Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova Tells Protestors What to Do–and Not Do–If Arrested by Authoritarian Police

Note: If the sub­ti­tles don’t play auto­mat­i­cal­ly, please click the “cc” at the bot­tom of the video.

Oli­garchic regimes built on cor­rup­tion and naked self-inter­est don’t typ­i­cal­ly exhib­it much in the way of cre­ativ­i­ty when respond­ing to crises of legit­i­ma­cy. The most recent chal­lenge to the oli­garchic rule of Vladimir Putin, for exam­ple, after the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion and jail­ing of his rival, anti-cor­rup­tion activist Alex­ey Naval­ny, revealed “the regime’s utter lack of imag­i­na­tion and inabil­i­ty to plan ahead,” writes Masha Gessen at The New York­er, and seems to promise an open­ing for a rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ment.

Per­haps it’s safer to say, Joshua Yaf­fa writes, “that Russ­ian pol­i­tics are mere­ly enter­ing the begin­ning of a pro­tract­ed new phase,” that will involve more large, coor­di­nat­ed mass protests against the “per­ceived impuni­ty and law­less­ness of Putin’s sys­tem,” such as hap­pened all over the coun­try in recent days: “In St. Peters­burg, a siz­able crowd blocked Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main thor­ough­fare. Sev­er­al thou­sand gath­ered in Novosi­birsk, the largest city in Siberia. Even in Yakut­sk, a far­away region­al cap­i­tal, where the day’s tem­per­a­tures reached minus fifty-eight degrees Fahren­heit, a num­ber of peo­ple came out to the cen­tral square.”

Footage from the protests “shows activists pelt­ing Russ­ian riot police and vehi­cles with snow­balls,” Dazed reports. Mas­sive, in-real-life protests have been orga­nized and sup­port­ed by online activists on Tik Tok, YouTube, and oth­er social media sites, where young peo­ple like viral teenag­er Neu­rol­era share tips—such as pre­tend­ing to be an indig­nant Amer­i­can—that might help pro­tes­tors avoid arrest. In one video call­ing on young stu­dents to attend Saturday’s protests, a young woman holds a book, and cap­tions “explain how she is read­ing about how cit­i­zens’ rights are guar­an­teed,” writes Bren­dan Cole at Newsweek. “But wait!” she says in one cap­tion, “In Rus­sia things hap­pen dif­fer­ent­ly.”

Russ­ian cit­i­zens, and espe­cial­ly young activists, do not walk into protest sit­u­a­tions unpre­pared for arrest and detention—particularly those who fol­low long­time trou­ble-mak­ers Pussy Riot, famous for stag­ing flam­boy­ant anti-Putin protests and get­ting arrest­ed. In the video at the top, the band/activist collective’s Nadya Tolokon­niko­va explains “how to behave when you’re arrest­ed.” Deten­tion “is an unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence,” she says, but it need not “end up being such a trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ence.” One must con­quer fear with knowl­edge. Dur­ing her first arrest, “I was scared because I felt that the police offi­cers held an enor­mous pow­er over me. That’s not true.”

The Eng­lish trans­la­tion seems inex­act and many of the intri­ca­cies of Russ­ian law will not trans­late to oth­er nation­al con­texts. Woven through­out the video, how­ev­er, are gen­er­al­ly pru­dent tips—like not adding crim­i­nal charges by attack­ing police dur­ing arrest. Last year, the group dis­trib­uted anti-sur­veil­lance make-up tips also use­ful to activists every­where. The viral spread of videos like Pussy Riot’s and Neurolera’s tuto­r­i­al show us a world­wide desire for youth­ful hope and deter­mi­na­tion in the face of bru­tal real­i­ties. Yaf­fa describes the “scenes of police employ­ing brute force” that filled his Russ­ian-lan­guage social media dur­ing the protests:

In one such video, from St. Peters­burg, a woman con­fronts a col­umn of riot police­men drag­ging a pro­test­er by his arms and asks, “Why are you arrest­ing him?” One of the police offi­cers kicks her in the chest, knock­ing her to the ground. Watch­ing these scenes, I couldn’t help but think of Belarus, where months of street protests against the rule of Alexan­der Lukashen­ka have been marked by bru­tal­i­ty and tor­ture by the secu­ri­ty forces, and a remark­able will­ing­ness from pro­test­ers to fight back against riot police, at times forc­ing them to retreat or aban­don mak­ing an arrest.

These images do not spread so read­i­ly in Eng­lish-lan­guage media, per­haps giv­ing a super­fi­cial impres­sion that the cur­rent anti-Putin, pro-Naval­ny move­ment is a new, young online phe­nom­e­non, rather than the con­tin­u­a­tion of a bat­tle-hard­ened resis­tance to twen­ty years of mis­rule. “Throw­ing the book at Naval­ny could spark protests of unde­ter­mined strength and longevi­ty,” Yaf­fa argues, from which mass move­ments around the world draw inspi­ra­tion for years to come.

via Dazed

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A His­to­ry of Pussy Riot: Watch the Band’s Ear­ly Performances/Protests Against the Putin Regime

Slavoj Žižek & Pussy Riot’s Nadezh­da Tolokon­niko­va Exchange An Extra­or­di­nary Series of Let­ters

Pussy Riot Releas­es First Video in a Year, Tak­ing on Russ­ian Oil Prof­its and Oth­er High-Pro­file Tar­gets

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness