It was -25 degrees Celsius on December 23, 2013 when Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a member of the punk rock advocacy group Pussy Riot, was granted amnesty. She stepped out of the prison gate wearing a thin coat with no hat or scarf. In the bitter cold of the afternoon, Tolokonnikova walked proudly towards reporters, flashing the V sign at the cameras and smiling. “How do you like our Siberian weather here?” she asked. It was the first time she had walked free in 21 months.
3800 kilometres away in the town of Nizhny Novgorod, Maria Alyokhina — a fellow band member and political dissident — was far less pleased with her sudden freedom. “I don’t think it’s an amnesty, it’s a profanation,” she told reporters. “It’s a PR move.” Shoved into a car and quickly escorted from her cell to downtown Nizhny Novgorod, Alyokhina was given no time to say goodbye to her fellow inmates.
Before reuniting with her friends and family, Alyokhina met with local human rights activists. Having served almost all of her sentence, which was set to end in March, she was critical of the Russian government’s choice to grant her amnesty mere months away from the Olympic Games in Sochi. “If I had a chance to turn it down,” she said, “I would have done it.”
Both women have since publicly committed the rest of their lives to the fight for human rights in Russia. But for them and other political activists in Russia, there’s no easy road ahead.
Pussy Riot’s public demonstration on February 21, 2012 in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour only lasted two minutes, and began innocuously — the five members involved in the performance entered the church in modest clothing and bare faces, only to put on their trademark multicoloured balaclavas and strip off their clothing for an impromptu protest against the ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and, at that time, recently-elected President Vladimir Putin.
The Sochi Olympic Games carry a heavy burden for Putin’s presidential legacy.
Within hours, the show, which the group dubbed a “punk prayer,” was uploaded to YouTube. Three of the performers were arrested several days later on charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” Six months later, Alyokhina, Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina Samutsevich were sentenced to two years in a penal colony on the grounds that they had blasphemed and “crudely undermined social order” with their performance, as Russian women are not allowed at the altar of a church.
The women refused to ask President Putin for a pardon; Tolokonnikova called the verdict “a clear and unambiguous sign that freedom is being taken away from the entire country.”
Though she and many more political prisoners in Russia may be free today as a result of Putin’s amnesty, Tolokonnikova’s views on the Russian government have not softened. On December 27, she and Alyokhina announced on the Moscow news conference their plans to shed the Pussy Riot moniker, create a human rights organization and “keep the system in tune.”
Meanwhile, construction continues in preparation for the Sochi Olympics, devastating the local ecosystem and leaving those in the nearby town of Akhshtyr without a reliable source of water for the fifth year in a row.
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Vladimir Putin’s decision to grant amnesty to over 20,000 Russian political prisoners is not without precedent. In fact, offering amnesty to mark important dates — in this case, the 20th anniversary of Russia’s 1993 constitution — is a time-honoured Russian tradition, dating all the way back to tsarist rule. However, Putin’s presidential pardon is hardly a harbinger for a change of heart in terms of dissidence or democracy. On the contrary, the move is a carefully calculated political strategy; an attempt to sweep Russia’s substandard human rights record under the rug.
To be clear, Putin’s amnesty avoided targeting any political prisoners directly; instead, pardons were given to those with young children or minor sentences, such as hooliganism. In an interview, Putin assured the media that the amnesty was “not a revision of the court’s decision” towards Pussy Riot, nor towards the group of Greenpeace activists arrested months before.
The pre-holiday amnesty was preceded by his decision to free Mikhail Khodorkovsky, arguably his most prominent political rival, on December 20.
Once the richest man in Russia, Khodorkovsky rose to prominence during Russia’s period of post-Soviet privatization. His company, Yukos Oil, quickly secured a monopoly on Russia’s oil reserves in Siberia. Openly critical of President Putin and what he viewed as the corruption of the Russian government, Khodorkovsky used his vast wealth to support social programs and fund political parties opposed to Putin’s regime.
In 2003, he was arrested on charges of fraud and tax evasion. His assets frozen by the government, Khodorkovsky was formally charged in May 2005. By this time, most of his fortune had evaporated, and Yukos Oil had capsized.
Khodorkovsky was set to be released in 2017, 12 years after his original sentencing. This elicited controversy from many international heavyweights, such as Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague. The European Court of Human Rights spoke out against Khodorkovsky’s arrest, arguing that his lawyers were pressured by the authorities and his witnesses were denied medical treatment.
Khodorkovsky walked free for the first time in almost a decade on December 20, 2013. Putin cited his mother’s declining health as reason for his release, and assured the Russian people that nine years in prison amounted to “a significant punishment.” At Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie, a location rife with Soviet history, Khodorkovsky made his first public appearance since his arrest.
“I am happy about this decision,” he told reporters, a smile forming on his lips. “That would be the most precise.” When asked about Putin’s motivations, he replied, “I think it’s a sign that the Russian government, and Putin personally, are worried about the country’s image.”
Though Khodorkovsky, Pussy Riot, and 20,000 other political prisoners now walk free, their status as political dissidents in Russia is hardly a desirable one. One of Putin’s first actions in his third term was the application of a foreign agent law, which requires any advocacy group with international funding to register officially as a “foreign agent.”
In Russia, the term has connections to Soviet-era espionage, and its attempts to vilify and dehumanize Putin’s opposition are all but transparent.
NGOs who refuse to register as such are ordered to suspend their activities and provide confidential files and documents to the Russian authorities. Among the organizations targeted are Amnesty International, Transparency International, and Human Rights Watch. “The [law] violates Russia’s national and international obligations to safeguard the rights of association, assembly and expression,” an Amnesty International representative said. “It should be repealed immediately.”
