Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Writing about people whom I cannot, for one reason or another, interview has become something of a specialty for me. It has taught me to cast a wide reporting net. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich all knew I was working on the book from the moment this project began, and each helped me collect information. Yekaterina sat for many hours of recorded interviews, allowed me to trail along with her some days as she went about living the life of a convicted felon on parole, and also provided me with documentation of all her legal battles. Nadezhda and Maria corresponded with me, answering my questions to the extent that time, their physical condition, and prison censors allowed. I was also fortunate to be able to meet with Nadezhda in the penal colony for nearly four hours in June 2013. Maria and her friends and family gave me access to letters she had written to them; excerpts from these letters are reproduced in this book with her permission. I attended most of the court hearings described or mentioned in the book; where I could not be physically present, I used audio and video recordings prepared by journalists or lawyers. Defense attorneys Mark Feigin, Nikolai Polozov, and Violetta Volkova not only sat for interviews but also gave me access to case documents, correspondence, and audio recordings. Defense attorney Irina Khrunova made herself available for interviews and accessible for running commentary before, after, and even during many legal proceedings. Friends and family of the three Pussy Riot convicts talked to me at length: all of their quotes in this book come from original interviews. Tasya Krugovykh shared film footage documenting the group’s history. Finally, I interviewed seven Pussy Riot participants other than the three whose names are known to the public; some but not all of them are quoted in this book. The one unfortunate omission are the two participants in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior action who were not arrested. I was forced to forgo interviewing them because one of them asked that I pay for the interview; I do not know whether she was asking for herself or for both of them, because the other one never responded to me directly. In the many months of intensive reporting for this book, this was the only interaction that contradicted the spirit of openness, accessibility, and free flow of information that had always marked Pussy Riot. The rest of the time, I was not only grateful for but often awed by the ability of Pussy Riot and their family and friends to maintain this spirit under the most trying of circumstances.