{"id":21696,"date":"2022-03-10T12:40:23","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T20:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=21696"},"modified":"2022-03-10T12:52:17","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T20:52:17","slug":"pussy-riots-nadya-tolokonnikova-you-cannot-play-nice-with-putin-he-is-insane-he-might-open-fire-on-his-own-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/03\/10\/pussy-riots-nadya-tolokonnikova-you-cannot-play-nice-with-putin-he-is-insane-he-might-open-fire-on-his-own-people\/","title":{"rendered":"PUSSY RIOT\u2019S NADYA TOLOKONNIKOVA: \u2018YOU CANNOT PLAY NICE WITH PUTIN. HE IS INSANE. HE MIGHT OPEN FIRE ON HIS OWN PEOPLE\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Zoe Williams<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russian artist \u2013 who spent two years in a Siberian jail for singing an anti-Putin \u2018punk prayer\u2019 \u2013 is using NFTs to fight the dictator, raising $7m in five days. At a time like this, she says, only activism will keep you sane<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\u2018I\u2019m
\u2018I\u2019m in a panic, I\u2019m crying every day\u2019 \u2026 Nadya Tolokonnikova at a concert in Tennessee earlier this month. Photograph: Paul A Hebert\/LiveMusicToday\/REX\/Shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Zoe<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

@zoesqwilliams<\/a>Tue 8 Mar 2022 15.13 GMT (TheGuardian.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

N<\/strong>adya Tolokonnikova is in a geographically undisclosed location, speaking to me on Zoom, in a Pussy Riot T-shirt, looking purposeful, driven and singleminded. Her feminist protest art has been deadly serious since its inception, when she founded Pussy Riot in 2011. The watching world may have been entertained by its playful notes, the guerrilla gigs in unauthorised places, culminating in the event for which she was prosecuted, in Moscow\u2019s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, when she sang Punk Prayer: Mother of God, Drive Putin Away.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the consequences have always been seismic and severe. Tolokonnikova, along with two other members of Pussy Riot<\/a>, were sentenced to two years in prison for hooliganism in 2012, separated from their very young children, went on hunger strike, endured unimaginably harsh conditions and were named prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tolokonnikova is \u201cnomadic by nature\u201d, she says. \u201cThis planet is my home. I\u2019ve always been an anarchist. I\u2019m not really a big fan of borders or nation states.\u201d But beneath those abstracts there are concrete dangers. She was declared a \u201cforeign agent\u201d by the Kremlin in December<\/a>, as was the independent news outlet she founded upon her release from prison, Mediazone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sentenced
Sentenced to two years \u2026 Pussy Riot perform inside Moscow\u2019s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Photograph: ITAR-TASS News Agency\/Alamy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPutin just signed a law that said you\u2019re going to get 15 years in jail for even discussing the war in Ukraine<\/a>,\u201d she says matter-of-factly. \u201cYou cannot even call it a war, you have to call it a special military operation.\u201d The jeopardy of being a known Russian dissident is greater now than it has been in decades, and nobody understands that more keenly than Tolokonnikova, who was born in 1989, too young to remember Perestroika.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet her focus is anything but self-protective. When Putin invaded Ukraine on 24 February, she and various collaborators from the world of cryptocurrency launched the Ukraine DAO<\/a> (decentralised autonomous organisation). It was a 1\/1 non-fungible token (NFT) of the Ukrainian flag, and the group invited people to bid for collective ownership of the image, raising $7.1m in five days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe felt, me and my friends in crypto, that we had to react somehow. I\u2019m personally convinced that in situations like this, activism is the only thing that can keep you sane. Just looking at disasters and tragedies and not doing anything about it is really detrimental for the world, but also it slowly destroys you and makes you feel helpless.\u201d The money has already been distributed to the organisation Come Back Alive<\/a>, which has been mobilising support for the Ukrainian army since 2014 with medical care, ammunition, training and defence analytics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you fight with a dictator like Putin, you have to show them that you are ready to die \u2013 and I was<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Tolokonnikova is devastated by the invasion of Ukraine. \u201cI\u2019m in a panic, I\u2019m crying every day. I don\u2019t think it was in any sense necessary, I don\u2019t think it was in any sense logical. It wasn\u2019t something that had to happen, it\u2019s a disaster that will end thousands of people\u2019s lives. I\u2019m freaking out.\u201d Yet she never had the luxury of complacency about what Putin was capable of. \u201cThe global community was extremely complacent, and I see two reasons: hypocrisy, based on greed. People would make statements that they did not support Putin\u2019s politics, and his oppression of the political opposition, and the wars that he started \u2013 this isn\u2019t the first war by any means. But at the same time they would continue doing business with him.\u201d Nobody was interested in following the money; asking how the oligarchs coming out of Russia, fetching up in Europe<\/a> and Miami, had come upon their vast wealth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStupidity,\u201d she continues, bluntly. \u201cThis is the second reason. People underestimate how dangerous dictators are. In 2014, we spoke to the UK parliament, we spoke at the Senate in the US, we were asked by a lot of people how they should talk to Putin, how they should frame the conversation, and I always advised that they should be as strict as they could. You cannot play nice with Putin.\u201d This wisdom was won, not so much by her arrest for offending the thin-skinned leader but during her time in prison. \u201cDictators act a lot like prison wardens. They treat kindness as weakness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\u2018I
\u2018I honestly think Putin is digging his own grave\u2019 \u2026 a recent publicity shot of the Russian conceptual artist and activist. Photograph: Yulia Shur<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

