Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T13:31:19.072Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Pussy Riot as a feminist project: Russia's gendered informal politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Janet Elise Johnson
Janet Elise Johnson*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, USA
*
∗Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article considers Pussy Riot as a feminist project, placing their actions and the regime's reactions in the context of three post-9/11 developments in gender and sexuality politics in Russia. First, I assert that Pussy Riot's stunts are a logical reaction to the Kremlin's masculinity-based nation-rebuilding scheme, which was a cover for crude homophobic misogyny. Second, Pussy Riot is part of the informal feminism emerging in Russia, a response to nongovernmental organization (NGO) feminism and the regime's repression of NGO feminism, albeit likely to be outflanked by regime-supported thuggery. Third, the members of Pussy Riot were so harshly prosecuted because they - swearing, covered up and disloyal - violated the political cleaner role that the Kremlin has given women in the last few years. Feminist social scientists have long looked for politics outside of formal institutions and processes. The Pussy Riot affair makes clear how much gender is central to the informal politics that gender-blind observers of Russia have come to see as crucial to understanding Russia's regime.

Keywords

Russiafeminismprotestcivil societyNGOs
Type
Special Section: Pussy Riot
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , July 2014 , pp. 583 - 590
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akulova, Vera. 2013. “Pussy Riot: Gender and Class.” In Post-Post-Soviet? Art Politics and Society in Russia at the Turn of the Decade, edited by Dziewanska, Marta, Degot, Ekaterina, and Budraitskis, Ilya, 279–287. Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.Google Scholar
Bitten, Natasha, and Kerim-Zade, Tatiana. 2013. “The Duma and Russian Orthodox Church vs Feminism.” Open Democracy, October 14. http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/natasha-bitten-tatiana-kerim-zade/duma-and-russian-orthodox-church-vs-feminism Google Scholar
Carothers, Thomas. 2002. “The End of the of the Transition Paradigm.” Journal of Democracy 13(1): 5–21.Google Scholar
Cook, Linda J., and Nechemias, Carol. 2009. “Women in the Russian State Duma.” In Women in Power in Post-communist Parliament, edited by Rueschemeyer, Marilyn and Wolchik, Sharon L., 25–60. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Goetz, Anne Marie. 2007. “Political Cleaners: Women as the New Anti-corruption Force?” Development & Change, 38 (1): 87–105.Google Scholar
Goscilo, Helena, ed. 2013. Putin as Celebrity and Cultural Icon. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hemment, Julie. 2004. “The Riddle of the Third Sector: Civil Society, International Aid, and NGOs in Russia.” Anthropological Quarterly 77 (2): 215–241.Google Scholar
Johnson, Janet Elise, and Saarinen, Aino. 2011. “Assessing Civil Society in Putin's Russia: The Plight of Women's Crisis Centers.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 44 (1): 41–52.Google Scholar
Johnson, Janet Elise, and Saarinen, Aino. 2013. “Twenty-first-century Feminisms under Repression: Gender Regime Change and the Women's Crisis Center Movement in Russia.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 38 (3): 543–567.Google Scholar
Johnson, Janet Elise, and Zaynullina, Gulnara. 2010. “Global Feminism, Foreign Funding, and Russian Writing about Domestic Violence.” In Domestic Violence in Postcommunist States: Local Activism, National Policies, and Global Forces, edited by Fábián, Katalin, 78–110. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Kay, Rebecca. 2000. Russian Women and Their Organizations. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Kizenko, Nadieszda. 2013. “Feminized Patriarchy? Orthodoxy and Gender in Post-Soviet Russia.” Signs 38(3): 595–621.Google Scholar
