Known to a very narrow circle of music lovers, the Pussy Riot group became famous throughout the country thanks to an unauthorized punk prayer service in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. But it remains to be seen whether the band members would have received such wide popularity if it were not for the song they sang - "Mother of God, drive Putin away." However, they sang this or another song remains a mystery.
Five girls entered the Cathedral of Christ the Savior on February 21, 2012. Donning their masks, they ran into the Solea and the pulpit, walked to the altar, turned on the amplification equipment, and gave a five-minute show, which was broadcast on all federal news programs. Then the girls were kicked out of the temple by the guards.
The initial reaction from law enforcement and the church was adequate. The Moscow police department reported that all the participants in the action were taken to the territorial police station and then released, the main church speakers of today - the official representative of the Russian Orthodox Church Vsevolod Chaplin and deacon Andrei Kuraev - were condescending to hooliganism - Maslenitsa is a time of buffoonery.
But soon everything changed. The fact is that witnesses to the incident say that the song performed by Pussy Riot was simply anticlerical, and a video appeared on the Internet, where the song "Mother of God, Drive Putin Out" was superimposed on the performance. A criminal case was opened against the perpetrators of this "punk prayer" under the article "hooliganism". Three alleged participants in the action, Maria Alekhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, were taken into custody in early March.
For law enforcement agencies, the case turned out to be so complicated that on April 19, the Tagansky Court of Moscow considered the investigation's request to extend the arrest of the suspects. The girls were considered so dangerous to society that the petition was granted, and in mid-June, the court once again extended the arrest period for the group members - until July 24.
If at the beginning of the investigation a powerful propaganda campaign sounded about insulting the feelings of believers, then the mood in society changed to bewilderment, since the reaction of the state law enforcement system to a simply ambiguous act turned out to be inadequate. Therefore, letters from the public and the creative intelligentsia were sent to the Moscow City Court and the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation with a request to take a softer stance towards the members of the group.
