Nadya Tolokonnikova, activist and founding member of Russian rock group Pussy Riot, has penned a new op-ed for The New York Times. The article is titled: “I’m an Activist in Russia. I Can’t Believe What My Life Has Become.” Tolokonnikova’s piece discusses her experiences fighting against oppression and autocracy in her native country. Read it in full here.
Tolokonnikova discusses the suspected poisoning of her friend, politician Aleksei Navalny, who is a noted critic of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. She also goes into detail about caring for Pyotr Verzilov, who was hospitalized after being poisoned in 2018. “It was horrible to sit by his bed there in Berlin, as Aleksei’s wife, Yulia, is doing now,” Tolokonnikova wrote. “And think I may never fully get back this person I call Petya, this person I love, this vital, funny, kind person.”
Elsewhere in her piece, Tolokonnikova discusses fellow peers and dissidents, some of whom were murdered, some beaten. “I myself was sent to prison for two years just for singing a song,” she wrote, adding that “many, many activists in my country have been sentenced to more time and suffered far worse fates. This is the reality I live with day to day, that we in Russia and my friends in Belarus are living with day to day. You learn to live with it, to fight it as you can, deal with it how you can, but it becomes your life.”
“The promise of our democracy was chipped away in pieces, one by one,” Tolokonnikova added. “Corrupt cronies appointed, presidential orders issued, actions taken, laws passed, votes rigged. It happens slowly, intermittently; sometimes we couldn’t see how steadily. Autocracy crept in, like the coward it is.”
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