[spectre] The closing statements from Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 8 Aug 2012

[Andreas Broeckmann]

http://eng-pussy-riot.livejournal.com/4602.html

*Nadezhda Tolokonnikova*

*Closing Statement *

*8 August 2012, Khamovnichesky Courthouse, Moscow*


*Essentially, ***it is not three singers from Pussy Riot who are on 
trial here. If that were the case, what's happening would be totally 
insignificant. It is the entire state system of the Russian Federation 
which is on trial and which, unfortunately for itself, thoroughly enjoys 
advertising its cruelty towards human beings, its indifference to their 
honour and dignity, the very worst that has happened in Russian history 
to date. To my deepest regret, this mock trial is close to the standards 
of the Stalinist troikas. Thus, we have our investigator, lawyer and 
judge. And then, what's more, what all three of them do and say and 
decide is determined by a political demand for repression. Who is to 
blame for the performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and for 
our being put on trial after the concert? The authoritarian political 
system is to blame. What Pussy Riot does is oppositional art or politics 
that draws upon the forms art has established. In any event, it is a 
form of civil action in circumstances where basic human rights, civil 
and political freedoms are suppressed by the corporate state system.**

*Since the turn of the millennium many people, relentlessly and 
methodically flayed alive by the systematic destruction of liberties, 
have rebelled.*

*We were looking for authentic genuineness and simplicity and we found 
them in the holy foolishness of our punk performances. Passion, openness 
and naivety are superior to hypocrisy, cunning and a contrived decency 
that conceals crimes. The state's leaders stand with saintly expressions 
in church but, in their deceit, their sins are far greater than ours. 
We've put on our political punk concerts because the Russian state 
system is dominated by rigidity, closedness and caste and the policies 
pursued serve only narrow corporate interests to the extent that even 
the air of Russia makes us ill.*

*We are absolutely not happy with---and have been forced into acting and 
living politically by---the use of coercive, strong-arm measures to 
handle social processes, a situation in which the most important 
political institutions are the disciplinary structures of the state - 
the security agencies, the army, the police, the special forces and the 
accompanying means of ensuring political stability: prisons, preventive 
detention and mechanisms to closely control public behaviour. Nor are we 
happy with the enforced civic passivity of the bulk of the population or 
the complete domination of executive structures over the legislature and 
judiciary. Moreover, we are genuinely angered by the fear-based and 
scandalously low standard of political culture, which is constantly and 
knowingly maintained by the state system and its accomplices. Look at 
what Patriarch Kirill has to say: "The Orthodox don't go to rallies." We 
are angered by the appalling weakness of horizontal relationships within 
society. We don't like the way in which the state system easily 
manipulates public opinion through its tight control of the overwhelming 
majority of media outlets. A perfect example is the unprecedentedly 
shameless campaign against Pussy Riot, based on the distortion of facts 
and words, which has appeared in nearly all the Russian media, apart 
from the few independent media there are in this political system.*

*Even so, I can now state---despite the fact that we currently have an 
authoritarian political situation---that I am seeing this political 
system collapse to a certain extent when it comes to the three members 
of Pussy Riot, because what the system was counting on, unfortunately 
for that system, has not come to pass. Russia as a whole does not 
condemn us. Every day more and more people believe us and believe in us, 
and think we should be free rather than behind bars. I can see this from 
the people I meet. I meet people who represent the system, who work for 
the relevant agencies. I see people who are in prison. And every day 
there are more and more people who support us, who hope for our success 
and especially for our release, who say our political act was justified. 
People tell us, "To start with, we weren't sure you could have done 
this," but every day there are more and more people who say, "Time is 
proving to us that your political gesture was correct. You have exposed 
the cancer in this political system and dealt a blow to a nest of vipers 
who then turned on you." These people are trying to make life easier for 
us in whatever way they can and we are very grateful to them for that...*

