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Последнее слово Надежды Толоконниковой #PussyRiot (08.08.2012)

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    By and large the current process is not about
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    the three singers in the group Pussy Riot
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    if that was the case then the proceedings here would be irrelevant
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    It is the entire state system of the Russian Federation which is on trial
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    and which, to its own detriment, takes such pleasure in inflicting cruelty on people
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    and indifference to human respect and dignity.
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    As bad as the very worst of Russian history.
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    The simulation of a court process comes close to the standards of Stalin's "troikas" [extrajudicial panels]
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    to my deep regret.
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    Thus, we have our investigator, lawyer and judge.
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    And then, what’s more, what all three of them do and say and decide
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    is determined by a political demand for repression.
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    Who is guilty for what happened during
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    the performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour
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    and the trial which followed our concert?
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    The authoritarian political system is guilty.
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    That which Pussy Riot does, is opposition art
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    or even politics, taking on forms developed by art.
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    In any case it is the kind of civil activity
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    under conditions of pressure from a corporate state system
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    on basic human rights
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    on civil and political freedoms.
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    Many people, who have been methodically robbed of their freedoms
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    are now rebelling.
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    We are looking for sincerity and simplicity
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    and we found both in our punk performances.
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    Passion, sincerity, and naivety are above hypocrisy, deceit, feigned modesty, and hiding your crime.
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    The country's top brass stand in cathedral with righteous faces
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    but they are sly, their sins are far greater than ours.
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    We do our political punk concerts because
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    the Russian state system is ruled by such
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    stiffness, opacity, and class
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    and policies are subject only to narrow corporate interests
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    so much so that Russian air makes us ill.
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    Against our wishes, we are made to act and live
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    with the politically coercive and violent techniques
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    to control social processes.
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    The situation, when the most important political institutions
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    are the state's disciplinary structures,
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    law enforcement, the army, the police, the security services
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    and the corresponding means for achieving political stability involve
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    prisons, preventive detention, mechanisms of strict control over the behaviour of citizens.
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    We also do not like the forced passivity of most of the civilian population
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    and also the complete domination of executive branch
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    over the legislature and judiciary.
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    In addition, we are sincerely annoyed
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    at the scandalously low level of political culture, built on fear
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    a level which consciously supports the state system and its cronies.
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    Just look at what Patriarch Kirill says
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    that Orthodox believers do not attend the demonstrations.
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    We are annoyed by the scandalous weakness
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    of community connections within society.
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    We do not like the state's manipulation of public opinion
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    easily carried out thanks to tight control over most media
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    by state agencies, and for example,
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    the exceptionally arrogant and base distortion of facts and words in the campaign against Pussy Riot,
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    launched in almost all Russian media,
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    except for independent ones, a rarity in this political system.
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    Nonetheless I now state that
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    even though this situation is authoritarian
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    and even though the political system is authoritarian
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    I still see the collapse of this political system
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    in its response to the three members of Pussy Riot
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    because that which the system depends on, was wrong.
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    Unfortunately for the system, Russia as a whole does not condemn us
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    and with every day more and more people believe us and believe in us
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    and think we should be free rather than behind bars.
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    I can see this from people I meet.
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    I meet people who represent the system, who work for the relevant agencies.
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    And every day there are more and more people who wish us well
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    who hope for our success and especially for our release
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    who say our political act was justified
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    More and more, people tell us
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    At first, we weren't sure you could have done this
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    but every day there are more and more people who say
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    Time is proving to us that your political gesture was correct.
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    You have exposed the cancer in this political system and dealt a blow to a nest of vipers, which then turned on you.
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    These people are trying to make life easier for us in whatever way they can
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    and we are very grateful to them for that
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    We are grateful to all those who, free themselves, speak out in our support.
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    There are a vast number, I know.
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    I know that a huge number of Orthodox people are standing up for us.
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    They are praying for us outside the courtroom
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    for the members of Pussy Riot who are incarcerated.
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    We’ve seen the booklets Orthodox people are handing out
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    with prayers for those in prison
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    This shows that there isn’t a unified social group of Orthodox believers
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    as the prosecution is claiming.
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    No such thing exists.
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    More and more believers are starting to defend Pussy Riot.
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    They don’t think what we did deserves even five months in detention
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    much less the three years in prison the prosecutor would like.
