Masha Gessen profiles Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, of Pussy Riot, in their new role as prisoners’ rights activists:
“I was worried that no one would be interested in prisoners’ rights,” Tolokonnikova says. “I thought this might be just something Masha and I want to work on because we have experienced it.” But prison is an object of almost universal fear and interest in Russia. The country has one of the world’s highest percentages of its population behind bars—not as high as the United States, but a key difference is that in Russia the risk of landing in prison cuts across class lines. No one knows the exact figures, but human rights advocates estimate that more than 15,000 and possibly more than 100,000 of Russia’s roughly 700,000 inmates are entrepreneurs sent to jail by competitors or extortionists. And then there are the political prisoners, a population that is growing despite recent high-profile pardons. Opposition activists are arrested seemingly at random; many of them are not leaders but ordinary grassroots activists or even one-time participants in a demonstration.
The goal of this tried-and-true Soviet tactic is to frighten people away from any and all opposition activity. It’s effective, but its flip side is that when Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova speak about the abuse of prisoners, they grab the attention of millions of Russians who fear winding up behind bars themselves.
In an interview with Cullen Murphy, Gessen discusses her new book, Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot:
While I was writing this part of the book [on prison conditions], I was also watching Orange Is the New Black, which was very helpful for two reasons: it refreshed my vocabulary (I wouldn’t have produced the word “commissary” without it) and it also presented a picture of how most readers would be likely to imagine a women’s prison. So my goal was very clear: I had to show the difference between Orange Is the New Black and hell. The difference is, again, best summed up by the word “torture.” Most, possibly all, Russian correctional institutions for women run sewing factories. Maria sewed bedding, while Nadya, like many Russian inmates, worked on police uniforms. Prison factories get government jobs because they offer low prices—and this they can do because they use slave labor. Inmates do not get paid (though by law they are supposed to); they are forced to work 12-, sometimes 16-hour shifts seven days a week, using outdated equipment. If they object to the work hours or fail to meet their production requirements, they are beaten, deprived of food, locked out of their barracks, and sent to do additional back-breaking labor on facility grounds. When I visited Nadya in prison last June, she told me they had recently been shown an educational American film about the importance of getting enough sleep—and the women watching it, who routinely slept no more than three hours a night, were falling off their chairs from laughter. Or perhaps from exhaustion.
The Dish 