, when the people, who could do more than any others in the international spotlight to expose the rottenness of his regime, seem to have taken their eyes off the gun-sights.

When the third member of the original trio, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was released early during the trial, many unjust insinuations of collaboration were circulated. But at least Katie remained firm in her convictions and used every opportunity to radically attack Putin's system as a whole and, indeed, risked further imprisonment for it while on probation.

Unfortunately, Pussy Riot says that Nadia and Maria “have refused any contact with us.” Hopefully, there is more confusion and lack of communication involved in all this than is presently being reported. At a press conference yesterday, Nadia and Maria said they would perform again, but exactly what they meant by this wasn't clear.

Nadia once described their trial as “a trial of the entire political system of the Russian Federation,” while Maria described prison as “just Russia in miniature.” I think most people would like to see them return to the big picture. At the same, I'm sure that many of us would also like to congratulate the other members of Pussy Riot for standing up and defending the original ideals and aims of the group. Long Live Pussy Riot!