*We are grateful to all those who, free themselves, speak out in our 
support. There are a vast number, I know. I know that a huge number of 
Orthodox people are standing up for us. They are praying for us outside 
the courtroom, for the members of Pussy Riot who are incarcerated. We've 
seen the little booklets Orthodox people are handing out with prayers 
for those in prison. This alone shows that there isn't a unified social 
group of Orthodox believers as the prosecution is trying to assert. No 
such thing exists. More and more believers are starting to defend Pussy 
Riot. They don't think what we did deserves even five months in 
detention, much less the three years in prison the prosecutor would 
like. And every day, more and more people realize that if this political 
system has ganged up to this extent against three girls for a 30-second 
performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, it means the system 
is afraid of the truth and afraid of our sincerity and directness. We 
haven't dissembled, not for a second, not for a minute during this 
trial, but the other side is dissembling too much and people can sense 
it. People can sense the truth. Truth really does have some kind of 
ontological, existential superiority over lies and this is written in 
the Bible, in the Old Testament, in particular. In the end, the ways of 
truth always triumph over the ways of wickedness, guile and lies. And 
with each day that passes, the ways of truth are more and more 
triumphant even though we are still behind bars and are likely to be 
here a lot longer yet.*

*Madonna performed yesterday (7 August). She appeared with "Pussy Riot" 
written on her back. More and more people can see that we are being held 
here unlawfully and on a completely false charge -- I'm overwhelmed by 
this. I am overwhelmed that truth really does triumph over lies even 
though physically we are here in a cage. We are freer than the people 
sitting opposite us for the prosecution because we can say everything we 
like, and we do, but those people sitting there say only what political 
censorship allows them to say. They can't speak words like "punk prayer" 
or "Virgin Mary, Banish Putin!" They can't say the lines from our punk 
prayer that have to do with the political system. Perhaps they think it 
wouldn't be a bad thing to send us to jail because we are rising up 
against Putin and his system as well but they can't say so because 
that's not allowed either. Their mouths are sewn shut. Unfortunately, 
they are mere puppets. I hope they realize this and also take the road 
to freedom, truth and sincerity because these are superior to stasis, 
contrived decency and hypocrisy. Stasis and the search for truth are 
always in opposition to one another and, in this case, at this trial, we 
can see people who are trying to find the truth and people who are 
trying to enslave those who want to find the truth.*

*Humans are beings who always make mistakes. They are not perfect. They 
strive for wisdom but never actually have it. That's precisely why 
philosophy came into being, precisely because philosophers are people 
who love wisdom and strive for it, but never actually possess it and it 
is what makes them act and think and, ultimately, live the way they do. 
This is what made us go into the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. I 
think that Christianity, as I've understood it from studying the Old and 
New Testaments, supports the search for truth and a constant overcoming 
of the self, overcoming what you used to be. It is not for nothing that 
Christ associated with prostitutes. He said we should help those who 
stumble, saying, "I forgive them" but for some reason I can't see any of 
that at our trial, which is taking place under the banner of 
Christianity. I think the prosecutor is defying Christianity. The 
lawyers want nothing to do with the injured parties. Here's how I 
understand this: Two days ago, Lawyer Taratukhin made a speech in which 
he wanted everyone to understand that he does not identify with the 
people he is representing. This means he's not ethically comfortable 
representing people who want to send the three members of Pussy Riot to 
jail. Why they want to do this, I don't know. Perhaps it is their right. 
The lawyer was embarrassed, the shouts of "Shame! Executioners!" had got 
to him, which goes to show that truth and goodness always triumph over 
lies and evil.*

*I think some higher powers are guiding the speeches of the lawyers for 
the other side when, time after time, they make mistakes in what they 
say and call us the "injured parties". Almost all the lawyers are doing 
it, including Lawyer Pavlova who is very negatively disposed towards us. 
Nevertheless, some higher powers are causing her to say "the injured 
parties" about us rather than the people she's defending, us. I wouldn't 
give people labels. I don't think there are winners or losers here, 
injured parties or accused. We just need to make contact, to establish a 
dialogue and a joint search for truth, to seek wisdom together, to be 
philosophers together, rather than stigmatizing and labelling people. 
This is one of the worst things people can do and Christ condemned it.*

*We have been subjected to abuse during this trial. Who would have 
thought that one man and the state system he controls would once again 
be capable of entirely wanton evil? Who would have thought that history 
and Stalin's fairly recent Great Terror, in particular, would teach us 
nothing at all? It makes you want to weep to see how the methods of the 
medieval inquisition are brought out by the law-enforcement and judicial 
system of the Russian Federation, which is our country. Since the time 
of our arrest, however, we can no longer weep. We've forgotten how to 
cry. At our punk concerts we used to shout out in desperation to the 
best of our abilities about the iniquities of the authorities and now 
we've been robbed of our voice.*

