Gordy Grundy likes his “Putini,” shaken not stirred—one part Lillet Blanc wine, two parts Pussy Riot Vodka, garnished with lemon and a cheers to activism.

As appetizing as the drink might sound, the satirical Pussy Riot Vodka cocktails created by Grundy and his colleague Michael Delgado aim to incite awareness, not belligerence, for the Russian punk-rock band arrested one year ago today.

“Right now is the time we have to keep talking and bringing attention to them,” said Grundy, a Los Angeles-based artist.  “What they're doing is so brave.”

This time last year, four young women dressed in brightly colored ski masks and combat boots performed a “punk prayer” at one of Moscow’s most famous cathedrals, protesting the soon-to-be reelected president Vladimir Putin. The song barely concluded before the authorities detained three of the band members.

In the months that followed, as the women of Pussy Riot awaited trial, their faces became synonymous with the ongoing political unrest in Russia.  Their story resonated with millions, capturing a global audience and support from across the world.

“When it first happened, I was really outraged by it,” Grundy said.  “Their stuff, which was tame in so many ways, the fact that they've been punished the way they have been was just shocking to me.”

When Grundy heard about the members of Pussy Riot being arrested for an expression of political dissent, he felt compelled to support his fellow artists. 

He first attempted to find a group of women to recreate the Pussy Riot “punk prayer” in a church here in the United States. When that failed to happen, Grundy and Delgado turned to the next best idea—Pussy Riot Vodka. 

“Half the fun of this is that people really think it is a product,” said Grundy, who first wrote about the project for the Huffington Post and had it temporarily taken down because it was mistaken as self-advertising.

The sardonic art project is meant only to bring more awareness to the women behind bars and it disclaims any affiliation with the artist-activists known as Pussy Riot.

At PussyRiotVodka.com, recipes for cocktails such as the Putini, the Cosmonaut and the Medvedev all contain “Pussy Riot Vodka,” along with other derisions aimed at Russian culture.  But the site also provides visitors with ways to learn more about the case and outlets to actively become involved.  

“What's happening in Russia is a dictatorship,” Grundy said.  “People are trying to slow Putin down but he just keeps shoving them in a trash chute.  Anything that we can to do to support Pussy Riot is valuable.”

Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, and Maria Alyokhina, 24, were the three band members taken into custody on February 21, 2012.  

Samutsevich was later granted release after hiring a new lawyer for the appeal hearing who successfully agued that she did not participate in the performance because church guards captured her before she started playing the guitar.

But Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were sent to prison camps where they still remain.

Alyokhina has spent the past three months in solitary after receiving threats, while Tolokonnikova's previous health conditions have worsened since bring imprisoned.  Both women have young children and are currently fighting to suspend their prison sentence.  

ALSO SEE: Pussy Riot Members Sent To Prison Camps

Standing before the alter at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, the riot grrrl inspired band performed their “punk prayer,” protesting President Putin and the allegedly corrupt government that looked to reelect him for a third term.

“Virgin Mary, Mother of God, banish Putin, banish Putin,” proclaimed the girls in their punk rock ballad.  “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, we pray thee, banish him!”

Only 40 seconds passed before the guards took hold of the petite women.  Kicking and flailing, they resisted the arrest before falling to their knees and anointing their bodies with the sign of the cross—a gesture that appears in the video both inherent and sincere.

The beautiful fair-skin faces unveiled by the masks met the harsh political reality they themselves set out to dissent.  Post-Soviet Russia sounds far more progressive than it stands, and Pussy Riot has come forward as the emblem for youth in revolt. 

Ken Paulson, the president and chief executive officer of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, works to educate on the protected freedoms of speech and expression.  He agreed that the international attention of Pussy Riot helps the world see problems of repression in Russia and shows younger generations, especially in the U.S., that not all freedoms are universal.

“The story had appeal on many levels.  It involved young people, it involved rock and roll and it involved a repressive government—all of that is going to get a lot of attention,” he said.  “The challenge really is to define what actually happened in this case.”

On the day they were arrested a video of the demonstration went viral via social media, blending a montage of the routine with sound bites from the anti-Putin song.

Today, the video has reached almost 2.5 million views on YouTube.

The three women awaited a lengthy trial on charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” with a maximum sentence of seven years in prison for acting as a group.  Placed in jail within weeks of their arrest, the band members waited almost six months before hearing the court’s verdict.

In that time, protest erupted on the streets of Russia and the international community deemed the scandal a matter of basic human rights pertaining to freedom of speech and expression.  Outside of the court during their trial, supporters mimicked the bands demonstration in the same brightly colored fashion yelling, “Free Pussy Riot!”

Numerous western celebrities became outspoken about the unjust treatment of Pussy Riot, including Madonna, Sting and Yoko Ono.  Endorsed by the human rights organization Amnesty International, the three band members have been declared “Prisoners of Conscience,” spotlighting the case as Amnesty’s most recent effort in the battle for freedom of expression.  

