The Times Magazine 47and Amnesty International designating them
“prisoners of conscience”, Tolokonnikova and
a colleague, Masha Alekhina, received two-
year sentences for “hooliganism motivated by
religious hatred”.
She was sent to Penal Colony No 14 in
Mordovia in central Russia. The inmates
were “speechless slaves” forced to sew police
uniforms for 16 hours a day, she complained
in an open letter. They received inhuman
punishments. The food and hygiene were
unspeakable. Any prisoner who dared
complain triggered collective sanctions.
Tolokonnikova eventually went on
hunger strike. After five days she was
transferred to the colony’s hospital, and
then to another prison in Siberia. She and
Alekhina were released two months early
to improve Russia’s image before the 2014
Winter Olympics in Sochi.
“It was a degrading and humiliating
experience, and a great trauma for everyone
who went through it,” she says. But
imprisonment did not break her spirit.
“If you have to suffer [for your activism]
it’s unfortunate, but we realised we had to
go through it.”
She was barred from completing her
university degree, but continued her activism.She and Alekhina co-founded MediaZona,
which has since become one of Russia’s
leading independent media sites. She went
to the Sochi Olympics to stage a protest
entitled “Putin Will Teach You to Love the
Motherland” and was beaten, pepper-sprayed
and arrested “multiple times a day”.
In 2018, her husband, from whom she is
now separated, was poisoned with a nerve
agent weeks after he and three Pussy Riot
members wearing police uniforms invaded the
pitch during the World Cup final in Moscow.
He was flown comatose to Berlin where
Tolokonnikova met him.
“He had just regained consciousness, but
he didn’t make any sense” she recalls. “He
couldn’t recognise me. It was really scary
because I knew him as a vital, energetic, really
emotional and strong human being, but he
couldn’t even move his hands. When I talked
about our daughter he didn’t know who she
was.” He recovered but “for two weeks, we
didn’t know if the damage to his brain was
reversible or not”.
Last February, she rented a St Petersburg
studio to film a video with 200 activists for
Rage, her new single. They had barely started
before the police cut off the heating and
electricity in the middle of a Russian winter,
accused Tolokonnikova of promoting gay
propaganda, and detained her for five hours.
“With our prison sentence we ended
up on the black list for all law enforcement
agencies in Russia so our every step is followed
closely,” she says. “Sometimes they don’t evenOf course she was afraid, Tolokonnikova
says, but “really effective activists are those
who control their fear. That’s the daily job of
lots of activists who are fighting one of the
most oppressive regimes on this planet.”
After Voina split, Tolokonnikova and other
former members established Pussy Riot, a
punk rock and performance art collective, to
promote feminism and LGBT rights as well
as fighting Putin.
The guerilla stunts continued. Wearing
neon clothes and brightly coloured balaclavas
they scaled tram roofs and elevated spots in
subway stations to play their protest music.
After a crackdown on demonstrators in
2011 they seized a platform in Red Square and
performed a song entitled Putin Zassa (Putin
Has Pissed Himself). They sang on a garage
roof next to the Moscow Detention Centre
for hundreds of detained activists.
Then came the Punk Prayer protest in
Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
Tolokonnikova and four other women
cavorted around the altar singing, “Virgin
Mary, Mother of God, chase Putin out.” The
Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church
accused them of sacrilege. Putin said they
had “undermined the moral foundations”
of Russia. Despite an international uproar,
SHE’S TRYING TO STOP NAVALNY FROM BEING KILLED
IN PRISON. ‘WE KNOW THAT’S A POSSIBLE SCENARIO’
Tolokonnikova, London,
September 2017. Right,
from top: Tolokonnikova
attending a court hearing
in August 2012; on trial
with fellow Pussy Riot
activists Yekaterina
Samutsevich, left, and
Maria Alyokhina