“You can't expect people who didn't exist as a community at all until about twenty years ago to have formed a political movement. This attack on the LGBT community was very shocking to the people who consider themselves to be activists. They're basically playing in the sandbox, and there's a tank coming! And what are they supposed to do - use the plastic shovel to push the tank back? But since the homosexual propaganda legislation, people have really stepped up, educated themselves politically, and grown by leaps and bounds.” PeoplePoliticalCommunityEducatedPropagandaLgbtLeapActivistHomosexual Author:Masha Gessen
“There are several dozen political prisoners in Russia. When I cite that number people are often very surprised. They often think there are more. Well - there are hundreds of thousands of people who haven't had a fair trial, who are victims of the political system. But in the Amnesty International sense of the word, most of them are not political prisoners because they are not going to prison for protesting.” PeopleThinkingPoliticalVictimPrisonPrisonerCiting Author:Masha Gessen
“For example, if you are a blogger who wrote something about a local official and you're going to prison for that, you're a political prisoner. If you're a businessman who has refused to cede his business to the local official and you're going to prison for that, you're not a political prisoner. In that second category there are hundreds of thousands of people in Russia.” PeoplePoliticalPrisonPrisonerBusinessman Author:Masha Gessen
“The reason Vladimir Putin released Pussy Riot, the Greenpeace activists who were kidnapped in international waters and kept in prison for two months, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's best-known and longest-serving political prisoner, was because he finally started panicking and realized that he may not have anyone to take pictures with.” ReasonPoliticalWaterPrisonActivistPrisonerRiot Author:Masha Gessen
“I received the Media for Liberty Award from Swedish PEN, and the prize was awarded by the Swedish minister of culture, who also happens to be the minister of sport. When she handed me the award, I said, Thank you, it's wonderful to be recognized, but we journalists always want more. So madam minister, I have a personal favor to ask you: Do not go to Sochi. And she announced that she was going to Sochi, but she's not attending the ceremonies, for political reasons. It's a very pointed stance.” ReasonPoliticalCultureSportsLibertyWonderfulJournalistPrizePensCeremony Author:Masha Gessen
“With Pussy Riot - this was a prank! It was a brilliant, artistically gifted prank. But they didn't expect to go to prison! They were college girls who became political prisoners for two years. That makes them very similar to the people who were "just going to a protest one day" and got arrested. They had no idea they were risking the rest of their lives. Because you're never the same after you've spent two years in a gulag.” PeoplePoliticalGirlCollegeOne DayPrisonBrilliantProtestPrisonerRiot Author:Masha Gessen
“Pussy Riot have certainly changed some people's assumptions about the role of political art and the relationship between the intelligentsia and the church. That's a hell of a lot to do in a forty-second performance.” ArtPoliticalChurchHellChangedAssumptionRiot Author:Masha Gessen
