Looking beyond the economy: Pussy Riot and the Kremlin's voting coalition

Regina Smyth and Irina Soboleva
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Ирина Владимировна Соболева

Post-Soviet Affairs, 2014, vol. 30, issue 4, 257-275

Abstract: The arrest of the protest punk band Pussy Riot (PR) in March 2012 and the subsequent prosecution of three band members pose a significant puzzle for political science. Although PR's performances presented a coherent alternative to the Putin regime's image of Russian reality, it was unlikely that the discordant music and crude lyrics of their art protest would inspire Russian society to take to the streets. Yet, the regime mounted a very visible prosecution against the three young women. We argue that the trial marked a shift in the Kremlin's strategy to shape state–society relations. In the face of declining economic conditions and social unrest, the PR trial encapsulated the Kremlin's renewed focus on three related mechanisms to insure social support: coercion, alliance building, and symbolic politics. The PR trial afforded the Kremlin an important opportunity to simultaneously redefine its loyal constituency, secure the Church–state relationship, and stigmatize the opposition.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1060586X.2013.865940 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rpsaxx:v:30:y:2014:i:4:p:257-275

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rpsa20

DOI: 10.1080/1060586X.2013.865940

Access Statistics for this article

Post-Soviet Affairs is currently edited by Timothy Frye

More articles in Post-Soviet Affairs from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().