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    And every day, more and more people realize
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    that if this political system has ganged up to this extent against three girls
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    for a 30-second performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour
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    it means the system is afraid of the truth
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    and afraid of our sincerity and directness
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    We haven’t dissembled, not for a second
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    not for a minute during this trial
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    but the other side is dissembling too much and people can sense it.
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    People can sense the truth.
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    Truth really does have some kind of ontological, existential superiority over lies
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    and this is written in the Bible, in the Old Testament in particular.
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    In the end, the ways of truth always triumph over the ways of wickedness, guile and lies.
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    And with each day that passes,
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    the ways of truth are more and more triumphant
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    even though we are still behind bars
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    and are likely to be here a lot longer yet.
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    Madonna performed yesterday [7 August].
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    She appeared with Pussy Riot written on her back.
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    More and more people can see
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    that we are being held here unlawfully and on a completely false charge
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    I’m overwhelmed by this
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    I am overwhelmed that truth really does triumph over lies
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    even though physically we are here in a cage.
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    We are freer than the people sitting opposite us
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    for the prosecution because we can say everything we like
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    and we do, but those people sitting there say only what political censorship allows them to say.
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    They can’t speak words like “punk prayer” or "Virgin Mary, Banish Putin!”
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    They can’t say the lines from our punk prayer that have to do with the political system.
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    Perhaps they think it wouldn’t be a bad thing to send us to jail
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    because we are rising up against Putin and his system as well
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    but they can’t say so because that’s not allowed either.
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    Their mouths are sewn shut. Unfortunately, they are mere puppets.
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    I hope they realize this and also take the road to freedom, truth and sincerity
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    because these are superior to stasis, contrived decency and hypocrisy.
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    Stasis and the search for truth are always in opposition to one another
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    and in this case, at this trial,
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    we can see people who are trying to find the truth
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    and people who are trying to enslave those who want to find the truth.
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    Humans are beings who always make mistakes.
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    They are not perfect.
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    They strive for wisdom but never actually have it.
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    That’s precisely why philosophy came into being,
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    precisely because philosophers are people who love wisdom and strive for it,
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    but never actually possesses it
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    and it is what drives them to act and to think
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    and, ultimately, to live the way they do.
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    This is what made us go into the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour,
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    and I think that Christianity, as I’ve understood it from studying the Old and New Testaments,
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    supports the search for truth and a constant overcoming of the self,
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    overcoming what you used to be.
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    Christ didn’t associate with prostitutes for nothing.
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    He said, ‘I help those who have gone astray and forgive them’
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    but for some reason I can’t see any of that at our trial,
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    which is taking place under the banner of Christianity.
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    I think the prosecutor is defying Christianity.
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    The lawyer wants nothing to do with the injured parties.
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    Here’s how I understand this:
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    Two days ago, Lawyer Taratukhin made a speech
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    in which he wanted everyone to understand that he had no sympathy with the people he is representing.
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    This means he’s not ethically comfortable representing
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    people who want to send the three members of Pussy Riot to jail.
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    Why they want to do this, I don’t know.
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    Perhaps it is their right.
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    The lawyer was embarrassed
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    the shouts of “Shame! Executioners!” had got to him
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    which goes to show that truth and goodness always triumph over lies and evil.
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    I think some higher powers are guiding the speeches of the lawyers for the other side
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    when, time after time, they make mistakes in what they say
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    and call us the “injured parties”.
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    Almost all the lawyers are doing it,
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    including Lawyer Pavlova who is very negatively disposed towards us.
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    Nevertheless, some higher powers are causing her
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    to say "the injured parties" about us rather than the people she’s defending, us.
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    I wouldn’t give people labels.
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    I don’t think there are winners or losers here,
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    injured parties or accused.
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    We just need to make contact,
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    to establish a dialogue and a joint search for truth,
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    to seek wisdom together,
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    to be philosophers together,
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    rather than stigmatizing and labelling people.
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    This is one of the worst things people can do
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    and Christ condemned it.
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    We have been subjected to abuse during this trial.
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    Who would have thought that a person and the state system he controls
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    would be repeatedly capable of entirely wanton evil?
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    Who would have thought that history and particularly Stalin’s Great Terror
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    not so very long ago, would not be taught at all?
