http://www.vulture.com/2012/08/why-pussy-riot-is-big-in-america-but-not-russia.html
Why Pussy Riot is Big in America, But Not Russia
"“I think they kind of get the western market much better than every mainstream [Russian] pop singer who’s trying to record an album in English,” says Michael Idov—a Russian-American who’s currently living in Moscow, editing GQ Russia. For the record, he’s chuckling when he says this (Pussy Riot aren't technically a band), but the group's references connect well to western art and activism, and the package makes immediate sense to a large number of people when images are wired across the ocean to the U.S. For Russians, the format may be more alien. “I’d say they work in a purely western idiom,” says Idov. “That’s part of why they’re so well-received in the west: They’re 100% recognizable. For me, looking through their performances, the main feeling they evoke in me is full-on nostalgia for being at the University of Michigan, because that’s the kind of innocuous shit that was going on every day on the campus grounds. To me that’s what it is. People in Russia feel a little differently.” How differently? “The vast majority of Russians,” he reports, “actually do want to see them in jail.”
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“[Alexei] Navalny, the unofficial head of the new wing of the opposition—I was very happy to see him take this on,” says Idov. “He tried to be a witness for the defense; he didn’t get to speak. He tweeted a lot about them. He came to the sentencing. I was happy to see that because he’s a populist, and if you’re a populist politician who’s trying to broaden his base, Pussy Riot are not a popular cause to pick up."
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