Pussy Riot: It took a bunch of bright, sassy women in colourful balaclavas to blow the lid off Putin's Russia
What Pussy Riot have done is show up the machinery of the state for what it is: scary, violent, punitive and male
"They didn't have any beef with religion. They simply didn't think the church should be telling people how to vote. They came across as natural democrats who believed in decency and fair play and the right to free expression, who just happened to find themselves living in a one-party state where none of those things applies.
But then that's the thing about Moscow. It looks like a western, European city. It has Starbucks and Ikea and Cosmo and GQ. And for the last two decades its citizens have played along with the idea that it is.
But what Pussy Riot has done, so brilliantly and intuitively, is to expose that as a lie. In the end, it wasn't a politician who stood up to Putin and exposed the great moral bankruptcy at the heart of his regime; it was a bunch of young women in bright dresses and colourful balaclavas.
What they have done so brilliantly is to show up the machinery of the Russian state for what it is: scary, violent, punitive and male."
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