Maria Alyokhina, Russian punk activist: The price of political art was prison

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? the History Bureau Putin and the Apartment Bombs listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts with the European Athletics Championships the Men's FIFA World Cup and the Commonwealth Games all taking place 2026 is shaping up to be a terrific year for global sport and the More Than The Score podcast will be following all the action bringing you interviews with sports stars and exploring the stories beyond the score sheets with the BBC's expert sports journalists More Than The Score from the BBC World Service.

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1:15Hello, I'm Vitaly Shevchenko, BBC presenter, and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC. People shaping our world from all over the world. I'm disappointed in him. I had a deal done four times and then you go home and you see just attack a nursing home in Kiev. I said, what the hell was that all about? I was still in an induced coma in hospital when the world was defining me, but I was still 15 years old and I did not know who I was. I love singing and so my goal was always to do better and better at it. Today we are spending trivians on war and peanuts on peace.

1:56For this interview, I met Maria Alekhina, the Russian activist and band member of the punk feminist protest group Pussy Riot. You're going to hear about her arrest after the band's anti-Putin protest in a Moscow church in 2012, her punk prayer, and her two years incarcerated in a penal colony. Conditions were unrelentingly harsh, with temperatures dropping to minus 35 degrees Celsius in winter. Other prisoners were banned from speaking to her. Some listeners may be distressed by some of the graphic details of her treatment. She was freed in 2013 under an amnesty ahead of the Sochi Winter Olympics and immediately continued her activism, including advocating for prisoners' rights in Russia.

2:42Her support for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny led to another criminal case against her in 2021, and she was placed under house arrest and under surveillance. Maria tells me about her dramatic escape from Russia the following year. Despite everything that followed their punk prayer, Maria stands by her decision to protest in the way she did. One of the goals of political art is to ask uncomfortable questions and raise an attention to make the situation which already exists more clear and more visible. So at this point, I'm sure that many people understood that Vladimir Putin is a dictator.

3:22Yes, the price is the real present term, but the situation became more visible, more clear. Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Maria Alekhina. Pussy Riot is anti-dictatorship art and it started in the end of 2011 when Putin announced that he is going to run for the third term, which actually became point of no return for Russia and for Ukraine also. There was a large protest movement of people across the country who were protesting on the streets, completely different people. My first action with Pussy Riot was on the Red Square. And then we were reacting to the situation when Putin started to use the church for a proof for his endless presidency.

4:20So we wrote a sarcastic song, Mother Mary Benish Putin, reflecting on the events which were happening that time on the collaboration of church and the state. And we managed to perform 40 seconds of the song in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Moscow's most important cathedral. Yeah, Moscow main place for Putin's promotion. And then they opened a criminal case, which was surprising. We've been first artists activists who've been in prison for real prison term because of our protest against Putin. So you were charged with hooliganism. Motivated by religious hatred. And you were sentenced to a two year jail sentence.

5:10You didn't expect that? No, we didn't. We didn't expect a criminal case, real prison term. So they came to my real address next day after the bank prayer. A guy in plain clothes was waiting for me on the stairs when I was coming home with my small son. So tomorrow a lawyer came to the police office and said to run because the criminal case was opened. And a week of adventures in conspiracy apartments, and then they caught us. From the, I think, the second day of imprisonment, I knew that it would be a real prison term if I would not sign the papers that I'm kind of guilty and apologize, which I didn't want to do.

6:04I declared hunger strike. like first hunger strike in my life in Petrovka which is like a brutal competition. One of the main police buildings in Moscow. Yeah, an oldest. Almost two years in that remote colony near the Ural Mountains. What was it like? So Russian prison system is different from Western one. We have a legacy of GULAG, actual post-GULAG system. It's a network of penal colonies which are labor camps during the pre-trial and trial investigation you held in jail, like building with cells, but after you received the sentence, they send you to penal colony. The transportation takes around a month, but because of the system, you go to police van, stalipin wagon, police van, like jail.

6:59Then again, car, wagon, car, jail. so the whole trip takes a month because they held you in transportation jails and the road and you don't know where you're going, you don't know when it will finish and what is the final destination it's Soviet Union system and during transportation this is the most kind of fragile for the person period because they can kill you there are no cameras, there is nothing. Anyway I was sent to penal colony number 28 It's located near Berezniki town. It's quite cold there. It's like minus 35 Celsius in winter. And on the second week, I went to Human Rights Commission and said that the state does not provide to women warm clothes.

