About This Edition
The songs discussed in this edition are presented in their original online format, which was edited performance footage that was uploaded online by Pussy Riot or their private contacts on sites such as YouTube or the Russian social media site VKontakte. Their private contacts were familiar with or were a part of the media world and were able to sometimes assist Pussy Riot with filming and posting their content for them. Five of the six songs that are discussed and linked to in this edition were first found online thanks to the efforts of the now-inactive YouTube channel “Garadzha Matveeva,” likely owned and operated by the Pussy Riot member known as “Garadzha.” This excludes Pussy Riot’s very first song, “Kill the Sexist,” which was only recorded and never performed live in public. This edition therefore links to a YouTube video that contains a recording of “Kill the Sexist” by the channel “More Than Music.” It is unknown whether or not this is the original recording of the song.
The footage of the other five performances (“Free the Cobblestones,” “Kropotkin-Vodka,” “Death to Prison, Freedom to Protest,” “Putin’s Pissed Himself,” and “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Chase Putin Away”) that this edition links to were edited by Pussy Riot’s team to be less “live” and more “music video” in style. To achieve this effect, the original live music and audio was removed and a recording of the song was overlaid while visually splicing multiple different performances together to create a cohesive presentation of how and where Pussy Riot performed each song. An exception to the background audio's removal during the editing process can be found in “Death to Prison, Freedom to Protest,” where yelling sounds are intentionally left in.
Much remains unknown about the behind-the-scenes planning and coordination of each Pussy Riot performance due to the members’ need to maintain their anonymity to avoid legal trouble. This need remains today, with an exception being the very publicly active Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina’s “Pussy Riot 2.0.” As a result of this continued secrecy, there is no public record of exactly when these songs were recorded, who recorded them, where the original song recordings were done, who edited the performances, or who even originally posted and uploaded them online.
Pussy Riot performed and curated each song sequentially in response to the current news, blocking off certain time periods and dedicating that time to publicly performing only one song before moving on to the next one. For example, the group performed “Free the Cobblestones” from early October to November 7, 2011 to protest the State Duma (parliamentary) elections on December 4, 2011. “Free the Cobblestones” was then followed by “Kropotkin-Vodka,” and so on.
This type of performance scheduling was not a marketing stunt or a financial tactic, but rather strategic protesting. Pussy Riot wrote and recorded their songs so they could then perform and film them as much as possible before uploading them online. Having powerful videos of their performances online incited the press and the public while increasing their digital circulation. It is my understanding that Pussy Riot did not financially benefit from their viral presence online from at least August 2011 to March 2012. A self-released online mini-album titled Ubeĭ Seksista (Kill the Sexist) that contains all six of the same songs discussed in this edition was uploaded around August 2012, but it was free to download. If any money was made from the album’s release, it was likely from public donations that went towards Nadya, Masha, and Katya’s legal fees. In other words, Pussy Riot was not formed as a commercial enterprise, but rather as a philosophical and political outlet.
I attempted to reach out to former and current Pussy Riot members and their current talent agents, but I received no response regarding the pitch for this edition. This SourceLab edition tentatively links to edited performances of theirs that are housed on YouTube under a fair use claim. Pussy Riot officially credits these six songs to the anonymous members who went by the aliases Balaklava, Blondi, Vozhzha, Garadzha, Kot, Man’ko, Pokhlëbka, Serafima, Terminator, Tiuria, Shaĭba, Shliapa, and Shumakher. I would also like to mention that due to the members’ anonymity, the exact owners of copyright remain unclear.
The songs presented here in this edition are in their original sequential order to accurately reflect the timeline of Pussy Riot’s work. Excluding “Kill the Sexist,” the lyrics for all of the songs were verified by Pussy Riot’s online blog Pussy Riot: Kak v krasnoi tiur’me (Like a Red Prison). The citation for the album, blog, and the linked YouTube videos are as follows:
Pussy Riot. Ubeĭ Seksista. By Balaklava, Blondi, Vozhzha, Garadzha, Kot, Man’ko, Pokhlëbka, Serafima, Terminator, Tiuria, Shaiba, Shliapa, and Shumakher. Recorded 2012. Self-released mini-album with no label, MP3.
Pussy Riot. “Zhurnal.” Pussy Riot: Kak v krasnoi tiur’me. Last updated on February 20, 2014. http://pussy-riot.info/.
More Than Music. “Pussy Riot - Ubeĭ Seksista (Ubej sexista).” YouTube video, 1:45. May 24, 2012. https://youtu.be/dZVjv9_Uf_c.
Garadzha Matveeva. “Devchonki iz PUSSY RIOT zakhvatyvayut transport.” YouTube video, 2:11. November 6, 2011. https://youtu.be/qEiB1RYuYXw.
Garadzha Matveeva. “Gruppa Pussy Riot zhzhet putinskii glamur.” YouTube video, 1:34. November 30, 2011. https://youtu.be/CZUhkWiiv7M.
Garadzha Matveeva. “PUSSY RIOT poiut politzekam na kryshe tiur’my.” YouTube video, 1:16. December 14, 2011. https://youtu.be/mmyZbJpYV0I.
Garadzha Matveeva. “Pussy Riot na Krasnoi ploshchadi - pesnia ‘Putin zassal.’” YouTube video, 1:37. January 20, 2012. https://youtu.be/7kVMADLm3js.
Garadzha Matveeva. “Bogoroditsa, Putina progoni! Pussy Riot v Xrame.” YouTube video, 1:52. March 10, 2012. https://youtu.be/vpR1mwyIHGY.
All translations are my own. Transliterations are done in the simplified ALA-LC style.
This digital documentary edition is part of our open scholarly publishing series SourceLab. This publication is maintained by SourceLab's Editorial Board, which conducts rigorous peer review of every new edition. It is intended as an Open Educational Resource and is licensed for free and unrestricted use in all settings under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Citation Guide for this Edition
Footnote:
Jamie Hendrickson, “The Birth of Pussy Riot: Six Early Songs,” SourceLab 3, no. 2 (2022), https://iopn.library.illinois.edu/scalar/the-birth-of-pussy-riot-six-early-songs/index.
Bibliographical Note:
Hendrickson, Jamie. “The Birth of Pussy Riot: Six Early Songs.” SourceLab 3, no. 2 (2022). https://iopn.library.illinois.edu/scalar/the-birth-of-pussy-riot-six-early-songs/index.*To cite specific pages, for example "About this Source," insert the URL of that page (that is the part that begins "http://") in place of the homepage URL given.
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