*Throughout this whole trial, they have refused to hear us and I mean 
/hear us/, which involves understanding and, moreover, thinking. I think 
every individual should strive to attain wisdom, to be a philosopher, 
not just people who happen to have studied philosophy. That's nothing. 
Formal education is nothing in itself and Lawyer Pavlova is constantly 
trying to accuse us of not being sufficiently well-educated. I think 
though that the most important thing is the desire to know and to 
understand, and that's something people can do for themselves outside of 
educational establishments.The trappings of academic degrees don't mean 
anything in this instance. Someone can have a vast fund of knowledge and 
for all that not be human. Pythagoras said that 'the learning of many 
things does not teach understanding'. Unfortunately, that's something we 
are forced to observe here. We're just part of the scenery, a bit of 
wildlife, just bodies brought into the courtroom. If, after many days of 
asking, talking and doing battle our petitions are examined, they are 
inevitably rejected.*

*The court, on the other hand---and unfortunately for us and for our 
country---listens to the prosecutor who repeatedly distorts our comments 
and statements with impunity in a bid to neutralize them. There is no 
attempt to conceal this breach in an adversarial system. They even seem 
to be showing it off. On 30^th July, the first day of the trial, we 
presented our response to the charges against us. Prior to that we were 
in prison, in confinement. We can't do anything there: we can't make 
statements, we can't film, we don't have Internet. We can't even give 
our lawyer any papers because that's banned too. Our first chance to 
speak came on 30^th July. The document we'd written was read out by 
defence lawyer Volkova because the court refused outright to let the 
defendants speak. We called for contact and dialogue rather than 
conflict and opposition. We reached out a hand to those who, for some 
reason, assume we are their enemies. In response they laughed at us and 
spat in our outstretched hands. "You're disingenuous," they told us. But 
they needn't have bothered. Don't judge others by your own standards. We 
were, as always, sincere in saying exactly what we thought, out of 
childish naïvety, sure, but we don't regret anything we said, even on 
that day. We are reviled but we do not intend to speak evil in return. 
We are in desperate straits but do not despair. We are persecuted but 
not forsaken. It's easy to humiliate and crush people who are open, but 
when I am weak, then I am strong.*

*Listen to us rather than to Arkady Mamontov talking about us. Don't 
twist and distort everything we say. Let us enter into dialogue and 
contact with the country, which is ours too, not just Putin's and the 
Patriarch's. Like Solzhenitsyn, I believe that in the end, words will 
shatter concrete. Solzhenitsyn wrote, "the Word is more ancient than 
concrete. The Word is not to be taken lightly. In just the same way, 
noble people will suddenly spring up and their word will shatter concrete."*

*Katya, Masha and I are in jail but I don't consider that we've been 
defeated. Just as the dissidents weren't defeated. When they disappeared 
into psychiatric hospitals and prisons, they passed judgement on the 
country. The art of creating an image of an era knows no winners or 
losers. The Oberiu poets remained artists to the very end, impossible to 
explain or understand. They were purged in 1937. Vvedensky wrote: "We 
like what can't be understood, What can't be explained is our friend." 
According to the death certificate, Aleksandr Vvedensky died on 20 
December 1941. We don't know the cause, whether it was dysentery in the 
train after his arrest or a bullet from a guard. It was somewhere on the 
railway line between Voronezh and Kazan. Pussy Riot are Vvedensky's 
disciples and his heirs. His principle of 'bad rhyme' is our own. He 
wrote: "It happens that two rhymes will come into your head, a good one 
and a bad one and I choose the bad one. It will be the right one." What 
can't be explained is our friend. The elitist, sophisticated occupations 
of the Oberiu poets, their search for sense at the edge of meaning was 
ultimately realized at the cost of their lives, swept away in the 
senseless Great Terror that's impossible to explain. At the cost of 
their own lives, the Oberiu poets unintentionally demonstrated that 
their feeling of meaninglessness and alogism as the raw nerve of the 
period was correct, but at the same time led art into the realm of 
history. The cost of taking part in creating history is always 
staggeringly high for people, for their very lives. But that taking part 
is the very spice of human life. Being poor while bestowing riches on 
many; having nothing but possessing everything. It is believed that the 
OBERIU dissidents are dead, but they live on. They are persecuted but 
they do not die.*

*Do you remember why the young Dostoyevsky was given the death sentence? 
All he had done was to get carried away with socialist theories---and at 
the Friday meetings of a friendly circle of free thinkers at 
Petrashevsky's, he became acquainted with works by Charles Fourier and 
George Sand. At one of the last meetings, he read out Belinsky's letter 
to Gogol, which was packed, according to the court, and, please note, 
"with childish utterances against the Orthodox Church and the supreme 
authorities". After all his preparations for the death penalty and ten 
dreadful, impossibly frightening minutes waiting to die, as Dostoyevsky 
himself put it, the announcement came that his sentence had been 
commuted to four years hard labour followed by military service.*

