The group, which is called Pussy Riot, played a song titled “Putin Pissed Himself” while perched on Red Square’s Place of Skulls, a platform historically used for announcing imperial decrees. After the 1:38 minute song was over, FSB officers ran up to the group and brought three of the eight girls away to a Kremlin police checkpoint. Five of the girls were arrested in all.

After the incident, police immediately cordoned off the Place of Skulls “to carry out investigative work.”

According to one member of the band, the song calls on Russian citizens “to occupy key places in the country and achieve political changes.”

The singer explained: “The song has the line ‘Punishment with the whip for your freedom and ours.’ We were recalling the dissident protest on Red Square in 1968 [against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia], after which the dissidents were tortured and sent to psychiatric hospitals, prison, and exile. The line ‘Patients are invited to conform’ is a reference to the types of punishment that were used in the USSR, and also to the fact that the government in Russia today thinks of its citizens as psychiatric patients incapable of making their own decisions.’”

Interfax later reported that the activists were charged with violating the law on holding public demonstrations. They were released from holding, but must appear in court on January 24.

Pussy Riot is well-known for holding impromptu protest concerts. They also participated in a concert on December 17 in support of oppositionists arrested during protests against falsified elections for the State Duma.

Photographs from the concert can be seen on the group’s LiveJournal page.

A letter dated July 8, 2011 from the Karelian Ministry of Education, signed by Minister Irina Kuvshinova and sent to schools throughout the republic orders a thorough ban on any possible form of Halloween celebrations. The text of the letter, which is available online, was sent to Kasparov.ru on Wednesday by the Karelian branch of the Youth Human Rights Group.

Civil servants justified the move by demonizing Halloween as a pagan, non-Christian holiday that contradicts the “secularist character of education” and promotes “Satanism and extremism.”

According to the Ministry of Education, “it is necessary to create new forms of joint school holidays that correspond with the basic values of Russian culture.” Given that Halloween has its roots in ancient Irish and Scottish history, Minister Kuvshinova suggested that teachers limit themselves to providing students with factual descriptions of associated Gaelic holidays, such as Samhain and Beltine, when teaching the histories of those counties.

Kuvshinova also proposed teaching the “special role of Christianity in culture and traditions,” citing examples such as Boxing Day in Great Britain, St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland, and Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving in the United States [editor's note: Thanksgiving is not actually a Christian holiday].

The letter goes on to say that the issue of holding Halloween celebrations in schools is a matter under the jurisdiction of the Karelian Prosecutor’s Office, and that school administrators must therefore send the Ministry of Education information confirming that the recommendations have been carried out by November 1, 2011.

In recent years, Russian officials have used wanton charges of “extremism” as an excuse to stifle oppositionist dissent, a trend that critics say abuses legislation that defines the term too broadly. Such charges have been filed against at least one poet, the families of victims in the Beslan school massacre, opposition leader Garry Kasparov, many newspapers, a television channel that airs South Park, and countless political oppositionists.

Also in the spirit of vague bans, Russian legislators attempted to outlaw the emo subculture in 2008.

A play based on the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky is set to stage its North American premiere in Washington, DC on May 4, 2011.

The play, called “One Hour Eighteen,” is a highly acclaimed production based on excerpts from Magnitsky’s personal diary. As has been the case in Moscow since premiering last June, the play will be followed by a group discussion.

Sergei Magnitsky’s tragic death has become a symbol for those working to further human rights and the rule of law in Russia today. After uncovering a $230 million tax fraud case implicating a variety of Russian officials, bankers, and members of the mob, Magnitsky was arrested and placed in a Moscow detention facility. After eleven months of being denied proper medical care, he died without ever seeing trial in November 2009. What followed was an unprecedented global outcry demanding justice for what, upon closer inspection, appeared to be a case of premeditated murder. While a still-ongoing independent inquiry ordered by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev concluded last week that Magnitsky’s jailing and treatment was illegal, no charges have been filed in the case.

The play’s premiere in Washington could not be more timely, as Russian investigators announced this morning that they are seeking the arrest of one of Magnitsky’s colleagues, Ivan Cherkasov, in connection with his accusations that tax inspector Olga Stepanova was involved in the fraud Magnitsky uncovered. Stepanova was one of the central figures in a YouTube mini-doc released in April by Magnitsky’s supporters, where evidence is presented that she and three other inspectors garnered $42.9 million for aiding in the fraud.

A court is set to consider the motion on May 4.

The play will be staged on Wednesday, May 4 from 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. RSVP is required. Click here for more details.

The Moscow Times provides a thorough account of the festivities:

Gays crashed a Communist rally, ultranationalists protested migration and the president’s Twitter account, the mayor got pelted with eggs, and hipsters rallied for raccoon power during unusually colorful celebrations of the May Day holiday in Moscow.

