Two non-incarcerated members of the punk rock band are in the US to connect with other activists and to 'have a dialogue'

At an unannounced appearance at a radical feminist bookstore in New York, two members of the Russian punk rock group that sparked an international crisis for Vladimir Putin took off their iconic colorful balaclavas and revealed their faces.

Two youthful women using the pseudonyms Fara and Shaiba revealed themselves as members of Pussy Riot, the activist feminist collective that doubles as perhaps the world’s most dangerous band. It was the first time Pussy Riot has ever visited the United States.

Behind the masks, the protests, the music and the controversy that prompted Russian courts to convict two of their comrades on “hooliganism” charges, Fara and Shaiba, dressed in unassuming clothing, looked like any young women who might move about New York or any other city.

That accessibility was central to their message, delivered through translation: “We are keeping the spirit alive. Continue the riot. Right now we are here on a special mission to try to establish connections with like-minded people and organizations throughout the globe.” Any woman in a balaclava who believes in gender equality and is willing to fight for it, they said, can be considered a member of Pussy Riot. They showed their faces, Shaiba said, because they believed they were in a “safe space.”

Their appearance on Monday night at Bluestockings, a feminist bookshop on New York’s Lower East Side, was not announced on the store’s website. Invitations spread through word of mouth. The 50-odd attendees, many of them young activists, were asked to keep news of the band’s arrival off social media and the Internet. The Guardian was able to attend the small gathering provided it kept news of their appearance under a 48-hour embargo and did not photograph Fara and Shaiba with their masks off – all security measures, they said, to avoid the Russian security services that imprisoned their bandmates and continue to target them.

“Feminism is perceived in Russia as something very negative,” Fara said. “It might be because of the way the current leader and his clique are trying to portray feminism as something bad, dangerous, and at the same time senseless.”

Pussy Riot has captivated the world’s attention since February 2012, when five members of the music and performance art collective performed a controversial song, “Punk Prayer” at Russia’s Christ the Savior cathedral in Moscow. The Russian government reacted to the song’s anti-Putin lyrics (“Virgin Mary, Mother of God, put Putin away”) and anti-religious imagery (“the phantom of liberty is in Heaven”) by arresting three band members and ultimately convicting two of them, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, on charges of “hooliganism.” Alyokhina, 25, on Monday ended an 11-day hunger strike to protest her prison conditions; both she and Tolonnikova have been jailed for over a year.

The imprisonment of Pussy Riot prompted an international outcry. Celebrity musicians ranging from Paul McCartney to Madonna have denounced the conviction as an affront to free expression; the Russian foreign ministry may now deny Madonna future entry visas. When Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were sentenced in August, the US State Department issued a statement calling their two-year sentences “disproportionate” and urging the Russians to “review this case and ensure that the right to freedom of expression is upheld.” Even Putin’s political protege, the Russian prime minister and former president Dmitry Medvedev called Pussy Riot’s incarceration “unproductive” in September.

Photograph: Raya Jalabi/Guardian

Fara and Shaiba arrived in the United States on 30 May and evaded publicity. They said they had a “very productive” meeting with Occupy activists on June 2, their only quasi-public appearance before stepping into the small bookstore. On 10 June, HBO will premiere a documentary about the band, Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer; Fara and Shaiba’s American visit is timed to promote it.

The mere presence of Pussy Riot in the US is a potential diplomatic complication for Washington. The Obama administration is trying to work with the government of Vladimir Putin on several vexing issues, like pressuring Iran to negotiate away its nuclear program and abandoning support for the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Russia maintains an ambiguity about completing a sale of a powerful air-defense system to Assad, the S-300, that would seriously complicate any potential US or allied aerial bombing campaign. Moscow might view the arrival of Pussy Riot in the United States as a potential slight. Hours before Fara and Shaiba spoke at Bluestockings, two Republican members of the US Congress, Steve King of Iowa and Dana Rohrabacher of California, defended Pussy Riot’s imprisonment during a visit to Moscow.

A complicating factor: US diplomats are unlikely to know Pussy Riot’s true identities. Anonymity is a core aspect of the band’s political and aesthetic message: they employ pseudonyms like Cat, Terminator and Seraph. One member, known as Shayba, told the Financial Times in 2012 that there are at least 11 members of Pussy Riot but no set number. The members of the collective wear masks in public – a necessity given the band’s oppositional political stance – and US visa or entry documents don’t require people to reveal political affiliations.

“There’s a fundamentally dangerous crackdown in Russia right now that threatens the future of civil society,” said Rachel Denber, the deputy Central Europe and Asia director of Human Rights Watch, “and it’s something the US should be raising with the Russian government at a very high level.”

Fara and Shaiba described that crackdown directly. People can be arrested for concealing their faces in gatherings of two or more, even for wearing a “cosmetology mask of herbs and greens,” or for offending religious sensibilities. Publicly advocating a change in the Russian government is “considered treason and could be punished quite severely,” said Fara, who did most of the talking during the evening meeting.

“The most interesting part is that in the band’s name, Pussy Riot, Russian authorities are more concerned and more fear the second word, ‘Riot’ – unlike here,” Fara said, drawing laughs.

Audience members queried the Pussy Riot representatives for over an hour, eager to hear the group’s origins and divine their views on feminist and activist tactics. Fara and Shaiba clarified that the group formed in September 2011 with an “open, horizontal structure” for membership. It wants to find some way to once again perform in Russia – provided it can evade further repression.

“We don’t have a goal to build a network, to create one,” Fara said. “It’s just the case and the whole media attention and global protest rallies in support of Pussy Riot showed us that there is thousands and millions of people who are concerned, who think the same things, who are like-minded. Now we are just trying to get in direct connection with them, to have a dialogue. We didn’t create the network. The network exists already.”

A well-tattooed attendee who identified herself as Emma expressed gratitude to Pussy Riot. “Thank you,” she said, “for making punk a threat again.”

Disclosure: a cousin of the author of this article works at Bluestockings and moderated Pussy Riot's remarks at the bookstore.