Lenin’s Tomb

The name they chose for their group sounds like a back-handed tribute to an early James Bond film – although these punk rockers are probably too young to know that.  Their stunt in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral was crude, stupid and guaranteed to elicit precisely the visceral reaction that ensued.  There are Russian words – Кощунство and Богохульство – that ‘sacrilege’ and ‘blasphemy’ don’t begin to convey.  And these are not silly teenagers who gave in to an ill-considered impulse.   The ages of these three women – at least one of which is a mother – range from twenty-one to thirty years.
 
My spouse and I just spent a wonderful fortnight in Israel.  For us it was among the most memorable of summer holidays ever.  Approaching The Wailing Wall, I couldn’t help thinking – had Pussy Riot been a group of Israeli women – how long they would last ‘performing’ in front of this holiest of sites.  I could imagine the reaction of many otherwise nominally secular Israelis.  Play the same mind game at any Moslem holy site and the Pussy Riot performers would not have lived long enough to sit in jail cells.
 
“There ought to be clowns.  Send in the clowns.”  And now the Russian law enforcement authorities and judicial system have given these three stunt performers worldwide notoriety.  Madonna, the queen of iconoclasm, just passed through Russia on a concert tour with the Pussy Riot “victims” emblazoned on her body and her tongue.  A Pussy Riot look-alike flash mob recently performed in Berlin – and perhaps elsewhere, for all I know.
 
I can’t even credit Pussy Riot for originality of street theatre.  They are a camouflaged echo of the Ukrainian Femen who have been using their well rehearsed attack femininity as a vehicle for protest.  Here we have balaclavas in rainbow colours instead of bared breasts.
 
But the reaction of the Russian authorities and like-thinking social elements has been exactly what Pussy Riot had hoped for – a ham-handed exertion of authoritarian state power to the hosannas of the most retrograde elements of the Orthodox Church.  Discourse in the Public Square on this issue is taking place as if in two parallel universes consciously unaware of each other’s existence.  Most disheartening is the absence of a strong moderate voice among the Orthodox Church supporters – the sole token exception being Deacon Andrei Kurayev – acknowledging that the Pussy Riot performance was offensive but, essentially, let’s get over it and move on.
 
Ironically, this incident has played nicely into Vladimir Putin’s hands.  The Russian President was able to assume the role of statesman and Sweet Voice of Reason during his recent visit to London.  His “comfortable words” of calm have created a new conundrum: If the Pussy Riot defendants receive a relatively light sentence, will this be seen as further evidence of the Russian judiciary’s subservience to the President’s vertical of power?  
 
The saddest aspect of this affair, to my mind, is that the level of discourse – reflecting, presumably, the quality of thinking – has been debased rather than elevated.  Russia now has an avowedly secular constitutional order.  The Orthodox Church – even representing a significant majority of the population – should not be able to bring overwhelming influence to bear on secular judicial proceedings.  If, continuing to conjecture, we were to place the Pussy Riot performance not in front of The Wailing Wall or at a Moslem holy place but in a correspondingly sacred site back in time – let’s turn the clock back to Khrushchev’s or Brezhnev’s Soviet Union – then the clear choice for equivalent shock value would be Lenin’s Tomb.   The context has changed but the paradigm has not shifted.