The trial of Pussy Riot ended as it began: as an egregious expression of contempt for law, justice, and common sense. The verdict—two years in prison camp for each of the three women, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, members of the punk band Pussy Riot, which had staged a brief anti-Putin performance in a cathedral, was a triumph of anti-modern obscurantism over young Russian modernity, the crushing power of the state over the individual, servility over independence.

In trials, like that of Pussy Riot, that are guided by powerful political interests, convictions are preordained, and the verdicts are generally identical to the initial indictment. In her tedious three-hour reading of the sentence, Judge Marina Syrova repeated the same absurd phrasings that were heard from the prosecution during the hearings. The Pussy Riot women, who are all between twenty-two and thirty, were convicted for violating “conceivable and inconceivable rules”; for “emphatically vulgar” and “deliberately provocative” gesturing; for “crossing themselves in a parodied way;” for their clothing, “inappropriate in a church”; and for other acts that “offended the feelings of religious believers.” The thirty or forty seconds they performed in an almost empty church were characterized as a premeditated act of criminal hooliganism, a grave violation of public order. Though Pussy Riot called their “punk prayer” “Mother of the Lord, Chase Putin Out,” and emphasized that the act was a political protest against the Patriarch campaigning for Putin in the Presidential race, the judge bluntly denied that there was any political inspiration, and ruled instead that religious hatred was the motive of Pussy Riot’s performance.

Asked about the Pussy Riot affair during his recent visit in London, Putin said, “I don’t think that they should be punished too harshly.” To the supporters of Pussy Riot, Putin’s statement, as well as the incredible outpouring of international support, provided some hope that the conviction would be suspended and that the three young women would be released. But, apparently, to Putin, two years of prison camp does not seem too harsh. In fact, the time of the actual incarceration may be even shortened after Pussy Riot’s lawyers appeal today’s verdict. Yet to those outraged by the crying unfairness and the cruel absurdity of the prosecution, the sentence is an insult.

In the closing section of the verdict, Judge Marina Syrova read “psychiatric-psychological examinations” of Nadia, Masha, and Katya, as the women are known. All three were found to suffer from a “mixed-personality disorder,” a condition that included different combinations of a “proactive approach to life,” “a drive for self-fulfillment,” “stubbornly defending their opinion,” “inflated self-esteem,” “inclination to opposition behavior,” and “propensity for protest reactions.”

It’s hard to think of a better definition of the Pussy Riot “crime.” These same psychological “abnormalities” were the targets of systematic eradication during the decades of Bolshevik terror and the following period of the Soviet police state: a Soviet man had to be quiescent, unquestioning, and submissive. The Communist state demonstrated (and used) force and dictated the rights and wrongs in ideology, ethics, artistic tastes, and moral values. Anyone showing independence of the mind, initiative, or individual striving, was seen as suspicious and politically unreliable. There were those who did so anyway; as David Remnick wrote recently, the women’s closing statements were part of a grand tradition of Russian dissidence. But over the decades, the overwhelming majority accepted their powerlessness vis-à-vis the state as a fact of life; those defying the oppression and showing any independence were regarded suspicious troublemakers and a threat to everyday life.

As I wrote in an earlier post, Putin’s Russia is not the Soviet Union. There is more freedom of expression, and the years of post-Communist development have produced a minority of new Russians who are not willing to live by the old norms of fear and quiescence. It is this minority that have joined the mass rallies in Moscow since December. They are the ones who gathered outside the courthouse today and chanted, “Free Pussy Riot!” and “Russia without Putin,” and erupted with “Pozor! Pozor!” (“Shame! Shame!”) each time the police took away yet another busload of protesters. In total, some fifty people were grabbed by the police outside the courthouse. Among them was Garry Kasparov, world chess champion turned political activist.

But they are still a minority: young Muscovites may rage and chant outside the courthouse, but over fifty per cent of Russians showed negative opinions of Pussy Riot in an August national poll; just over thirty per cent were non-negative—of these, most said they were indifferent, and only five per cent said they were sympathetic. Still, their sense of individual achievement, their solidarity, their readiness to defend their dignity despite the government’s pressure, present a growing challenge to Putin, who remains a proponent of the traditional Russian model of an omnipotent state and powerless people.

Facing this challenge, Putin increasingly relies on his more conservative, Soviet-style compatriots, and capitalizes on their habitual dependence on the state and their fears of the new.

The Russian Orthodox Church is Putin’s natural ally in this effort. The Church barely serves as a moral authority or source of spiritual solace. Of the seventy per cent Russians who identify themselves as Orthodox Christians, a significant part readily admit that they don’t believe in god; only a tiny number take part in parish life. The role of the Church is, instead, a pillar of Russian statehood and of a conservative order, professing many of the same virtues of quiescence favored in the Soviet era. The Church has been Putin’s loyal and reliable partner in the prosecution of Pussy Riot, as well as in his more general effort to consolidate his rule. The latter goal requires that non-conformist Russians be neutralized and alienated just as they are increasingly anxious to make a difference. And this means that the women of Pussy Riot are not the last victims.

Read Masha Lipman’s earlier posts about the Pussy Riot trial.

Photograph by Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images.