Last week’s verdict from a Moscow court on the fate of dissident punk band Pussy Riot seems to have divided religious commentators in unexpected ways–here’s Rod Dreher on the ordeal; for a different (and sympathetic) take, see John O’Sullivan at NRO; and of course today Tim Kelleher writes at “On the Square” with his own angle. And if you haven’t read them already, transcripts of the band members’ closing statements (courtesy n+1) have been making the rounds. While erudite in a showboat kind of way, and clearly passionately delivered, I find myself less impressed with this than others seem to be. The band members certainly aren’t the stereotypical “punk meatheads” that their stated influences seem to suggest, but the self-comparisons to Socrates and Jesus are dreadfully over the top; I suppose some of the Russian literary allusions are smart.
Mostly, I find myself agreeing with Mark Movsesian and Philip Jenkins. As they point out, one aspect of this which has been less-than-well reported is the venue in which the band chose to make its last stand. Yes, it was a cathedral, as the media relayed, and the act intentionally violated the sanctity of the building and the altar in particular. Less reported, though, is that this was not just any old cathedral. It’s a new cathedral, in fact. Rebuilt from 1990-2000, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior:
…was a central shrine both of the Orthodox faith and of Russian national pride, and for that reason, the Bolsheviks targeted it for destruction. In 1931, in a notorious act of cultural vandalism, the Soviet government dynamited the old building, leveling it to the ground, and replacing it with a public swimming pool. Not until 1990 did a new regime permit a rebuilding, funded largely by ordinary believers, and the vast new structure was consecrated in 2000. The cathedral is thus a primary memorial to the restoration of Russia’s Christianity after a savage persecution.
It’s difficult, perhaps, for Westerners to realize how bloodthirsty that government assault was. Russia in 1917 was overwhelmingly Orthodox, and in fact was undergoing a widespread religious revival. Rooting out that faith demanded forceful action by the new Bolshevik government, which had no scruples about imposing its will on the wishes of a vast majority. Government leaders like Alexandra Kollontai — the self-proclaimed Female Antichrist — illegally seized historic churches and monasteries, and used soldiers to suppress the resulting demonstration. Hundreds were killed in those actions alone.
Consequently, the cathedral’s reconstruction was more than a symbolic restoration:
In the process of dechristianization, the crowning act came in 1931 with the obliteration of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. For the Bolsheviks, it was the ultimate proof of the Death of God.
But, of course, Resurrection did come, so that a new cathedral would stand to mark a new century. The long nightmare was over.
Yet Russia’s new religious freedom is a very tender shoot, and the prospect of future turmoil has to agonize those believers who recall bygone horrors. These fears are all the more pressing when modern-day activists seem to reproduce exactly the blasphemous deeds of the past, and even in the precise places.
Venue matters, sometimes to the point of eclipsing the actual performance itself. From examining their lyrics, I don’t believe the band is fundamentally “anti-religious” (and Western liberals reveal their own biases when they attempt to pilot this discussion from legitimate complaints about a corrupt Russian justice system and overly-entangled church-state relations into a simpler narrative of religion vs. enlightenment). But the real offense–at least for outside observers with a spot of sympathy for both sides–is that these twentysomething punk rockers just couldn’t handle the symbolism they so eagerly seized upon. The connotations of that cathedral instantly granted them attention, as they knew it would. But even if they had been given more than the forty seconds it took for security to whisk them away, almost anything they could have done or sung there would have looked like chaff in comparison to the historical struggles that place and its congregants have witnessed. As a result, their sacrilege came garnished with juvenilia.
As Jenkins says, imagine if a similar situation taken place at a Central European synagogue. Or imagine, say, a band performing a vulgar anti-war song at the site of the World Trade Center. Regardless of the validity of the cause or the artistic complexity of the act itself, such actions would rightly engender calls for justice.
August 21st, 2012 | 12:53 pm
The fact that it was done inside the cathedral on the altar was enough for me to lose any sympathy to these young ladies.
Though the sentence is too harsh.