7:49So they locked me to solitary confinement, like for four and a half months. So my first calling received a lot of problems from Moscow because of my existence there. and they sent me to another penal colony, to Nizhginovgorod, from where I've been released. Did you get special treatment? I mean, better or worse, given that you were a special prisoner? Yes, we can say like that. That was prohibited to talk with me. the guy with video camera was always like nearby filming my every step so penal colony is different from the prison so it looks like a strange village divided into two parts in the living part living zone there are barracks so 100 women live together sleep in one room two toilets or three toilets without borders, no hot water, kitchen with one fridge.

8:54The working zone is a fabric where prisoners showing police uniform and uniform for Russian army having two pounds per month. And no one speaks to you? Yeah, like it was prohibited to speak to me. But after this fight for warm clothes and basically fight for the disgrace of working day like put it to normal eight hours i think people managed to give me like small pieces of paper with thank you which was very nice fellow inmates yeah but this is like i mean there there are a number of um things which they can do to press you like i don't know when they found out that we are going to the court with my lawyer against them they started to search me before every visit to the lawyer and full search like requires gynecological chair and they don't use gloves so you spend almost all of your term in what remains of the gulag system and after your release you carried out more protest actions until you left russia yeah so basically putin wrote a special vip amnesty because olympic gates being held in russia in 2014 and there were questions from western politicians about political prisoners about us, about Khodorkovsky, about activists, ecology activists from Arctic Sunrise.

10:38And he wrote an act of amnesty for us. Quite Hippocratic paper being named for, like, mothers of children who, like, committed heavy crimes. And hooliganism motivated by religious hatred is so-called heavy crime. So five people from the whole country being released on this so-called amnesty. And I didn't want to go out. I don't want to go out from the penal colony because Putin wrote some amnesty. Can you tell us about why you left Russia and how? Let's start with how. I had second criminal case opened 2021 because I wrote an Instagram post with the call to go to the protest when Navalny came back and went to protest.

11:36So they caught me, took my documents, my international passport, put an electronic anky to my leg and locked to house arrest. Then several months later, they started to lock me to detention center for 15 days. so in a year I was like locked six times for 15 days with electronic Anki. During one of these 15 days I've heard the announce of the full-scale invasion. One hour Putin's speech from the radio in a cell where I was alone somehow. I realized that it would be a war. then I was released from this detention center and then like locked again so first months of the war I spent in detention center in the cell full of cool people actually best people random girls who went to the protest against the war and I was the only one who just went out because my last year they were just imprison me for just existence in the country i wanted to help ukraine i mean as much as i can at the same time i desperately didn't want to go out from my country for forever and i understood that if you run from the criminal case you run not forever but like for for a long time you would not like come back legally so you escaped from house arrest disguised yeah i had to change clothes to the delivery service uniform and we have thousands of couriers you know delivering food because apartment was surrounded by political police i had to like make some stuff like leaving the phone using the back door, change clothes, go to the secret place where the car was waiting, go to Belarus and make this attempt by attempt to cross the border legally because I didn't want to go through the forest because I had the hope to come back.

13:57You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service, people shaping our world from all over the world. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? the History Bureau Putin and the apartment bombs listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts with the European Athletics Championships the Men's FIFA World Cup and the Commonwealth Games all taking place 2026 is shaping up to be a terrific year for global sport and the More Than The Score podcast will be following all the action bringing you interviews with sports stars and exploring the stories beyond the score sheets with the BBC's expert sports journalists More Than The Score from the BBC World Service.

15:05Listen now. Search for More Than The Score wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

15:16For this episode of The Interview, I'm speaking to Maria Alekhina. Maria turned up for The Interview wearing a patch that said freedom or death in Ukrainian. A Russian who very publicly supports Ukraine and opposes Vladimir Putin, that's a rare combination. And she has paid the price for her opposition to the Kremlin, spending almost two years in jail and having to leave her country. During the interview, she took long pauses before answering some of my questions, lost in thought. Maria is 0 % hot air, 100 % sincerity, a true punk rocker. Okay, let's return to my conversation with Maria Alekhina.

