The Russian feminist punk band has been in the news lately; three twentysomething young women rockers were sentenced to two years in prison for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred‖ that is,  their guerrilla rock performance on the altar of a Russian Orthodox Church. For less than a minute, the women danced, singing “Our Lady, Chase Putin Out!†and crossing themselves until they were apprehended by security guards.  What you probably haven’t read is their own insightful analysis of what their acts meant in Russian’s current political context.  From their closing statements in their Moscow court trial:
Yekaterina Samutsevich charged that Putin has been “exploit[ing] the Orthodox religion and its aesthetic…” by making use of
the aesthetic of the Orthodox religion, which is historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself….
Our sudden musical appearance in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior with the song “Mother of God, Drive Putin Out†violated the integrity of the media image that the authorities had spent such a long time generating and maintaining, and revealed its falsity. In our performance we dared, without the Patriarch’s blessing, to unite the visual imagery of Orthodox culture with that of protest culture, thus suggesting that Orthodox culture belongs not only to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch, and Putin, but that it could also ally itself with civic rebellion and the spirit of protest in Russia.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova
What was behind our performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the subsequent trial? Nothing other than the autocratic political system. Pussy Riot’s performances can either be called dissident art or political action that engages art forms. Either way, our performances are a kind of civic activity amidst the repressions of a corporate political system that directs its power against basic human rights and civil and political liberties. The young people who have been flayed by the systematic eradication of freedoms perpetrated through the aughts have now risen against the state. We were searching for real sincerity and simplicity, and we found these qualities in the yurodstvo [the holy foolishness] of punk….
we are deeply frustrated by the scandalous dearth of political culture, which comes as the result of fear and that is kept down through the conscious efforts of the government and its servants (Patriarch Kirill: “Orthodox Christians do not attend ralliesâ€); the scandalous weakness of the horizontal ties within society.
We do not like that the state so easily manipulates public opinion by means of its strict control over the majority of medial outlets (a particularly vivid example of this manipulation is the unprecedentedly insolent and distorted campaign against Pussy Riot appearing in practically every Russian media outlet).
Despite the fact that we find ourselves in an essentially authoritarian situation, living under authoritarian rule, I see this system crumbling in the face of three members of Pussy Riot. What the system anticipated did not occur; Russia does not condemn us, and with each passing day, more and more people believe in us and that we should be free, and not behind bars.
I see this in the people I meet. I meet people who work for the system, in its institutions, I see people who are incarcerated. Every day, I meet our supporters who wish us luck and, above all, freedom. They say what we did was justified. More and more people tell us that although they had doubts about whether we had the right to do what we did, with each passing day, more and more people tell us that time has shown that our political gesture was correct—that we opened the wounds of this political system, and struck directly at the hornet’s nest, so they came after us, but we. . . .
Maria Alyokhina
Today’s educational institutions teach people, from childhood, to live as automatons. Not to pose the crucial questions consistent with their age. They inculcate cruelty and intolerance of nonconformity. Beginning in childhood, we forget our freedom.  I have personal experience with psychiatric clinics for minors. And I can say with conviction that any teenager who shows any signs of active nonconformity can end up in such a place. A certain percentage of the kids there are from orphanages.
In our country, it’s considered entirely normal to commit a child who has tried to escape from an orphanage to a psychiatric clinic…..
This is especially traumatizing given the overall punitive tendency and the absence of any real psychological assistance. All interactions are based on the exploitation of the children’s feelings of fear and forced submission. And as a result, their own cruelty increases many times over. Many children there are illiterate, but no one makes any effort to battle this—to the contrary, every last drop of motivation for personal development is discouraged. The individual closes off entirely and loses faith in the world.
I would like to note that this method of personal development clearly impedes the awakening of both inner and religious freedoms, unfortunately, on a mass scale. The consequence of the process I have just described is ontological humility, existential humility, socialization. To me, this transition, or rupture, is noteworthy in that, if approached from the point of view of Christian culture, we see that meanings and symbols are being replaced by those that are diametrically opposed to them. Thus one of the most important Christian concepts, Humility, is now commonly understood not as a path towards the perception, fortification, and ultimate liberation of Man, but on the contrary as an instrument for his enslavement. To quote [Russian philosopher] Nikolai Berdyaev, one could say that “the ontology of humility is the ontology of the slaves of God, and not the sons of God.†When I was involved with organizing the ecological movement, I became fundamentally convinced of the priority of inner freedom as the foundation for taking action. As well as the importance, the direct importance, of taking action as such.
Read their complete closing statements from court here