Vanity Fair contributor Masha Gessen has written acclaimed stories for the magazine about Vladimir Putin (“Dead Soul,” October 2008), the ordeal of Mikhail Khodorkovsky (“The Wrath of Putin,” April 2012), and the lawsuit brought by the late Boris Berezovsky against fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich (“Comrades-in-Arms,” VF.com, November 2012). Her new book, Words Will Break Cement, published this month by Riverhead, chronicles the rise of the group Pussy Riot in Russia—and the relentless efforts of the Putin regime to punish its members for the crime of free speech and dissent. Editor-at-large Cullen Murphy posed some questions to Gessen after she arrived in New York from Moscow, where she has lived and worked, off and on, for many years.

VF: For those who have not been following the news, can you fill us in on the basics. First, what is—who are—Pussy Riot, and what did they do that got them into trouble with Vladimir Putin?

Masha Gessen: Pussy Riot, contrary to a misconception they have successfully propagated, are not a punk band; they are a feminist art collective conceived by 22-year-old philosophy student Nadezhda (Nadya) Tolokonnikova in the fall of 2011, just before the Russian protest movement began. The group staged guerrilla performances in Moscow locations ranging from fashion shows to a garage roof outside a jail, to Red Square. They protested the many expressions of the Putin era, from political repression to unbridled consumerism. The performance that got them arrested was a “punk prayer” staged in Moscow’s most opulent cathedral, favored by both government officials and the Church hierarchy. In the 40 seconds before being removed by security, they appealed to the Virgin to “chase Putin out.” The election that would return Putin to the president’s office for his third time was two weeks away, Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, was campaigning for Putin, and this symbiosis of church and state was the object of the protest—and the reason behind the harsh punishment it drew.

*VF:Any reader of _Words Will Break Cement_will be struck by the intimate portraits you paint of the members of Pussy Riot and the members of their circle. How did this personal connection between you and them begin and develop? *

The reporting process was complicated by the fact that two of the three protagonists were behind bars the entire time I was working on the book. Three of the participants in the “punk prayer” were arrested and sentenced to two years in prison, but one, Ekaterina (Kat) Samutsevich, was released on parole in October 2012. I spent many hours interviewing Kat, and days just following her around as she checked in with her parole officer and generally lived the life of a convicted felon.

I interviewed Nadya by correspondence: some Russian penal colonies allow you to write email to inmates and allow them to respond—the letters are read by the censors, so we had some ground rules Nadya set in a letter she passed to me through her lawyer (this is illegal). Among other things, I had to use a pseudonym, which Nadya chose: I signed my letters “Martha Rosler,” which actually made me rather uncomfortable, since I don’t think the artist Martha Rosler and I have much in common. Russian inmates are allowed a short—four-hour—visit with two adults and one child once every two months, and in June of last year, Petr (Petya) Verzilov, Nadya’s husband, took me on a short visit with him, essentially sacrificing his time, since it became a very long interview, which was very important for the book, despite the fact that there were many things Nadya could not talk about in the presence of the guard who was there the entire time. I corresponded with the other Pussy Riot inmate, Maria Alyokhina, as well, and she also, incredibly, gave me access to letters she had written to her family and friends. She is a very fine writer, both introspective and very open, and the excerpts from these, including drawings of her jail cell, are, I think, the most poignant parts of the book.