Pussy Riot: Speaking Punk to Power

Both more and less than a band, Pussy Riot is continually misunderstood by the Western media. This book sets the record straight. After their scandalous performance of an anti-Putin protest song in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the imprisonment of two of its members, the punk feminist art collective known as Pussy Riot became an international phenomenon. But, what, exactly, is Pussy Riot, and what are they trying to achieve? The award-winning author Eliot Borenstein explores the movement’s explosive history and takes you beyond the hype.

Eliot Borenstein is Professor and Chair of Russian & Slavic Studies, Interim Chair of East Asian Studies, Collegiate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Senior Academic Convenor for the Global Network at New York University, USA. Before coming to NYU, Borenstein directed the Fulbright Program for the Russian Federation and taught at the University of Virginia, USA. His first book, Men without Women: Masculinity and Revolution in Russian Fiction, 1917-1919, won the AATSEEL award for best work in literary scholarship in 2000. In 2007, he published Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture, which received the AWSS award for best book in Slavic Gender Studies in 2008.

A 2009 Guggenheim recipient, Borenstein wrote Plots against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy after Socialism (2019), which received the 2020 AATSEEL Book Prize and the 2020 Wayne S. Vucinic Book Prize. His other books include Pussy Riot: Speaking Punk to Power (Bloomsbury, 2020), and Meanwhile, in Russia…: Russian Internet Memes and Viral Video (Bloomsbury, 2022).

Stephen M. Norris is Walter E. Havighurst Professor of Russian History and Director of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University (OH), USA. He is the author and editor of seven books, including A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity, 1812-1945 (2008) and Blockbuster History in the New Russia: Movies, Memory, Patriotism (2012).

Polly Jones is Professor of Russian at University College, Oxford, UK. She has published extensively on Soviet literature and memory politics, including two monographs Myth, Memory, Trauma (2013) and Revolution Rekindled (2019), several edited volumes, including The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization (2006) and numerous articles. She is embarking on a new collaborative project about the concept of the '101st kilometre' in Soviet penal policy and practice.