Langston, Henry. 2012. “Meeting Pussy Riot.” Vice. http://www.vice.com/read/A-Russian-Pussy-Riot Google Scholar
Ledeneva, Alena V. 2013. Can Russia Modernise?: Sistema Power Networks and Informal Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mazzarino, Andrea. 2013. “Entrepreneurial Women and the Business of Self-development in Global Russia.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 38 (3): 623–645.Google Scholar
Pedersen, Lise Birk. 2012. Putin's Kiss. edited by Videodisc, Helle Faber. New York: Monday Production, in association with Made in Copenhagen and Kloos & Co. Medien.Google Scholar
Riot, Pussy. 2012. “Vyn’ Prezhde Brevno iz Tvoego Glaza i Togda Uvidish.” [First cast out the beam out of thine own eye and then shalt thou see (Matthew 7.5)], 23 May. http://pussy-riot.livejournal.com/12658.html Google Scholar
Riot (Punk rock group)., Pussy 2013. Pussy Riot!: A Punk Prayer for Freedom: Letters from Prison, Songs, Poems, and Courtroom Statements, Plus Tributes to the Punk Band That Shook the World. Kindle ed. New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York.Google Scholar
Rivkin-Fish, Michele. 2010. “Pronatalism, Gender Politics, and the Renewal of Family Support in Russia: Toward a Feminist Anthropology of ‘Maternity Capital'.” Slavic Review 69 (3): 701–724.Google Scholar
“Russia: ‘Foreign Agents’ Law Hits Hundreds of NGOs: Periodically Updated List of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) Victimized under the ‘Foreign Agents’ Law.” 2013. Human Rights Watch, August 26. http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/14/russia-foreign-agents-law-hits-hundreds-ngos-updated-august-26-2013 Google Scholar
Saarinen, Aino, Ekonen, Kirsti, and Upsenskaia, Valentina. 2014. Women and Transformation in Russia. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sakwa, Richard. 2011. The Crisis of Russian Democracy: The Dual State Factionalism and the Medvedev Succession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Semenova, Elena. 2011. “Ministerial and Parliamentary Elites in an Executive-Dominated System: Post-soviet Russia 1991–2009.” Comparative Sociology 10 (6): 908–927.Google Scholar
“‘Send a dildo to Vladimir Putin’ Facebook group suggests LGBTs protest Russian President.” 2013. HuffPost Gay Voices, August 8. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/vladimir-putin-dildos-lgbt-russia_n_3689595.html Google Scholar
Sperling, Valerie. 2012. “Nashi Devushki: Gender and Political Youth Activism in Putin's and Medvedev's Russia.” Post-Soviet Affairs 28 (2): 232–261.Google Scholar
Temkina, Anna. 2013. “Nastaishchii muzhchina” [The real man]. Polit.ru, June 12. http://polit.ru/article/2013/06/12/temkina/ Google Scholar
Faer, Varvara. 2013. “Pussy Riot-The Sequel.” A witness theatre performance, March 13, 2013. Teatro, Italian Academy, New York City.Google Scholar
“V Russkoi tserkvi sovetuiut rossiiankam vesti sebia bolee bladopristoino” [Russian churches recommend that Russian women dress more conservatively]. 2010. Interfax, December 17. http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=38771 Google Scholar
Walby, Sylvia. 2011. The Future of Feminism. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Whitmore, Brian. 2013. “A Year of Cultural Warfare, from Pussy Riot to ‘Mizulina's List'.” The Power Vertical for Radio Free Europe, August 15. http://www.rferl.org/content/from-pussy-riot-to-mizulinas-list-russia-culture-war-ksenia-sobchak/25076703.htm Google Scholar
Wood, Elizabeth. 2012. “Putin, Masculinity, and the Protests in 2011-2.” Accessed June 14, 2012. http://nanovic.nd.edu/events/2012/02/17/9807-putin-masculinity-and-protests-in-2011-2012-why-the-spectacle-is-falling-apart-2-2/, online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEoPDOH_wHc Google Scholar
“Zhenshchiny—sushchestva vtorogo sort?” [Women—second class citizens?]. 2011. Pravda.ru, March 10. http://www.pravda.ru/faith/religions/orthodoxy/10-03-2011/1069463-adamieva-0/ Google Scholar