Pussy Riot answers questions on activism at Sziget festival

Budapest, August 14 (MTI) – Two members of Moscow-based punk-activist protest group Pussy Riot took questions from the audience during a session held at Budapest’s Sziget Festival on Friday.

“You go mad if you constantly live in fear,” members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, known for their campaign against Russian President Vladimir Putin, said at the event. They said they fought with art as well as organising civil action against Putin’s regime.

“Besides Russia it is only in Hungary that I met people who still thought we had danced naked in a church. This is not so; even our heads were masked,” Tolokonnikova said, adding that one did not need to be naked to carry out radical political action.

Tolokonnikova said she had set out on a journalist career when she was a student, but because of heavy censorship in the media she chose art instead.

Pyotr Verzilov, a Russian-Canadian artist and activist who is married to Tolokonnikova, said the group decided to take the path of political activism as there is no independent media in Russia and the opposition is not well organised.

“In western Europe this is difficult to grasp, but perhaps Hungarians understand better, because the government of Viktor Orban much resembles Putin’s Russia,” he said.

Alyokhina said Putin’s regime was very conservative and the Russian Orthodox Church believed that women’s role was to give birth so as to boost the population. But the social safety net to help raise children is not there, the monthly allowance for childcare is 50 US dollars, she said.

Tolokonnikova said their release from prison was merely “a PR move” and she denied accusations that the group’s performances were carried out under the influence of alcohol and drugs. She said this was “propaganda” and that staying clean was an important part of their act.

Asked to comment on the Crimean situation, Tolokonnikova said she condemned Russia’s presence in Ukraine and that Crimea should be part of Ukraine.

Commenting on a question about her political ambitions, Tolokonnikova said political change must be preceded by cultural change which “moves people”. She added that her prison record also meant she could not run for office for 10 years.

The duo proposed the Sziget event after a Q&A at the Glastonbury festival this summer was a success. Nadya and Masha said they would give their earnings to charity.

Photo: MTI

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters