Why The Russian Political Activist Will Never Stop Fighting

Last week, Maria Alyokhina got arrested. The 29-year-old is best known for her arrest record, having been infamously jailed for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" after staging an anti-Putin protest with her punk-band-come-political movement, Pussy Riot. Alyokhina spent 16 months in prison, but since her 2013 release, she's kept up her activism.

Her latest activist incident, staged alongside Pussy Riot cohort Olga Borisova, was a protest at the imprisonment of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, who was sentenced to 20 years in a remote Siberian penal colony, in 2015. "As Pussy Riot, we made an action," says Alyokhina, simply, via Skype from Finland, five days after her arrest. They travelled to Yakutsk, Siberia ("it's really far, it's near China"), and set off coloured flares, performing this 'street action' above a banner that read "Free Sentsov". 24 hours later, Alyokhina and Borisova were arrested and faced a court hearing for holding an unauthorised protest, before being released after the judge found errors in the case files.

"Officially, the case should go to the court," Alyokhina explains, of the likely legal fall-out. "It's not a criminal charge, it's an administrative charge. But, there's a new law, that was signed about three years ago, that if you have three of these administrative charges, they can send you to prison, for three years. But we already have so many crazy laws, they can send you to prison for anything, even a Facebook post."

Following their release, four years ago, from their much-publicised prison stay, Alyokhina and her fellow Pussy Riot prisoner, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, founded the independent media outlet MediaZona, in part as a way of publicising things that other Russian news sources never would. "It covers topics like prison violence and police violence, and court [cases] against political opposition," Alyokhina says. "Since Crimea was annexed, almost all the independent media [in Russia] was crushed. A lot of journalists and editors were fired because they didn't want to cover the Crimean crisis in the way that the government wanted."

Given the imprisonment and deaths of many anti-Putin voices, setting up an alternative news source was, indeed, dangerous. "If you are an activist of any kind in Russia, if you are against this power, anything can happen. You can have a criminal case, you can be beaten, you can go to prison," Alyokhina says. "[But], it's not a reason to stop."

Though Alyokhina is in Finland as she speaks, and travels to other countries to deliver performances and lectures, she's never thought of emigrating elsewhere. Instead of leaving, she chooses to stay and fight "this crazy Russian machine".

"It's my country," states Alyokhina. "It's them who should leave. Because they are thieves and they are murderers. They are people who are doing bad things. They shouldn't represent our country. I believe that we are… an example of another Russia. We are not Putin and his friends."

After coming to Dark Mofo in June - where she talked about MediaZona, the documentary Act & Punishment, and performed a DJ set - Alyokhina will be returning to Australia, arriving in Melbourne for the local premiere of Pussy Riot Theatre - Riot Days. Despite the name, she wants to attest that it's not theatre. "It's maybe anti-theatre," Alyokhina says. "It's not documentary theatre, it's more of a manifesto. A pop manifesto. It's our message. A message that we're speaking in different forms: actions, music, theatre, all of what we have. Underground, on stage, everywhere."

The story in Pussy Riot Theatre is based, loosely, on Alyokhina's experiences in prison; Riot Days is the title of her forthcoming memoir. But, Alyokhina doesn't see it as some work of autobiography; or even some 'official' tale of Pussy Riot from the members themselves. She's, as always, dreaming big. "It's not about us, it's about Russia. It's about our country. It's about what is going on here. It's history," she offers.

"The message which we are speaking, our message, is not only about Russia. This is my story, which wasn't told before, with all the details of prison life… But, what happened in Russia can happen anywhere. If people do not fight for what they believe, they easily can lose that… Trump was elected because people didn't go and vote, about half of the population of United States just didn't vote. And, the Brexit situation happened for the same reasons. This would be a good time for people to rise up, to remind themselves of what they believe. Our history is about that. It's our story, but it could happen anywhere, to anyone."