“As an artist, I'm so grateful that we have free speech and the Pussy Riot case reminded me that we have it,” Grundy said.  “It's something that we just can't take for granted.”

While artists and musicians lambaste the Russian government for restricting a person’s creative right to self-expression, the greater threat of silencing speech resonates with Russia’s dark history of oppressive political forces.  The ability of Russian courts to imprison Pussy Riot for speaking out against President Putin is an opportunity to make an example out of their political dissident and scare others from acting similarly through judicial threat.

Therefore, Pussy Riot is more than a local feminist rock band—they are political combatants in an oppressive and authoritarian government. 

In Russia, the crime of “hooliganism” could have put the women in jail for up to seven years.  Russia’s criminal code defines hooliganism in article 213 as “the flagrant violation of public order expressed by a clear disrespect for society.” 

The definition divides the crime in two parts: hooliganism committed with a weapon and hooliganism committed for reasons of politics, ideology, racism, nationalism, religious hatred, or enmity with respect to any social group.  Pussy Riot faced charges based on the latter.

While Russia’s intolerance for political dissidence is no secret, the punishment for protestors rarely amounts to charges of hooliganism. But Pussy Riot became susceptible to the crime when they decided to act inside the Russian Orthodox Church—the country’s most popular religion.  

But new laws have been put forward in Russia since the girls' demonstration that give authorities more power to smother political activitism, according to Amensty International.

A guilty verdict for the band was widely expected by observers and the only punishment for hooliganism is “deprivation of freedom,” usually in the form of imprisonment, and prosecutors were demanding a sentence of three years.  After President Putin weighed in with his suggestion, the court issued each band member a two-year sentence.

On August 17, the court reached a verdict while the band members sat side-by-side in an enclosed glass box within the courtroom.  Their headstrong glares of indifference met the eyes of court officials from outside the transparent cube as they read the women the judicial decision.

ALSO SEE: Pussy Riot Band Sentenced To Prison

In their closing statements, the women spoke freely to the public one last time.  The messages have since been republished internationally as poignant letters of their repressed voices.

Tolokonnikova, the most outspoken of the members throughout the trial, condemned the authoritarian Russian government in her closing message.

“To my deepest regret, this mock trial is close to the standards of the Stalinist troikas,” she said.  “Who is to blame for the performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and for our being put on trial after the concert?  The authoritarian political system is to blame.  What Pussy Riot does is oppositional art or politics.  In any event, it is a form of civil action in circumstances where basic human rights, civil and political freedoms are suppressed.”

In their case, Pussy Riot openly blamed Putin and the Church for orchestrating the trial.  They claimed the powers at be used their “punk prayer” to serve as an example of what will happen to those who openly protest the administration.

Sending the band members to jail did in fact silence their dissent with government officials. The Russian attorneys representing the members of Pussy Riot suggested the likelihood of these political intentions when they visited a panel at New York University in late September after the women’s verdict had been read. 

Co-defense team attorney Violetta Volkova explained that the offense of “hooliganism,” which the band members were charged with, even in a sacred space like the Church, would normally amount to a monetary fine in Russia.

Disrupting liturgy, breaking objects and stripping might have warranted a greater punishment, but nothing of that nature came about in Pussy Riot’s 40 second stunt below the alter, she added.

Attorney Mark Feygin reiterated the political motivation behind the women’s actions and the extremity of imprisonment.  

“It was a short political action that should have been handled administratively with them paying a fine,” he told the crowd of students, teachers, lawyers and artists gathered at the NYU panel.  “But no one cared, so they were just imprisoned.”

He added that because of the authoritarian powers at hand, politics trump laws.

Paulson related the conviction to how it would stand in a U.S. court by asserting there’s no parallel charge of “hooliganism” in our country.

“Perhaps disorderly conduct,” he suggested.  “But no one’s gone to prison for something like that.” 

However, political dissident in the U.S. has not always been forgiving.  In 1968 when David O’Brien burned his draft card on the steps of a Boston courthouse to protest the Vietnam War, the Court ruled that regardless of the action’s symbolic meaning, it was illegal at the time to burn a draft card.  O’Brien was sentenced to six years in prison.

During the Vietnam War, 46 men were indicted for burning their draft cards at demonstrations and four major court cases were heard.  But O’Brien’s case became the most well known Supreme Court decision of the era because it placed the power of federal law above the right to freedom of speech.

Many years later, the Supreme Court offset the widely criticized O’Brien decision, granting legal leniency in a case that drew an equal amount of the country’s attention.  

At the Republican National Convention of 1984, Gregory Lee Johnson participated in a demonstration against the Regan Administration by burning the American flag—an act prohibited in 48 of 50 states.  He was convicted, sentenced to one year in prison, and fined $2,000.   However, five years later when the case found its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the decision found Johnson’s First Amendment right was protected the symbolic speech behind burning the flag. 

In more recent national attention, many have argued the unwarranted arrests made during the Occupy Wall Street movement were violations of free speech.  Regardless of opinion, it’s important to see that these minor arrests were never turned into the legal circus that Pussy Riot is being subjected to in Russia.

