Pussy Riot's Cathedral Performance Lasted Less Than a Minute and Cost Three Members Two Years

On the morning of February 21, 2012, five members of the Russian feminist art collective Pussy Riot — wearing colored balaclavas, tights, and homemade shift dresses — entered the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow during a quiet midweek interval. They climbed onto the altar dais, in front of the iconostasis, plugged in a portable amplifier, and performed about 40 seconds of a song they were calling "Punk Prayer: Mother of God, Drive Putin Away." The opening melody was lifted from a Sergei Rachmaninoff Ave Maria. Cathedral guards walked them out before they finished. They later cut the recorded footage with shots from a second cathedral, Yelokhovo, to make a complete music video that went online a few days later.

The Russian state's response was disproportionate to the offense by a wide margin. Three of the participants — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich — were arrested in early March, charged with "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred," and tried in summer 2012. The case dominated Russian political media. On August 17, 2012, the three were convicted; each received a two-year prison sentence. Samutsevich's was suspended on appeal in October. Amnesty International designated all three as prisoners of conscience.

The protest had outsized international consequences. Madonna wore a balaclava onstage in Moscow and called out the band's name from her concert in St. Petersburg. Paul McCartney wrote a public letter. Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina, after their release in late 2013, spoke at a Brooklyn Amnesty International benefit concert in February 2014, where Madonna brought them onstage. The two have since lived mostly in exile, founding the independent media outlet Mediazona in 2014; the cathedral and Putin remain.