Appeal by Cultural and Arts Figures of the Russian Federation On June 20, Moscow’s Tagansky District Court extended the pretrial detention of the members of Pussy Riot. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich have been held in a pretrial detention center since March of this year. They have been charged under Article 213, Part 2 of the Russian Criminal Code, which carries a sentence of up to seven years in prison. We, the undersigned, differ in our assessment of the moral and ethical aspects of the February action in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, but: – We believe that Pussy Riot’s actions do not constitute a criminal offense. The young women did not kill anyone, rob anyone, commit violence, destroy anyone else’s property, or steal anything. Russia is a secular state, and no anti-clerical actions, unless they fall under specific articles of the Criminal Code, can be grounds for criminal prosecution. – We believe that the criminal case against Pussy Riot discredits the Russian judicial system and undermines trust in state institutions as a whole. All the while the participants in the action remain in custody, an atmosphere of intolerance is growing in society, leading to division and radicalization. – We see no legal grounds or practical sense in continuing to isolate these young women from society, since they pose no real danger. Especially given that two of them are young mothers. – We are convinced that Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich must be released from custody, and that their case should either be dropped or reclassified from a criminal matter to an administrative offense. A whole lot of signatures. The social and political views of some of the signatories (on other issues) are enough to make you sick, but this letter is a good thing. And it gets the emphasis right: Pussy Riot committed petty hooliganism; many people find it deeply offensive, but petty hooliganism is still what it was. A four-month detention and the investigation’s absurdly accusatory bent discredit the legal and judicial system. A person who drives drunk is a million times more dangerous than PR. But he gets three days in jail, while they sit under investigation for months. Obviously, if they had been singing not about Putin but about Cheburashka (a popular Soviet/Russian cartoon character), they would have gotten three days too (or just a fine), but they sang about Putin. And it is Putin who is keeping them under arrest. As is fashionable now on this subject, I should add: “as an Orthodox Christian.” So then, as an Orthodox Christian, I believe this entire political-criminal process is doing enormous damage to the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church. And the longer it goes on, the worse it gets. The everyday framing of the discussion is shifting toward: “the priests are keeping girls with small children in prison.” I do not want that, and I find that kind of discussion unpleasant. And all those people shouting, “Throw them in prison, prison, lock them up for a hundred years,” are no different from the dangerous fanatic freaks who attacked embassies over cartoons, shoot women with paintball guns (for not wearing headscarves) in Grozny, or jail someone for a Facebook post saying “There is no God.” Not every offensive act should be punished with imprisonment. Anyone who does not understand that belongs up a tree. Yesenin wrote obscene ditties on the walls of Strastnoy Monastery (a historic Moscow monastery). So what—should he stop being an icon of Russian culture because of that? Or should he be imprisoned posthumously? Pussy Riot, like all people, deserve a proper investigation, a fair trial, and preventive measures proportionate to the danger they actually pose to society. Not this trash, where the investigative expert report cites “the 15th rule of the Council of Laodicea,” adopted in the 4th century. At least M[alleus Maleficarum] ({ {URL_5}}) isn’t being quoted in the indictment—otherwise they’d have burned Tolokonnikova at the stake right there on Tekhnichesky Lane outside the Investigative Committee building, where every other investigator once took college exams in “scientific atheism” and now is suddenly so concerned about the “undermining of spiritual foundations.”