August 21st, 2012 | 1:10 pm
[...] The Band’s Venue (Russian Girl Band Fiasco) – Matthew Cantirino, Frst Thng/Frst Thghts [...]
August 21st, 2012 | 1:20 pm
Phillip Jenkins certainly does a service by delineating some of the the history and complexity that is the necessary context for considering the P Riot “gesture,” and why Christ The Savior Cathedral was such a highly sensitive staging ground for it. But, that seems to be precisely the point — correct or not, the protestors were attempting to say that an unholy alliance of church and state is the real blasphemy – one that truly dishonors the memories of those who suffered so unspeakably, and threatens the freedom of the living. Also, on a side note, no physical damage was done or attempted; no relic or icon defaced. And so far as the video shows, the protestors went nowhere near the altar, which in a Byzantine church, is behind the Royal Doors.
August 21st, 2012 | 1:56 pm
What’s this, the religious defending special privileges for themselves? That sentencing must be enhanced because it’s a “religious building”. What a surprise.
There is no right to be offended, religious people often say to people who are offended at religious people pushing their religion on everything that moves. I completely agree. A cathedral is just that. A building. If it offends their God so much, why can’t they let their God take care of these three courageous ladies?
August 21st, 2012 | 9:10 pm
“A cathedral is just that. A building. If it offends their God so much, why can’t they let their God take care of these three courageous ladies?”
I suppose Maximilian wouldn’t be too troubled if some Danzig punk urinated on the Wailing Wall while shouting “Seig heil!” After all, it’s just a wall. A bad, crumbly wall at that.
“But, that seems to be precisely the point — correct or not, the protestors were attempting to say that an unholy alliance of church and state is the real blasphemy – one that truly dishonors the memories of those who suffered so unspeakably, and threatens the freedom of the living.”
I think the only defense these three female Stooges have is if what they are saying is “correct”. As it stands, I see a lot of moral preening and very little substance in their closing statements. That one member comparing themselves to Dostoyevsky just had me in stitches.
Yeah, pissing on the monument of Orthodox resilience is the equivalent of writing “Crime and Punishment”. Some people need to get a cranial-rectal separation before even attempting something as significant as a protest against the supposed encroaching subordination of the Church by the State.
August 22nd, 2012 | 8:47 am
JonathanR: I suppose Maximilian wouldn’t be too troubled if some Danzig punk urinated on the Wailing Wall while shouting “Seig heil!” After all, it’s just a wall. A bad, crumbly wall at that.
Have these three urinated inside the Cathedral? That would trouble me, but not any more than I would be troubled, had they urinated in a public building other than a Cathedral.
Also, Danzig is located in Poland – a Slavic country that suffered greatly under the people who screeched “Sieg heil”.
August 22nd, 2012 | 8:58 am
I am not sure anyone is asking for ‘special priveleges’. How about just respect for property that one doesn’t own? If the band tried this in the the Capitol building in DC they would be dealt with as a security concern, if they tried it in my house it would be unlawful entry, and the penalty for such a trespass might be much higher given my states respect for the Castle Doctrine. The penalty for this particular trespass might be higher than one would support here in the West, but it is a trespass nonetheless, plain and simple.
August 22nd, 2012 | 9:39 am
Here in Scotland, it is the offence of Profanity to disturb worship. The essence of the offence is the disturbance and annoyance of the minister and congregation, and to the interruption of their devotions.
The building itself enjoys no special protection and it is not an aggravation of a breach of the peace that it is committed in a place regularly used for worship.
This seems to me a proper distinction.
August 22nd, 2012 | 9:43 am
“Regardless of the validity of the cause or the artistic complexity of the act itself, such actions would rightly engender calls for justice.”
