Pussy Riot case puts spotlight on power of church and state

Many see the singers’ trial as muscle-flexing by the government and church, writes JENNIFER RANKINin Moscow

INSIDE CHRIST the Saviour Cathedral, queues are forming at the icons as people wait to pray. Women in headscarves light spindle-thin candles. A man wearing jeans and T-shirt crosses himself repeatedly. Tourists wander, staring up at the gilt-laden, frescoed walls. The sound of shuffling feet and whispered voices is broken only by a hushed order, “no photography!”

This Moscow landmark was bustling on a recent Sunday, but it was almost empty on February 21st when a group of Pussy Riot activists entered, pulled off their winter coats, put on bright balaclavas and climbed up to the altar where they shouted out a protest song against Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Tomorrow a court will pronounce its verdict on Maria Alyokhina (24), Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (22) and Yekaterina Samutsevich (30).

The Russian prosecutor, who said the women had set themselves against the Christian Orthodox world, wants them jailed for three years.

Religious leaders have made no appeals for clemency and have spoken of a church “under attack” from “anti-Russian forces”.

Last week black-clad members of the Union of Orthodox Banner Bearers, a group of religious nationalists, burned Madonna posters outside the cathedral, after the singer gave her support to the group.

Yet many Orthodox believers are uneasy about the state’s pursuit of the women.

They include Nikolai Polozov, a lawyer defending Pussy Riot. “Without a doubt, believers are offended. I am also offended, but this was no crime,” he told the court last week.

Outside the cathedral, several people agree. “This should not have been a criminal matter,” said Dmitry (23), a bearded young man, speaking in front of the imposing marble building. “A fine would be enough, or if they had to clean the floors in the church for example, I think that would be appropriate.”

Others do not want to pass judgment. “What they did in this sacred place, in this sacred cathedral, I simply don’t have enough words to express myself, it was blasphemy,” says Valentina (62), a softly spoken woman wearing a white headscarf and a long skirt.

But she would not be drawn on sending them to jail. “We religious people always say that we must not be the judges. God will judge us,” she said, gesturing upwards.

Andrey Zubov, a historian at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, said the women had grossly insulted believers, but says their prosecution was a “political order”.

This trial is an “an angry reaction” from authorities unsettled by mass demonstrations against electoral fraud that started after last December’s parliamentary elections, he said.

He points out that if the women had been tried in a tsarist-era court 100 years ago, the harshest penalty would be six months in jail.

Prof Zubov thinks the authorities are playing a political game and trying to separate Orthodox believers from the protest movement. “The authorities are trying to show believers, ‘they are defending us, everything will be ok’.”

It is a game the church hierarchy seems ready to play. Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has previously counselled the faithful not to go to political demonstrations and described the Putin era as “a miracle of God”.

The case has thrown the spotlight on the Russian Orthodox Church, which is in the ascendant after decades of persecution under atheist Communists.

“Under Putin the Russian Orthodox Church has returned to the previously strong position it played before the revolution,” says Natalia Izergina, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She thinks the church authorities are helping the government manage public discontent. “By increasing the role of Christian values: modesty, obedience, ‘don’t go to demonstrations, just pray’, this is increasing the control of the authorities over the population.”