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    It makes you want to weep to see how the methods of the medieval inquisition are brought out
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    by the law-enforcement and judicial system of the Russian Federation, which is our country.
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    Since the time of our arrest, however, we are no longer able to weep.
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    We’ve forgotten how to cry.
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    At our punk concerts we used to shout as best we could
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    about the iniquities of the authorities and now we’ve been robbed of our voice.
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    This whole trial refuses to hear us
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    and I mean hear us
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    which involves understanding and, moreover, thinking.
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    I think every individual wants to attain wisdom, to be a philosopher
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    not just people who happen to have studied philosophy.
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    That’s nothing.
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    Formal education is nothing in itself
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    and Lawyer Pavlova is constantly accusing us of not being sufficiently well-educated.
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    I think though that the most important thing
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    is the desire to know and to understand,
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    and that’s something people can do for themselves
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    outside of educational establishments,
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    and the trappings of academic degrees don’t mean anything in this instance.
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    Someone can have a vast fund of knowledge
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    and for all that not be human.
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    Pythagoras said: ‘the learning of many things does not teach understanding’.
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    Unfortunately, that’s something we are forced to observe here.
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    It’s just a stage setting and bits of the natural world,
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    bodies brought into the courtroom.
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    If, after many days of asking, talking and doing battle
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    our petitions are examined, they are inevitably rejected.
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    The court, on the other hand
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    unfortunately for us and for our country
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    listens to the prosecutor who repeatedly distorts our comments and statements with impunity
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    in a bid to neutralize them.
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    There is no attempt to conceal this breach in an adversarial system.
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    It even appears to be for show.
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    On 30th July, the first day of the trial,
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    we presented our response to the accusations.
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    The document we wrote was read by defence lawyer Volkov
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    because the court categorically refused to let the defendants speak.
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    It was the first time in five months of imprisonment that we could communicate
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    Prior to that we were in prison, in confinement.
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    We can’t do anything there.
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    We can’t make statements. We can’t make films.
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    We don’t have the internet in there.
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    We can’t even give our lawyer a bit of paper because that’s banned too.
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    Our first chance to speak came on 30th July.
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    We called for contact and dialogue
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    rather than conflict and opposition.
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    We reached out a hand to those
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    who, for some reason, assume we are their enemies.
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    In response they laughed at us
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    and spat in our outstretched hands.
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    You’re disingenuous, they told us.
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    But they needn’t have bothered.
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    Don’t judge others by your own standards.
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    We were always sincere in what we said,
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    saying exactly what we thought,
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    out of childish naïvety,
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    sure, but we don’t regret anything we said,
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    even on that day.
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    We are reviled but we do not intend to speak evil in return.
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    We are in desperate straits but do not despair.
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    We are persecuted but not forsaken.
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    It’s easy to humiliate and crush people who are open,
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    but when I am weak, then I am strong.
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    Listen to us rather than to Arkady Mamontov talking about us.
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    Don’t twist and distort everything we say.
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    Let us enter into dialogue and contact with the country,
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    which is ours too, not just Putin’s and the Patriarch’s.
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    Like Solzhenitsyn, I believe that in the end, words will crush concrete.
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    Solzhenitsyn wrote, “the word is more sincere than concrete, so words are not trifles.
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    Once noble people mobilize, their words will crush concrete.”
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    Katya, Masha and I are in jail
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    but I don’t consider that we’ve been defeated.
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    Just as the dissidents weren’t defeated.
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    When they disappeared into psychiatric hospitals and prisons,
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    they passed judgement on the country.
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    The era’s art of creating an image knew no winners or losers.
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    The Oberiu poets remained artists to the very end,
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    something impossible to explain or understand
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    since they were purged in 1937.
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    Vvedensky wrote: "We like what can’t be understood, What can’t be explained is our friend."
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    According to the official report, Aleksandr Vvedensky died on 20 December 1941.
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    We don’t know the cause,
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    whether it was dysentery in the train after his arrest
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    or a bullet from a guard.
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    It was somewhere on the railway line between Voronezh and Kazan.
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    Pussy Riot are Vvedensky’s disciples and his heirs.
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    His principle of ‘bad rhythm’ is our own.
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    He wrote: "It happens that two rhythms will come into your head,"
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    a good one and a bad one and I choose the bad one.
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    It will be the right one.
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    What can’t be explained is our friend.
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    The elitist, sophisticated occupations of the Oberiu poets,
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    their search for meaning on the edge of sense
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    was ultimately realized at the cost of their lives,
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    swept away in the senseless Great Terror
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    something impossible to explain.
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    At the cost of their own lives
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    the Oberiu poets unintentionally demonstrated
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    that the feeling of meaninglessness and analogy,
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    like a pain in the backside, was correct,
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    but at the same time led art into the realm of history.
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    The cost of taking part in creating history
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    is always staggeringly high for people.
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    But that taking part is the very spice of human life.
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    Being poor while bestowing riches on many,
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    having nothing but possessing everything.
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    It is believed that the OBERIU dissidents are dead,
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    but they live on.
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    They are persecuted but they do not die.
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    Do you remember why the young Dostoyevsky was given the death sentence?
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    All he had done was to spend all his time with Socialists
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    and at the Friday meetings of a friendly circle of free thinkers at Petrushevsky’s
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    he became acquainted with Charles Fourier and George Sand.
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    At one of the last meetings, he read out Gogol’s letter to Belinsky,
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    which was packed, according to the court,
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    and I note, with childish expressions against the Orthodox Church and the supreme authorities.
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    After all his preparations for the death penalty
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    and ten dreadful, as he put it, "impossibly frightening minutes waiting to die"
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    the announcement came that his sentence had been commuted
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    to four years hard labour followed by military service.
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    Socrates was accused of corrupting youth
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    through his philosophical discourses
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    and of not recognizing the gods of Athens.
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    Socrates had a connection to a divine inner voice
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    and was by no means a theomachist,
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    something he often said himself.
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    What did that matter, however, when he had angered the city
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    with his critical, dialectical and unprejudiced thinking?
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    Socrates was sentenced to death and, refusing to run away
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    although he was given that option,
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    he drank down a cup of poison in cold blood, hemlock.
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    Have you forgotten the circumstances under which
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    Stephen, follower of the Apostles, ended his earthly life?
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    "Then they secretly induced men to say:
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    'We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.'
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    And they stirred up the people, the elders and the scribes,
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    and they came upon him and dragged him away, and brought him before the Council.
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    And they put forward false witnesses who said
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    'This man incessantly speaks against this holy place, and the Law.' "
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    He was found guilty and stoned to death.
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    And I hope everyone remembers what the Jews said to Jesus:
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    We're stoning you not for any good work, but for blasphemy.
  • 21:34 - 21:37
    And finally it would be well worth remembering this description of Christ:
  • 21:37 - 21:42
    He is possessed of a demon and out of his mind.
  • 21:42 - 21:50
    I believe that if leaders, tsars, elders, presidents and prime ministers, the people and the judges
  • 21:50 - 21:54
    really understood what "I desire mercy not sacrifice" meant,
  • 21:54 - 21:57
    they would not condemn the innocent.
  • 21:57 - 22:02
    Our leaders are currently in a hurry only to condemn
  • 22:02 - 22:05
    and not at all to show mercy.
  • 22:05 - 22:09
    Incidentally, we thank Dmitry Medvedev for his latest wonderful aphorism.
  • 22:09 - 22:14
    If Medvedev gave his presidency the slogan: "Freedom is better than non-freedom"
  • 22:14 - 22:16
    then, thanks to Medvedev’s felicitous saying,
  • 22:16 - 22:22
    Putin’s third term has a good chance of being known by a new aphorism:
  • 22:22 - 22:27
    Prison is better than stoning
  • 22:27 - 22:31
    I would like you to think carefully
  • 22:31 - 22:35
    about the following reflection by Montaigne
  • 22:35 - 22:37
    from his Essays written in the 16th century.
  • 22:37 - 22:44
    He wrote: "You are holding your opinions in too high a regard if you burn people alive for them."
  • 22:44 - 22:47
    Is it worth accusing people and putting them in jail
  • 22:47 - 22:52
    on the basis of totally unfounded conjectures by the prosecution?
  • 22:52 - 22:55
    Since in actual fact we never were,
  • 22:55 - 22:59
    and are not, motivated by religious hatred and hostility,
  • 22:59 - 23:02
    there is nothing left for our accusers
  • 23:02 - 23:04
    other than to draw on the aid of false witnesses.
  • 23:04 - 23:06
    One of them, Motilda Ivashchenko,
  • 23:06 - 23:09
    was ashamed and didn’t show up in court.
  • 23:09 - 23:11
    That left the false witness of the expert examination
  • 23:11 - 23:13
    by [Vsevolod] Troitsky, [Igor] Ponkin and Mrs [Vera] Abramenkova.
  • 23:13 - 23:16
    And there is no evidence of any hatred or enmity on our part
  • 23:16 - 23:19
    other than this expert examination.
  • 23:19 - 23:21
    For this reason, if it is honourable and just,
  • 23:21 - 23:25
    the court must rule the evidence inadmissible
  • 23:25 - 23:27
    because it is not a strictly scientific or objective text
  • 23:27 - 23:30
    but a filthy, lying bit of paper
  • 23:30 - 23:35
    from the medieval days of the inquisition.
  • 23:35 - 23:39
    There is no other evidence that remotely hints at a motive.
  • 23:39 - 23:43
    The prosecution is reluctant to produce excerpts from the text of Pussy Riot interviews
  • 23:43 - 23:49
    because they are primary evidence of this lack of motive.
  • 23:49 - 23:53
    For the umpteenth time, I will quote this excerpt.
  • 23:53 - 23:57
    I think it’s important. It was from an interview with Russky Reporter
  • 23:57 - 24:01
    given the day after the concert at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour
  • 24:01 - 24:05
    Our attitude toward religion, and toward Orthodoxy in particular
  • 24:05 - 24:08
    is one of respect, and for this very reason we are distressed
  • 24:08 - 24:11
    that the great and luminous Christian philosophy is being used so shabbily.
  • 24:11 - 24:16
    We are very angry that something beautiful is being spoiled.
  • 24:16 - 24:24
    It still makes us angry and we find it very painful to watch.
  • 24:24 - 24:30
    The lack on our part of any show of hatred or enmity
  • 24:30 - 24:34
    has been attested by all the witnesses examined by the defence.
  • 24:34 - 24:37
    And by the evidence of our characters.
  • 24:37 - 24:40
    In addition to all the other character statements,
  • 24:40 - 24:44
    I’d like you to consider the findings of the psychiatric and psychological tests
  • 24:44 - 24:47
    which the investigator ordered me to undergo in detention.
  • 24:47 - 24:49
    The expert’s findings were as follows:
  • 24:49 - 24:51
    the values to which I am committed in my life are
  • 24:51 - 24:57
    justice, mutual respect, humanity, equality and freedom.
  • 24:57 - 25:03
    That’s what the expert said, someone who doesn’t know me
  • 25:03 - 25:06
    and Investigator Ranchenko would probably
  • 25:06 - 25:11
    have very much liked him to write something different.
  • 25:11 - 25:18
    It would appear, however, that there are more people who live and value the truth
  • 25:18 - 25:23
    and the Bible’s right about that.
  • 25:23 - 25:31
    Finally, I’d like to quote a Pussy Riot song
  • 25:31 - 25:34
    because, strange as it may seem
  • 25:34 - 25:36
    all our songs have turned out to be prophetic
  • 25:36 - 25:39
    including the one that says:
  • 25:39 - 25:44
    The KGB chief, their number one saint, will escort protestors off to jail – that’s us.
  • 25:44 - 25:49
    What I’d like to quote now, however, is the next line:
  • 25:49 - 25:57
    Open the doors, off with the shoulder-straps, join us in a taste of freedom.
  • 25:57 - 25:59
    That's it.
  • 25:59 -
    [Applause]
Title:
Последнее слово Надежды Толоконниковой #PussyRiot (08.08.2012)
Description:

Последнее слово обвиняемой Надежды Толоконниковой в процессе над Pussy Riot в хамовническом суде.
Обвинение просило суд о 3х годах колонии. Оглашение приговора назначено на 17 августа 2012г.

исходник: http://ria.ru/tv_society/#tv_society/719116883

текстовая трансляция 8-го дня судилища: http://www.novayagazeta.ru/news/58826.html
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Video Language:
English, British
Duration:
26:05

English, British subtitles

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