Yeah, condemning them to two years in jail is a rightly call for justice. Such a proportional sentence, when there was not even any attempt of physical vandalism, and when the Orthodox Church is allowed to push for real hate speech in Russia against groups like homosexuals. But then, no surprise that conservatives will cherish the only alliances between church and state, even if with corrupt politicians like Putin who ran an agency like the KGB, guilty of persecuting Christians in the soviet era. Let’s not even talk of the patriarch of Moscow, to which the protest of the Pussy Riot was specifically directed, accused of having links with the KGB and illicit dealings with the importation of cigarettes. Yes, the performance of this punk band violated the private property of the Orthodox Church, and a penalty was called for: a fine maybe, but never jail and never in years.
August 22nd, 2012 | 10:27 am
Jack: I am not sure anyone is asking for ‘special priveleges’. How about just respect for property that one doesn’t own?
I completely support that. However, follow the links provided in the article to see the people who are outraged about the fact that it is a religious building.
Jack: The penalty for this particular trespass might be higher than one would support here in the West
They are not being prosecuted for trespassing, but for ‘hooliganism’, whatever that means.
August 22nd, 2012 | 10:37 am
Maximilian wrote “They are not being prosecuted for trespassing, but for ‘hooliganism’, whatever that means.”
A Soviet-era offence, used as a “catch-all,” rather like “breach of the peace.”
August 22nd, 2012 | 2:33 pm
Perhaps, but I think we all have places we consider special that we would be especially incensed if someone were to invade it in order to make it a personal platform from which to make a point.
August 22nd, 2012 | 5:34 pm
“Blasphemy” is fundamentally “insulting the sacred,” and obviously that requires that someone or something sacred be “insulted,” which further requires that someone or something deemed to be sacred by someone in a position to pronounce on such matters has, in the judgment of that person, been insulted.
I proceed at such length so as, finally, to be clear in the case at hand. Russian Orthodox Church officials, it seems to me, are in the exclusive position of having the authority to pronounce that something sacred has been insulted, not necessarily as a legal matter — though that should not be ruled out — but as a cultural one. I think that that is beyond reach of cavil. That is what those officials did. They pronounced that something sacred had been offended. No one was in any doubt of what the something was that they were talking about or in what the alleged offense consisted. But that is too straightforward for a certain, postmodern cast of mind.
To object, jejunely, that the “real blasphemy” is a so-called alliance between Church and State is, excuse me, a big yawn of a nothing of an inanity of a space-and-time filler designed, on the one hand, to excuse grossly insulting behavior that could have been known beforehand by the nitwits concerned to be grossly insulting, while, on the other hand, advancing an attack on religion. In other words, any old iron will do to bash traditional theists. It’s all grist for the mill.
In the manner of most leftish logic, of course, the language has been impoverished. Imagining that religion is thereby being turned against itself(!), the dedicated anti-theist or even atheist assumes, the slyboots, that he may now deploy “blasphemy” ad lib and willy-nilly to describe whatever he dislikes about religion and its adherents — and he dislikes a lot — whereas, alas, all that has occurred is that he has deliberately mangled a word.
So, the women blasphemed and were were duly punished. That should surprise no one but a goose. Is two years too much? I really don’t know. I suspect that 90 days in jail would mean we would be in for a lot more thoughtless and proudly irreverent nitwits leaping uninvited onto high altars. Well then, what about six months? It might be enough to deter further novel insertions into the service between the Collect and the Consecration. But what about two years? Hmm. It has a nice, satisfyingly kick-in-the-pants ring to it, it seems to me. Enough so that someone would think hard about disrupting a religious worship because he, personally, felt strongly about this, that, or the other thing.
August 22nd, 2012 | 5:38 pm
Jack: Perhaps, but I think we all have places we consider special that we would be especially incensed if someone were to invade it in order to make it a personal platform from which to make a point.
Yet I would not favor harsher sentences, because of my personal feelings about a place. It would not lessen my sympathy for people who have the book thrown at them, for protesting against a crypto-dictator like Putin.
August 23rd, 2012 | 9:59 am
I agree with this Maximilian, just as i am not a fan of hate crimes statutes or vague laws about notions like ‘hooliganism’, I think there should be clear and consistent and reasonable laws and penalties about criminal trespass and disturbing the peace.
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