*Socrates was accused of corrupting youth through his philosophical 
discourses and of not recognizing the gods of Athens. Socrates had a 
connection to a divine inner voice and was by no means a theomachist, 
something he often said himself. What did that matter, however, when he 
had angered the influential people of the city with his critical, 
dialectical and unprejudiced thinking? Socrates was sentenced to death 
and, refusing to run away, although he was given that option, he calmly 
drank down a cup of hemlock and died.*

*Have you forgotten the circumstances under which Stephen, follower of 
the Apostles, ended his earthly life? "Then they secretly induced men to 
say, 'We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and 
against God.' And they stirred up the people, the elders and the 
scribes, and they came upon him and dragged him away, and brought him 
before the Council. And they put forward false witnesses who said, 'This 
man incessantly speaks against this holy place, and the Law.'" He was 
found guilty and stoned to death.*

*And I hope everyone remembers what the Jews said to Christ: "We're 
stoning you not for any good work, but for blasphemy." And finally it 
would be well worth remembering this description of Christ: "He is 
possessed of a demon and out of his mind."*

*I believe that if leaders, tsars, elders, presidents and prime 
ministers, the people and the judges really understood what "I desire 
mercy, not sacrifice" meant, they would not condemn the innocent. Our 
leaders are currently in a hurry only to condemn and not at all to show 
mercy. Incidentally, we thank Dmitry Anatolievich Medvedev for his 
latest wonderful aphorism. If Medvedev gave his presidency the slogan: 
"Freedom is better than non-freedom", then, thanks to Medvedev's 
felicitous saying, Putin's third term has a good chance of being known 
by a new aphorism: "Prison is better than stoning."*

*I would like you to think carefully about the following reflection by 
Montaigne from his /Essays /written in the 16^th century. He wrote: "You 
are holding your opinions in too high a regard if you burn people alive 
for them." Is it worth accusing people and putting them in jail on the 
basis of totally unfounded conjectures by the prosecution?*

*Since in actual fact we never were, and are not, motivated by religious 
hatred and hostility, there is nothing left for our accusers to do other 
than to draw on the aid of false witnesses. One of them, Motilda 
Ivashchenko, was ashamed and didn't show up in court. That left false 
witness by [Vsevolod] Troitsky, [Igor] Ponkin and Mrs [Vera] 
Abramenkova. And there is no evidence of any hatred or enmity on our 
part other than this expert examination. For this reason, if it is 
honourable and just, the court must rule the evidence inadmissible 
because it is not a strictly scientific or objective text but a filthy, 
lying bit of paper from the medieval days of the inquisition. There is 
no other evidence that can even remotely suggest a motive.*

*The prosecution is reluctant to produce excerpts from the texts of 
Pussy Riot interviews because they are primary evidence of this lack of 
motive. For the umpteenth time, I will quote this excerpt. I think it's 
important. It was from an interview with "Russky Reporter", given the 
day after the concert at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour: "Our 
attitude toward religion, and toward Orthodoxy in particular, is one of 
respect, and for this very reason we are distressed that the great and 
luminous Christian philosophy is being used so shabbily. We are very 
angry that at this abuse of the sublime". It still makes us angry and we 
find it very painful to watch.*

*The lack on our part of any show of hatred or enmity has been attested 
by all the character witnesses examined by the defence. In addition to 
all the other character statements, I'd like you to consider the 
findings of the investigation's psychiatric and psychological tests I 
had to undergo in detention. The expert's findings were as follows: the 
values to which I am committed in my life are justice, mutual respect, 
humanity, equality and freedom. That's what the expert said, someone who 
doesn't know me and Investigator Ranchenko would probably have very much 
liked him to write something different. It would appear, however, that 
there are more people who love and value the truth, and the Bible's 
right about that.*

Finally, I'd like to quote a Pussy Riot song because, strange as it may 
seem, all our songs have turned out to be prophetic, including the one 
that says: "The KGB chief, their number one saint, will escort 
protestors off to jail" -- that's about us. What I'd like to quote now, 
however, is the next line: "Open the doors, off with the military 
insignia, join us in a taste of freedom."

*(Project team: Agnes Parker: translation/Eja Werner: coordination)*


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