15:58Looking back at what you were doing back in Russia, you and other opponents of Vladimir Putin, do you ever get the feeling of, you know, the punk prayer, what preceded it and what followed it? It was kind of futile, wasn't it? given how much in control Vladimir Putin is of Russia at the moment? It depends on what we call work. So basically the goal, like not the goal, but like for my opinion, one of the goals of political art is to ask uncomfortable questions and raise an attention to make the situation which already exists more clear and more visible. So at this point, I'm sure that many people in the country and here in the West understood that Vladimir Putin is dictator.

17:00Yes, the price is the real prison term, but the situation became more visible, more clear and more loud, I would say. we are not i'm not the government i don't have tanks i don't have army i don't have missile rockets i cannot like put the personal missile like attack to the body of vladimir putin i have my body i have my voice i have things which i lived and living through and by doing that I can share what was and is happening. This is what I can do. And I can not be indifferent, not stay aside. So as a person and as, like, I don't know, artist, this is something, I mean, this is not zero. so at this point i think we we managed to show what is this regime about and not only by prayer i mean i wanted to collect all the adventures which happened after to show that it's not one day when the country can be turned into the fascist state.

18:36It's not one moment. It's not just immediately you wake up and, hello, this is the totalitarian state. It's a way. It's a slow, patient, painful way to get people used to live like that. So tell us more about your book, Political Girl. What's in it?

19:27it's kind of the way to like the road to hell basically which put in forced people to go through and what was happening on this road my view is that russia went from a time when it was possible to protest, even at, you know, very, very grave danger to the protesters, to a time when protest is, well, impossible. You are going down, you're going to jail just by liking the wrong sort of post on social media. How did that happen? that's why i wanted to collect all of that together uh there were different moments and there is no one answer to to how it happened there are methods of silencing people and taking freedoms and hope out of them for example 2014 so we've been released we went to Sochi Olympic using opportunity that we've been released two months before the end of the term because of Olympic Games we decided to go to Olympic Games and make an action And you were flogged by Ozaks We've been beaten for the first time we've been beaten there no reaction from the West everyone like you know just cover the story and continue to shake hands with these people then they annex Crimea no reaction then And it was happening, like events were happening one by one, like very fast, starting the war in Ukraine.

21:15Do you feel let down by the West? It's not letting down. It's basically like there are a lot of jokes about how deeply concerned European Union is. and that's, yeah, like these are the conditions. In Russia there is a fear, in the West there is an indifference. So your book is called Political Girl. Who are you now? Are you a political girl? Are you a punk rocker still? Are you a journalist? Who are you? I never, well, I was studying journalist and creative writing, but yeah, I'm a punk in my heart. I would like never, it's not like a musical genre for me. I live like this. And I don't think that I would like live differently ever.

22:06Speaking about being political or not being political, we are all political. Even if you make a decision to keep silent, you make a political decision of indifference. And recently, a month ago, I received 13 years and 15 days of prison term on the article of fakes about Russian army because of the anti-war song, Mama Don't Watch TV, and performance in German museum, Binnakothek, where we were shouting the names of the companies, German companies, who have contracts with FSB and with Russian Army in providing microchips. So after that performance and after that clip was published, Mom Don't Watch TV, your mom, who is still in Moscow, her flat was searched by the security services.

23:08Yes, my mom's apartment and my father's apartment and my father died months later after that. And you couldn't go to his funeral? Funeral on Telegram and after funeral on Zoom. Interesting dystopian experience. I wanted to come back to the question of home. What is your home? Do you still think, still feel Russia is your home and will be forever?

23:38well

23:44I don't know about forever but I think I yes I feel but

23:55it's three years since I crossed the border even a little bit more than three years so and I know what was happening and like I'm in permanent contact with families of political prisoners with my mom so I highly likely know what is now there it changed so I was like leaving another even like during these three years country changed so it's a difficult question

24:36it always will be a life without like part of the heart many people like many ukrainians don't physically have home because that was bombed or people from occupied territories who ran away

24:57thank you for listening to the interview from the bbc world service You'll find more in-depth conversations on The Interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts, including episodes with author Sir Salman Rushdie, former US Vice President Kamala Harris and education activist Malala Yousafzai. Until next time, bye for now.

25:29If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. With the European Athletics Championships, the Men's FIFA World Cup and the Commonwealth Games all taking place, 2026 is shaping up to be a terrific year for global sport.

26:14And the More Than The Skull podcast will be following all the action. bringing you interviews with sports stars and exploring the stories beyond the score sheets with the BBC's expert sports journalists. More Than The Score from the BBC World Service. Listen now. Search for More Than The Score wherever you get your BBC podcasts.