This compelling account of dissent, creativity, and the personal cost of political engagement asks what can you do when your country is seized by all-powerful men waging war against another country and their own citizens?
“We don’t choose the country we are born in, but we choose how we want to live our lives.” Maria Alyokhina
Political Girl: Life and Fate in Russia is the new memoir by political activist and Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina. Her story, like her life, is fiercely courageous, darkly funny and highly inspiring to anyone who wants to stand up for the truth.
2014: Russia prepares to host the Winter Olympics. Russia invades Crimea. Putin is re-elected president. Several political prisoners are amnestied and released early from prison. Maria Alyokhina is among them, having spent two years in a penal colony after performing the punk prayer Virgin Mary, Banish Putin with friends in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. They had warned the rest of the world of the dangers of authoritarianism but the Russia she finds when she gets out of prison is even more oppressive.
This is a world of grassroots opposition and the absurd measures the Russian state takes to contain protest. And when the full-scale war against Ukraine starts and the Russian opposition is repeatedly silenced, Maria and her activist friends continue to resist despite the high stakes. They fight increasingly absurd cycles of detention and house arrest: sometimes with the smallest acts such as going for a walk or having a rainbow ice cream, until, faced with a new prison sentence, she escapes Russia in May 2022 dressed as a delivery food courier.
Maria Alyokhina is a political activist, artist and member of Pussy Riot collective. Her first book Riot Days was highly acclaimed and translated into many languages.