This week, Masha Alekhina, a member of the Russian dissident artist group Pussy Riot, was arrested in Moscow on charges of disseminating “propaganda of Nazi symbolism.” This is the second time Alekhina has been arrested for this alleged offense, and hers are part of a series of arrests the members of Pussy Riot have accumulated over the years. Last September, members over the group even released an NFT version of their sentencing documents in order to draw attention to the frequency with which they’ve been detained. Last summer, Pussy Riot members Alexander Sofeyev, Anna Kuzminykh and Veronika Nikulshina left Russia in order to evade the threat of near-constant arrests.
In the case of Alekhina’s latest arrest, the Pussy Riot member had evidently posted a photo on Instagram in 2015 that featured three women wearing hijabs accompanied by the words “Vodka Dudka Islam” and swastikas on either side. “In 2018, Lucy [Shtein] reposted a picture of a Kremlinbot with a photoshopped Nazi-fetch from a video clip against her, and in 2015, Masha posted a portrait of Lukashenko surrounded by Indian patterns that look like Swastiki,” a caption on an Instagram post on Alekhina’s account reads.
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“Neither is Nazism propaganda. The girls could not be counted in the FSIN inspection for several months to start counting down the term, but this is a different story (about the meaningless and merciless Russian bureaucracy).” Alekhina and fellow Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova also both spent nearly two years in prison for participating in a 2012 anti-Putin performance.
Members of Pussy Riot aren’t the only artists in Russia facing the threat of incarceration. Yulia Tsvetkova, a Russian feminist artist and LGBTQ advocate who was put on trial after being accused of distributing pornography, recently went on a hunger strike to publicize and garner public interest in the charges against her.
