Pussy Riot in the defendant dock: from left, Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, July 29, 2012.

Vladimir Putin does not like being criticized. He doesn’t like being accused of rigging the parliamentary elections or his own election this year. He doesn’t like the Ukraine telling him that they really don’t want to hand over control of their natural gas system in exchange for fair prices for the gas. He doesn’t like having Russia considered less important on the world stage than the economic juggernaut of China, so he’s backing the genocidal Syrian regime and forging “defense treaties” with China. Vladimir Putin was suckled at the breast of communist totalitarianism, infused throughout his early adult life with their ideology of single-party rule and complete control and began in his first round of being president to restore that system while retaining a veneer of democracy.

In the Putin regime’s latest affront to free people, three female musicians, members of the punk band Pussy Riot, are standing trial for an “unsanctioned performance.” In February, during the protests against the way the elections were being undermined by Putin’s party, Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Yekaterna Samutsevich, 29, entered Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral, strode up to the alter and prayed to the Virgin Marry to “throw Putin out!”

The Russian Orthodox hierarchy was furious. The church has enjoyed a revival in the years since the Soviet Union collapsed, and Putin supports the church’s independence as long as the church supports him. Patriarch Kirill had endorsed Putin for election for a second two-term occupancy of the presidency following a hiatus as Dimitri Medvedev’s prime minister and puppet master. Medvedev was frequently characterized as having his spine replaced with Putin’s right arm. The church wants greater influence over civil laws and called the stunt part of a campaign by “anti-Russian forces.”

The three women are being tried in the same Khamovniki Court where Putin’s prosecutors managed to railroad oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner to allow the government to seize control of Khodorkovsky’s holdings. Supporters for the band chanted “Girls, we’re with you!” and “Victory!” as they were escorted into the metal and glass defendant’s enclosure, each handcuffed to a female police officer.

The women have been charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred or hostility and face up to seven years in prison. They deny any animosity toward the church, and were simply engaging in political expression.

Their defense attorney, Violetta Volkova, read a statement handwritten by Tolokonnikova in which she said, “We did not want to offend anybody. Our motives were exclusively political. I have never had such feeling [of animosity] towards anyone in the world.” She described the charge of religious hatred as “wildly harsh.” “We are not enemies of Christianity. The opinion of orthodox believers is important to us and we want all of them to be on our side – on the side of anti-authoritarian civil activists. Our performance contained no aggression toward the public – only a desperate desire to change the situation in Russia for the better.”

Alyokhina’s statement said “I thought the church loved all its children, but it seems the church loves only those children who love Putin.”

In her statement, Samutsevich said that the prosecution is “the start of a campaign of authoritarian, repressive measures aimed to…spread fear among politically active citizens.”

Pussy Riot defines themselves as the avant-garde of the disenchanted of their generation, women who want a creative way to protest Putin’s 12-year (so far) dominance of life in Russia, with up to 12 more years in the presidency and another possible 12 behind Medvedev if they swap jobs again. They premiered this past winter with their protest lyrics and surprise performances and went viral with a performance outside the Kremlin on Red Square.

Stanislav Samutsevich said his daughter “looks like she has been on a long hunger strike. I think this is like an inquisition, like mockery.”

The state media reporter picked up every smile and whisper exchanged among the women and said, on-air, “Look at their faces. They are laughing and joking.” She suggested they were “continuing the action” from the cathedral. Prosecutors have asked that the trial be closed to the public. It is currently being streamed live on the internet. They fear a “rift in society” and say that the live stream puts the defendants at risk. The judge ordered the live streaming suspended during witness testimony, but kept the streaming going.

The prosecution is calling on persons who consider themselves “victims” of the performance. Lyubov Sokologorskaya, who works at the cathedral, is one of those “victims.” His attorney, Larisa Pavlova, argued that “This is not a question of our parlimentary or presidential elections, but a criminal case about….banal hooliganism with religious motives.” Her client described herself as a “profound believer”who was offended by anyone other than clergy at the cathedral’s altar, and said that the band’s bare shoulders, short skirts and “aggressive” dance moves violated church rules and offended the congregation. She testified that “When I talk about this event, my heart hurts. It hurts that this is possible in our country. Their punishment must be adequate so that never again is such a thing repeated.”

Since regaining office in May, Putin has enacted stricter punishments for “defamation” and tightened restrictions on foreign-based or funded civil rights groups. He has raised fines for disruption of public order at street rallies. Opposition leader like blogger Alexei Navalny and socialite Ksenia Sobchak have been subjected to repeated house searches and trips to the police station for questioning. Navalny’s attorney expects him to also be charged with a crime that would put him in prison for five years.

Speaking to the press in London where he is attending the Olympics, Prime Minister Dimitri Medvedev siad that it is up to court to decide if Pussy Riot’s performance was a “moral misdemeanor” or a crime. He called on all Russians to “be calm about” the trial and await the outcome. Few Russians, however, believe the courts are independent. They fully expected the judge to rule according to instructions from Putin.

Putin’s attitude toward freedom of speech and assembly makes one wonder if our satellites could pick up any activity that evidenced a re-building of those infamous KGB prisons in the Siberian Gulag. The way the Soviet Union fell, with no chance to transition, with no means to pay all those people who had received their paychecks from a government that owned everything, with all the subsequent chaos and rise of criminal organizations, and the rise of a “strong man” to rescue the nation right back to where it was before liberation, stands as a good example of how not to dismantle a communist state. If one takes a detached, objective look at the growth of private enterprise, the economic transitions being guided across the spectrum of the nations, what China and Cuba are doing is admirable. A communist government cannot survive in a free market economy, so transforming the economy will, in time, result in peaceful transition to a reformed government. The world just needs to be more patient than the Soviet people were in 1991.

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