{"id":727,"date":"2012-08-06T10:30:58","date_gmt":"2012-08-06T10:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/?p=727"},"modified":"2012-08-06T10:34:04","modified_gmt":"2012-08-06T10:34:04","slug":"pussy-riot-trial-worse-than-soviet-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/2012\/08\/06\/pussy-riot-trial-worse-than-soviet-era\/","title":{"rendered":"Pussy Riot trial ‘worse than Soviet era’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As you start this Year Thirteen course you may well have some idea that, as its title Russian dictatorships suggest, it wants you to think (and eventually write) in comparative terms. \u00a0<\/p>\n

You may well also have an idea that repression and religion are dominant\u00a0themes of the period 1855 to 1964. A central plank of\u00a0both in the period is\u00a0an intolerance of opposition to alternative views. Under\u00a0Alexander III a policy of Russification was followed to force non-Orthodox subjects of the\u00a0Tsar to convert, whilst in Stalin’s Russia repression was taken to a new scale in a totalitarian regime typified by show trials of the 1930s.<\/p>\n

At present\u00a0there is a trial underway of the three\u00a0members of the band Pussy Riot, for\u00a0performing a “punk prayer” against Putin in Moscow’s main cathedral. They are changed with\u00a0hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, and could face ten years in jail. This<\/a>\u00a0article from Daily Telegraph suggests that\u00a0 “the trio themselves claim they did not intend to upset Christians, but wanted to denounce Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Orthodox Church, for publicly supporting Mr Putin’s re-election. “It’s all about Putin taking personal offence,” said Nikolai Polozov, one of their lawyers. “He ordered this because you can’t insult the tsar.” <\/em>You may like to read the article and follow the trial, See what you think, how valid are the parallels ?<\/p>\n

Finally, I picked the Telegraph article because it quotes Masha Gessen<\/strong>. She wrote The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin<\/strong> <\/em>(see the earlier post about an enrichment opportunity). Gessen argues “this is a show trial…all such prosecutions originate from the executive branch. Putin is a vengeful person, that’s the overriding factor.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Mr Kydd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As you start this Year Thirteen course you may well have some idea that, as its title Russian dictatorships suggest, it wants you to think (and eventually write) in comparative terms. \u00a0 You may well also have an idea that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":732,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727\/revisions\/732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heathenhistory.co.uk\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}