Masha Lipman on The Absurd and Outrageous Trial of Pussy Riot

        …the prosecution of Pussy Riot does, indeed, have a lot in common with the Soviet dissidents’ trials. Then as now, the judges didn’t care to conceal their bias; then as now, there was a clear sense that conviction was preordained. Then as now, those in the dock were voices of reason, honesty and morality, while their persecutors were cruel, absurd, and ultimately immoral. Then as now, the formal charge was a thin disguise. In 1964, the poet Joseph Brodsky was charged and convicted for “parasitism”; in 1968, the participants of the demonstration against Soviet invasion in Czechoslovakia were charged with violation of public order. The Pussy Riot women are tried for hooliganism and for inciting religious hatred…