Perhaps more striking is the way Gessen

The rare exception comes when she describes the group's most notorious performance as "a great work of art",No matter the occasion, it's best to always have that perfect Discount Party Dresses for sale on hand. "a miracle". This seems excessive: it wouldn't have to be great,More than 1900 styles of cheap White satin sweatheart applique floor length wedding dress suffice your romantic ceremony. or even art, for you to think their punishment was a gross injustice. Gessen is right, though, to stress a link to the Russian artistic avant-garde, both the nonconformist poetry and performance art of the 1970s and earlier literary movements such as the absurdist Oberiu, which included such figures as Daniil Kharms and the poet Aleksandr Vvedensky.Every girl needs a Discount White satin sweatheart Beaded Applique a-line wedding dresses party dress at various times in her life, whether for a prom, a gala ball or a red-carpet event. Perhaps more striking is the way Gessen places Pussy Riot firmly within the dissident tradition. The book's title, drawn from Tolokonnikova's closing statement at the trial, is a paraphrase of a line from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle; in her account of the trial itself, Gessen finds echoes of the Brezhnev era, when writers such as Joseph Brodsky and Andrei Siniavsky were imprisoned for "parasitism" or "anti-Soviet activity".

Faced with a brutal, uncomprehending state apparatus, Pussy Riot themselves could hardly be blamed for drawing moral sustenance from such parallels. But framing their plight as that of lone voices struggling against authority can have some perverse effects. Pussy Riot's performances were not about freedom of individual expression – crucial though that is – but were connected to a wider movement against Putinism, based on a wholesale rejection of its stifling political conformism, its corruption and raging economic inequalities. The Kremlin's main aim in persecuting the group was to drive a wedge through that movement, using the commonly felt link between Russian national identity and Orthodoxy to launch a culture war. The other key component of Putin's strategy was to ratchet up repression, which continues today. Although Tolokonnikova, Alyokhina and prominent detainees such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky were released at the end of last year, many others remain behind bars – including 15 in prison and three under house arrest, accused of organising "mass disturbances" in Moscow on 6 May 2012, the day of Putin's inauguration. Severing Pussy Riot from this ongoing, collective battle risks playing into the Kremlin's hands, and obscuring what these women were originally fighting, and shouting, for.