“In the U.S., if someone goes into a church and is disruptive, the police would be called and then the charges in all likelihood would be a misdemeanor,” Paulson said of the band’s actions.  “Someone would be charged not for what they said, but for what they did because the First Amendment protects our speech, not our behavior.”

However, for Pussy Riot, despite the argument of the plaintiffs, the women’s case has less to do with their actions and everything to do with the content of their speech.

The band’s demonstration was meant to shed light on the unjust system that landed them in prison.  At the time, Putin was most likely to win a reelection because of a corrupt parliamentary decision many alleged was impacted ballot rigging.

In December 2011, over 50,000 protestors – mostly of the younger generation – gathered outside the Kremlin to denounce the lawless system they believe would reelect Putin come spring.  

It was the largest anti-government rally in Moscow since the Soviet Union held power.

Additionally, for a country that prohibits the association of church and state by law, the reality is far from true. Volkova said the Patriarch of the church not only forbade “believers” from participating in mass protest, but all instructed them to vote for President Putin in the upcoming election.

“That’s why [Pussy Riot] chose that specific Cathedral,” Volkova told the panel at NYU.

In the U.S., we have the First Amendment, which protects are innate freedoms, but we also have a structure of laws and regulations to ensure those rights are followed through.  The presence of these statutes can only shed further light on failed systems like Russia.  

Individual liberty, self-government, limited government power and attainment of truth are all proven values of free speech that on an everyday basis may be unrecognized without being put to the test. 

These values were historically endorsed by the U.S. government in the case New York Times v. Sullivan and continue to be a standard when thinking about the freedom speech.  Threatened by the legal implications of defamation after running an ad that criticized the Alabama police during the American civil rights movement, the New York Times prevailed through immunity as a free speech agent.  The Court eventually decided that healthy criticism of the government fosters the elements of democracy.

The ruling found reason through the idea that if people and organizations were to be wrongfully punished for outspoken dissent of leaders, it would hush the masses, and ultimately lead to a state of dismissive peoples.  This idea has been called the “chilling effect.”

While the Courts in Russian insisted the women of Pussy Riot were arrested under the laws that governed actions of “hooliganism” and “religious hatred,” the global audience is starting to believe that their incarceration had little to do with what they did and everything to do with what they said.  

ALSO SEE: Pussy Riot Band Forgiven By Russian Orthodox Church

Now a year since the feminist punk rock group took the stage at one of Moscow’s most famous Cathedrals and the Russian government still scrambles to stifle the impact of their speech.  The court even ruled to limit public access to videos of the performance on Russian blogs and websites after the girls were imprisoned.

The importance of masking the band’s performance to the Russian government would add to the argument that their actions were of little concern compared to the proliferation of what they said.  

Nonetheless, internationally the video lives on and their provocation can be heard by the masses outside of Russia. It should serve as a reminder of the problem Pussy Riot embodied through both their “punk prayer” and the trial that unfolded thereafter, and call to action the global community to speak for those who can’t.  

“We live in a world that is increasingly linked by digital and social media and young people everywhere are awakening to the possibilities, even if their nation has historically been repressive,” Paulson said.  “It is very hard to eliminate dissent or protest in a digital age and that's a good thing.”

The women’s current two-year prison sentence might never be overturned, but the bigger threat to freedom in Russian is whether Putin will be successful in chilling the speech of others in opposition of him.  If so, the corrupt system that placed Pussy Riot in jail will prevail and the injustice will go on.

The infamous “punk prayer,” and the women who risked their freedom to preach it, must not fall from the spotlight simply because their case has been closed. The conversation needs to continue and the demands must call to action and greater right all humans possess—the right to speak freely without consequence.  

“In the next two years, I bet we're not going to hear anything about the girls--they've been put in cold storage,” Grundy said. “There's not going to be any kind of email reports or any media on them because that's exactly what Putin doesn't want, he doesn't want any attention on them.”  

For that reason, Grundy and his creative partner Michael Delgado will continue to create as much content as they can.  He said that a lot of the web traffic at the Pussy Riot Vodka website comes from Russia, compelling them to continue to think creatively and draw attention to the issue.

And with awareness also comes education.  Even though Pussy Riot lost their battle in the Russian court, the knowledge gained by younger generations from watching an authoritarian system muffle one of the most powerful and important rights we possess as humans can be their victory.  

First Amendment freedoms are not just rights limited to Americans; these are rights all humans warrant. 

“Young people speaking their minds is a universally appealing image,” Paulson said. “The very positive thing about the story in Russia is that it reminds young people around the world that all freedom is not the same.”

Read Gordy Grundy's columns on Huffington Post:

Pussy Riot Vodka: Art, Capitalists, Comrades and the American Way

Pussy Riot Vodka, Part Two: We Will Not Forget!

Pussy Riot Vodka, Part 3: Art Does Not Suppress Itself

 

Find more Neon Tommy coverage of Pussy Riot here.

Reach Reporter Lauren Foliart here.