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It isn’t hard to see why the Sochi Olympics carry such weight for Putin and Russia; the games mark the nation’s second time as host, and its first for the Winter Games. The previous Russian games in 1980 were also host to controversy, as they were held during the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan — many nations, including Canada, Japan, China, Israel, Egypt, Argentina, and the United States, refused to take part due to Russia’s involvement in the conflict.
With Sochi, Putin has been given a chance to absolve Russia of its Olympic embarrassment, and to solidify Russia as the economic and political power it once was.
The Sochi Games also carry a heavy burden for Putin’s presidential legacy. The President is preoccupied with preserving his image as a strong-willed ruler of men, and an Olympic bungle might collapse his carefully constructed public persona. His tactful turn towards human rights advocacy is not only a move to soften relations with western powers, such as Germany and the United States; it’s an extension of his performance as Russia’s fearless leader, a man willing to swallow his pride on the international stage for the sake of the Motherland.
To be blunt, it’s also a chance for Russia to show off. The Games are already the most expensive ever, and they haven’t even begun; over $50 billion has gone into constructing the most elaborate showpiece in Olympic history, with business magnates such as Vladimir Potanin building metal skyscrapers and ski resorts from the ground up.
What was once an unadorned subtropical Sochi slope has become a carnivalesque display of excess, and one that Putin hopes will dispel misgivings about Russia’s finances and perceived political unrest.
President Putin’s strategy to transform Sochi into a thriving international hub has been plagued with controversy and turmoil since day one. Six lane highways have led to flooded houses and demolished roadways for the locals. Industrial waste litters the town’s forests and hills, leading to erosion and sinkage in Sochi homes.
In Akhshtyr, a small village which borders Sochi to the east, locals have had their water supply contaminated by the waste dumps of Sochi construction teams. According to the Human Rights Watch, the village has been denied access to clean water since 2008. Authorities deliver drinking water in trucks once per week — sometimes less.
Across the mountains on which snowboarders and skiers will compete, war rages on between Russia and the Caucasus Emirate, a militant Islamist group with connections to al-Qaeda and whose December 2013 suicide bombings in Volgograd killed 32 people in two days.
Plans set forth by the Kremlin to increase surveillance on athletes and spectators have done little to silence the skeptics: recently, the US bureau of diplomatic security released a statement warning Sochi travelers that “sensitive information may be taken and shared with . . . Russian regulatory and legal entities.”
I don’t think it’s amnesty, it’s a profanation . . . It’s a PR move.”
– Maria Alyokhina of Pussy Riot
Perhaps the most pressing question of safety, though, surrounds Russia’s puzzling June 2013 anti-gay legislation, which bans the distribution of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” to minors. This includes any expression or support of non-heterosexual behaviour or relationships in public, in films, through conversation, or on the web — the latter of which will net you an increased fine and, unless you’re a local, an immediate deportation from Russia.
The passage of the law has resulted in a surge of homophobic violence, from public humiliation to private torture. Hundreds have been publicly beaten, insulted, harassed and, in some cases, murdered. Meanwhile, LGBT protests against the law have been met with violent reaction — often from Russian law enforcement.
The Pride House, a temporary location which accepts LGBT athletes, spectators, and organizers, will also be missing from Sochi’s Games. The tradition of the House began when Vancouver hosted the Games just four years ago, and has been carried on by London and during the UEFA Euro 2012 competition in Poland and Ukraine.
“Russia is trying very hard to make discrimination look respectable by calling it tradition,” Graeme Reid, LGBT Rights Program Director, told reporters. “It remains a discrimination, and a violation of the basic human rights of LGBT people.”
In a private meeting with opposition leaders on November 20, Putin denounced the homophobic behaviour his country had seen since the propaganda laws were enacted. “Xenophobia should not be fostered in society, no matter on what criterion it is based, including sexual orientation,” he said.
“I have heard a lot of criticism in my own address, but everything we did at the government and legislative level – all of this was connected to limitations on promotion among the underage.”
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As of this article’s publication, world leaders from Canada, the United States, Germany, France, and Switzerland have refused to attend the Olympic Games as a result of the nation’s human rights record. Putin’s attempt to blanket his government’s problematic relationship with NGOs and advocates has done little to dissuade the tension and bitter controversy that has come to define the Sochi Games, which draw nearer every day.
In Putin’s eyes, Russia is the world power it is today because of his own iron fisted rule. It’s his gumption that revitalized the Russian economy, his commitment that has solidified Russia’s political stability and resolved its disputes with Chechnyan rebel forces. But it’s an illusion — one that Putin himself almost certainly believes, and one that the Sochi Olympics are meant to reflect on the world stage.
Whether the Games succeed or not, Putin’s legacy will ultimately be defined by their outcome. He has a lot to gain, and even more to lose.
For Russia’s LGBT community, its dissidents, opposition leaders, political prisoners, and for Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina, the Sochi Olympics are part of an unfortunately time honoured tradition of devaluing human rights in Russia. Long after the last foreign diplomat has caught the plane home from the Games, these struggles will continue — in Russia’s homes, streets, offices, churches, and prisons, activists will continue to fight for those less fortunate than them.
For their part, the former Pussy Rioters have vowed not to take part in the Games, and have urged the rest of the world to join them. “I’m calling for a boycott,” Tolokonnikova told reporters in the blistering Siberian cold. “For honesty.”
