"A punk-feminist collective, Pussy Riot is a band of political
rebel-artists who, faced with years in a Russian prison, turn out to be
courageous, self-possessed, and historically aware. And in their
testimony they have shown themselves to be defiantly intelligent, worthy
of the long tradition of Andrei Sinyavsky, Larisa Bogoraz, Joseph Brodsky, and so many other dissidents who stood in the dock and spoke for themselves and the cause of freedom.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a mother in her early twenties, and an artist
of fearless eloquence, thanked the group’s myriad supporters... those
abroad but especially those in Russia... and linked their cause to that
great tradition: to Socrates; to Dostoevsky and to Solzhenitsyn, who once wrote, as she quotes
him, “the word is more sincere than concrete, so words are not trifles.
Once noble people mobilize, their words will crush concrete.” Her
closing statement is a kind of instant classic in the anthology of
dissidence.
And that has been the Pussy Riot credo all along in court: the true
verdict will be a verdict on the regime, not them. The women of Pussy
Riot, like Sinyavsky and Brodsky before them, have spoken with the
confidence of free people who know that their words... not least their
closing statements—will outlive their persecutors, both in the courtroom
and the Kremlin."
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