Pussy Riot's Powerful Message to Vladimir Putin | Nadya Tolokonnikova | TED

Please,

stand up.

If you're able.

Thank you.

I want you to feel like I felt,

when I was getting sentenced.

It's August 17, 2012.

I’m handcuffed

and standing for four long hours while the judge is reading my sentence.

You're in a small cage

and you're surrounded by 10 prison guards in balaclavas.

There is also a guard dog who is barking at you angrily

because the dog is trained to be suspicious

towards people who smell like prison.

Even a nice little doge is angry at me.

I'm stripped down from my humanity.

I'm reduced to being just a prisoner.

I'm 22 and I smell like prison.

The prosecutor asked for three years in jail for me.

My crime is considered to be severe,

and it means that the judge can give me up to seven years in jail.

And as I'm standing here handcuffed behind the bars,

I’m thinking to myself:

Can one person change the world?

Is it even worth trying?

Or am I just setting myself up for failure?

Will I be able to achieve my dreams

or I'm going to be inevitably smashed by the system?

I ran away from home when I was 16 years old.

I jumped on a plane, went from Siberia to Moscow.

I was 16 and I was a dreamer.

And I knew that I want two things in life.

I want to be able to dream wildly

and to be able to make my utopian dreams come true.

For that, I knew I needed to be in Moscow.

I was studying philosophy

and I was stealing food and clothes in order to survive.

When I turned 22,

I got arrested for resisting to one of the most dangerous dictators

on planet Earth.

At the day of my arrest, my daughter turned four.

You can sit down if you want.

What is my crime exactly?

I sang a song.

"Virgin Mary, please get rid of Putin."

Me and four other members of Pussy Riot

came to Cathedral of Christ the Saviour,

and we preached to the people of Russia

from the holy place that for thousands of years

was reserved only for the male preachers

and, in particular, for the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church,

who today sends Russians to kill and to die in Ukraine.

We sang our song on February 21 of 2012.

We did it in response to Putin's announcement

that he wants to rule Russia pretty much indefinitely.

I dropped everything I was doing,

and I promised to myself

that I'm going to dedicate my life to resistance.

I felt deep inside me that Putin equals death,

medieval torture,

knife in the back, stagnation,

new Dark Ages for Russia.

To resist, we used our loud voices,

bright ski masks, dresses, courage,

commitment and performance art.

We would show up in public places,

unannounced, guerrilla style.

No permits at all.

And perform, preach.

We performed in government buildings, squares, shopping malls,

and we would get arrested almost every single day,

get out and go back to action.

Our job was to show the people of Russia that resisting is indeed an option.

The supreme, sacred,

holy rule in Putin's Russia

is to remain afraid.

We decided to break this rule.

By breaking this rule, we disrupted the game as such.

We exposed it as a mere game.

We said that the emperor is naked.

Did we achieve what we wanted?

As I'm standing behind the bars, handcuffed,

I'm asking myself this question.

Yes and no.

As I said in my closing statement,

we are behind the prison bars,

but we are freer than people who are prosecuting us

because we can say whatever we want to say

and they can say only things

that the government censorship allows them to say.

Despite of the global movement in support of Pussy Riot,

we got convicted to two years in jail.

The hell was in front of me.

I was forced to sew police and military uniforms

and I was getting injured while I was doing it.

But even in the darkest moments,

I knew that our fight is not over.

Two years later,

I will get out of jail.

And I will meet thousands of young Russians

who will tell me that they got inspired by our fight.

Over the next ten years,

Pussy Riot will build infrastructure, tools

and network for effective resistance.

In 2014, we started Mediazona.

It's unique in Russia, free of censorship,

[an] independent media outlet.

In 2022,

we raised seven million dollars in two days for Ukraine.

When reproductive rights became under attack in the United States,

we raised close to one million dollars for Planned Parenthood.

We started Unicorn DAO

and raised two million dollars to collect art made by women

and non-binary people.

I really wish I could tell all of this

to a 22-year-old version of myself

that is standing behind the bars,

separated from her family,

not knowing what's going to happen next.

Much work remains to be done.

My friends and family are getting beaten,

imprisoned,

poisoned,

tortured and murdered back home.

In March 2023,

I was put on Russia's most-wanted list.

I'm facing new criminal charges for the art I made.

Why?

Because I said that the emperor is naked

and because he is, in fact, naked,

he's scared of it.

We shattered the world of appearances

and we said that living a lie is indeed living a lie.

And it's dangerous for any dictatorship.

The reason why I became a threat to the system,

not because of any actual physical power that I have,

but because courage is contagious.

And any act of speaking the truth

can cause incalculable transformations in social consciousness.

And we all have this power.

It's a moral act to use this power.

You may or may not achieve the results that you wanted,

but there is eternal beauty

in trying to find truth,

in risking everything you've got for what's right,

stop calculating your profit

and just taking a leap of faith.

Courage is an ability to act in the face of fear.

And some of us

have chosen to live courageously.

For some of us, it's not a choice.

It's a matter of survival,

like for our Ukrainian friends.

Vladimir Putin became intimidated

by Ukraine choosing the path of freedom and democracy.

That's why the Russian army bombs maternity wards, schools, hospitals,

rapes and kills civilians and throws their bodies in mass graves.

Putin and everyone who supports him

are dead inside and they must be defeated.

And while I'm standing here,

I want to send a message to Vladimir Putin directly.

A wanted criminal to wanted criminal.

Vladimir Vladimirovich,

the Kremlin walls became your prison walls.

You have already lost.

You know it.

That's why you're so afraid.

You lost in spirit.

The world is on Ukraine's side.

The world is with the brave people of Ukraine.

And in your final hour,

when you pray

to whoever you're going to be praying to,

know that she is on our side.

She's on the side of truth.

(Applause)

And she's not going to forgive your crimes against humanity.

Yesterday, my friend,

my colleague and comrade Vladimir Kara-Murza

was sentenced to 25 years in jail

for publicly condemning the war in Ukraine

and Vladimir Putin's regime.

He said in his closing statement,

"I know that the day will come

when the darkness engulfing our country will dissipate.

This day will come as inevitably

as spring comes to replace even the frostiest winter."

And I'll finish my speech with words

of ... 22-year-old version of myself.

I said in my closing statement,

"Passion,

openness and naivete are superior to hypocrisy,

cunning and contrived decency that conceals crimes.

(In Russian) Open all doors,

take off the epaulettes,

feel the smell of freedom with us.”

Thank you.

(Applause and cheers)