During her sentence and following her release in 2014, Tolokonnikova campaigned in ways that political prisoners throughout history would recognise. First, with a hunger strike. \u201cStarting that, I was pretty much ready to die. If you fight with a dictator, you have to show them that you are ready to fight to the end. I think this is why Ukraine is actually winning: they might lose some cities but they are willing to fight to the end, and that is not the case for the Russian army.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She gained support worldwide, and from figures such as Madonna and Hillary Clinton. She began to exchange letters with the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj \u017di\u017eek which were subsequently turned into a book, Comradely Greetings<\/a>. What she remembers now, though, was the concrete impact on prison conditions. A week into her hunger strike, Putin\u2019s right-hand man on human rights called her personally, in prison, to discuss the brutal conditions she was protesting against: 18-hour days of labour with only one day off every six weeks; very little sleep; horrific violence at the hands of guards and other inmates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis was fairly insane. I was the lowest person on the social ladder and he had to call me.\u201d Later, the prison director and architect of this slave labour system, Yury Kupriyanov, was convicted for it and served a suspended two-year sentence, and the Russian correctional headquarters \u201chad to make a statement. They named me and said I was right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything I\u2019m doing is to be a greater pain in the arse to Putin<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Tolokonnikova\u2019s sentence left its mark: \u201cI was traumatised by prison. I was barely functional when I got released. I suffered from a really severe depression in 2014. I\u2019m still on medication for depression caused by PTSD.\u201d The daughter from whom she was separated while she was imprisoned is now 14. \u201cShe\u2019s a social democrat,\u201d Tolokonnikova says approvingly, if wryly. \u201cShe says that in her generation, people want greater equality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her experience hasn\u2019t blunted her activism, which is now concentrated at the frontier of technological possibility. She originally thought cryptocurrencies were just a toy for rich techies but their potential for activists \u2013 being independent of central banks and governments, immune to corporate takeover \u2013 dawned on her in early 2021, and since then she has raised: \u201cQuite substantial sums for different charitable causes. We raised money for a shelter for victims of domestic violence. We were able to move dozens of women from a really dangerous place in Russia, outside of Russia. We raised money in August of last year for political prisoners in Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides that, today she is helping to launch the UnicornDAO<\/a>, a crypto fund whose mission is to buy artworks from female and LGBTQ+ artists. \u201cIt\u2019s not going to be just buying up their works of art; we\u2019re going to be working with them, helping them in various ways to have stable and sustainable careers.\u201d Unicorn\u2019s first purchase was by the Russian-born, New York-based artist Olive Allen<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Detained
Detained \u2026 the band at a court hearing in Moscow in 2012. Photograph: Natalia Kolesnikova\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel like the NFT world is a great way to redistribute money,\u201d Tolokonnikova says, \u201cbut we see these old patterns being repeated. Misogyny doesn\u2019t go anywhere, it just migrates over to digital artwork. Women account for only 5% of all NFT sales. It\u2019s so much more difficult to prove there is value in your words if you happen to be a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These explorations in crypto can sound mercurial, one minute driving cultural change, the next raising money, the next trying to create democratic agency independent of nation states \u2013 and it\u2019s by no means clear what that would look like \u2013 but Tolokonnikova\u2019s reading of Russian politics, and what it would take to force change, is entirely practical. It would take \u201ca mass uprising, millions of people coming to the streets and refusing to leave until Putin is gone. That is obviously incredibly dangerous. Putin is insane, so he might open fire at his own people. I definitely understand why everybody is not already on the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside that, \u201canother force of change may come from Putin\u2019s closet circle. I honestly think Putin is digging his own grave now. The number of oligarchs who are close to him, who have publicly supported Ukraine and are standing against the wa is significant, and that hasn\u2019t happened in 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She sees a worthy successor to Putin in opposition leader Alexei Navalny<\/a>. \u201cBetter social programmes, and redistribution, that\u2019s all part of his programme. I\u2019ve known him since 2007 \u2013 it has been really interesting to witness his platform become more and more social democratic, even though he doesn\u2019t describe himself as that. He doesn\u2019t use labels. I think it\u2019s smart. He doesn\u2019t want to divide people.\u201d And as she recalls her own time in prison, Tolokonnikova urges the world not to forget that Navalny still languishes in jail. Her own work, specifically the UnicornDAO, \u201cis not connected to Putin directly anyhow. But everything I\u2019m doing is to be a greater pain in the arse to Putin because it\u2019s so personal to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n