I did my post-graduate degree in post-Soviet politics - looking at the forces against liberalisation after the attempted coup against Gorbachev in 1991.
One of the books I came across at the time - amongst the greatest books I have ever read - was The First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitysn. The story is set - over a few days -in a Prisoners' Labour Camp during the time of Stalin. As the tale unfolds, the reader comes to realise that the inmates are actually the ones who are free, and the guards and bureaucrats who rule over them, are the real prisoners. This is because , whilst the inmates have nothing to lose, the guards et al, live under a culture of fear and witch-hunts, knowing that they may be the victims of purges to come.
I thought of this book, over the past couple of days, when I heard about the story of the Pussy Riot Trial, currently going on in the Moscow High Court. Pussy Riot, (a kind of female Sex Pistols crossed with Russell Brand) is an anarchistic female pop group - that chose to perform an anti-Putin concert in a Russian Orthodox Church.
Under the cover of 'disrespect towards religion', members of the Group were imprisoned and now face a three year sentence. One of the group leaders, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova - in an uncanny echo of Solzhenitsyn - has argued in court that the members of her group, are freer than the prosecutors they face.
As The Guardian reports:
"Even though we are behind bars, we are freer than those people," she said, looking at the prosecution from inside the glass cage where she and her two bandmates, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, have spent the nine-day trial. "We can say what we want, while they can only say what political censorship allows".
The Trial of Pussy Riot begs the question as to whether Russia is retreating back into the Soviet days of The First Circle: A State which dissent is shut down through a mixture of threats and repression.
P.S. You can read more about the First Circle here. More details about Pussy Riot are on this BBC Weblink.
by Robert Halfon MP - Working Hard for Harlow.
by Robert Halfon MP - Working Hard for Harlow.
