Pussy Riot! by Pussy Riot

Author:Pussy Riot [Riot, Pussy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781558618336
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY

Closing Statement by Defense Attorney Nikolay Polozov

May it please the court, may it please the participants of the trial:

My colleagues have probably said it all. Let me add a few things. First of all, our defendants stand accused—I’m not talking about the formal charges, but speaking in general—of disorderly conduct and violating the rules observed in church. They are accused of perpetrating blasphemy and sacrilege, and although these words only partly come across in the indictment, everyone understands that the accusation pertains exclusively to them.

I would like to mention the so-called butterfly effect. Unfortunately, there are moments, when a point of no return is reached. Once the prosecution pursued a criminal procedure for an offense the defendants did not commit, we reached a point of no return, a butterfly effect.

Let’s go back a little. As our defendants have said, literally less than a year ago the group Pussy Riot was formed. The goal of this group was to bring across artistic forms of political protest to the broadest stratum of the public. They did this successfully. At first their fame was—let’s be honest—insignificant, with the exception of a narrow circle of sympathizers and followers of actionism in contemporary art who admired their creative work. But, thanks to television, thanks to the aid of mass media, thanks to the efforts of the government above all else, their activities became known to the entire world. There’s probably not a corner of the world that doesn’t know what the group Pussy Riot is.

The point of no return occurred at the moment when the decision was made to prosecute our defendants for the act, which, as my colleagues have rightfully discussed, was just a minor administrative offense. It’s true, the devout have been insulted. I, as a religious person, am insulted, although my opinion at this trial is not decisive. The performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was probably a bit too much, even from an artistic point of view. But it is not a criminal offense and it cannot be considered one in principle, because we have a constitution. And here I would like to turn to the Constitution.

My colleagues, the opposing side, have already brought this up. Unfortunately, for some, the Constitution has become nothing more than letters written in a book. Unfortunately, our government, which is obliged to uphold the Constitution and to monitor that it is upheld by all of the citizens and people who reside in the territories of the Russian Federation, does not always observe it. There’s a growing sense that the Constitution has been forgotten. But this Constitution was adopted by our nation, which withstood tremendous suffering. It was adopted after more than seventy years of the Soviet system, the camps of the Gulag, the Patriotic War, the Great Patriotic War, and at the cost of the lives of millions of people, people who endeavored so that we, and our descendents, would live justly and with dignity.

The second half of Article 4 of the Constitution

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