Police said only several of the 40,000 people to rally in Moscow on Sunday were briefly detained, Interfax reported. But about 50 anarchists were held in St. Petersburg.

Mayor Sergei Sobyanin was targeted with eggs and mayonnaise while addressing the city’s biggest rally of 25,000 people gathered in front of City Hall on Tverskaya Ulitsa for a joint event by the ruling United Russia party and trade unions, The Other Russia [political party - theotherrussia.org ed.] said on its web site.

The sole successful strike saw an egg grazing Sobyanin’s pant leg, the statement said, adding that, to the mayor’s credit, he did not interrupt his speech. The incident went ignored by state-owned media covering the rally.

A brief scuffle broke out at the second-biggest rally, staged downtown by the Communist Party, when about 100 gay rights activists unfurled rainbow banners and attempted to join the main crowd of 4,500 people, Interfax said.

Riot police separated the two groups and held two gay activists for questioning, Interfax said.

Hundreds of ultranationalists staged a rally in northern Moscow, waving black, yellow and white banners associated with imperial Russia and chanting slogans such as “Migrant, time to go home,” “Down with the Yiddish yoke” and “Twitter! Medvedev! Lies!” — the latter a reference to President Dmitry Medvedev’s fondness for blogging.

Police did not intervene with the sanctioned rally, which was accompanied by a car with loudspeakers, anti-xenophobia watchdog Sova said. The banned Movement Against Illegal Immigration said on its web site that some 2,000 protesters attended the rally, but Sova put their number at 600, unchanged from last year.

The liberal Yabloko party marked the holiday by staging a picnic on the artificial isle Fantasy Island in western Moscow, which houses luxury real estate owned by tycoons and senior officials.

Critics have long accused developers of illegal construction on the island, and Sunday’s event protested the fact that cottages block free access to the coastline, which is a violation of environmental legislation, the party said on its web site. It said activists had to use boats to reach the isle’s coast.

In St. Petersburg, police detained some 50 anarchists who tried to join a sanctioned trade union rally, the news web site Fontanka.ru reported. Many detainees wore masks imitating the anarchist vigilante from the graphic novel “V for Vendetta” and carried knives and brass knuckles.

Among the more unusual events were flash mobs called Monstratsia — a play on the Russian word for rally that comes to roughly mean “monsterization.” The event, initiated by performance artist Artyom Loskutov in Novosibirsk in 2004, spread this year to cover Moscow and some 20 cities in Russia and abroad.

Monstratsias, usually timed to official holidays, require participants to carry nonsensical banners and chant meaningless slogans. This year’s crop in Moscow included offerings such as “Yummy,” “Gas, Oil, May,” “We could be working instead” and “Power to Raccoons.”

Viktoria Lomasko and Anton Nikolaev had planned to show their work at the gallery in International University in Moscow. The exhibit, which was to be curated by noted art historian Andrei Yerofeyev, was meant to show graphic representations of controversial topics in Russian society.

But university administrators balked when they saw two pieces that criticized another Moscow university and former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.

Nikolaev explained what happened on his blog:

This is the third time already that an exhibit with work by Vika and I has been closed because of censorship.

Twice it was because of our piece “Tagansky Justice,” which spoke the whole truth about how the clergy and Orthodox Christians are fascist assholes. First at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, then at Vinzavod.

In the first instance, we were told that the air conditioners were broken; in the second one, they unexpectedly changed the plan for the exhibit.

The third time they cancelled it because of Luzhkov.

They said directly in the text that it was because of him.

Here’s the story. Yerofeyev asked if Vika would do a personal exhibit in the gallery of International University. Most of the exhibited works were our joint reports on controversial societal topics. At the last moment, International University demanded that we take down two of our reports.

1) About how teachers are being unlawfully fired from the Polygraphic Institute.
2) About unlawful construction in Moscow.

The explanation for the first was that they didn’t want to spoil relations with the administration at Polygraphic (Moscow State University of Printing Arts).

And for the second – that Luzhkov lectures in the university.

Vika and I told them that we refuse to remove the pieces from the exhibit.

A representative from International University told us that, in that case, there won’t be an exhibit.

The offending works can be found here and here.

Nikolaev’s post is dated April 21, but on April 27 he added an update:

According to Andrei Yerofeyev, curator of the banned exhibit, [the artists] would have had to make a compromise with the university administration in order for the exhibit to go on. They were prepared to leave up the drawing about Polygraphic, but they did not agree to leave up the report about how Kadashi was razed that criticizes Luzhkov. Yury Luzhkov holds the post of dean of the Department of City Management.

Luzhkov was given this appointment almost immediately after being fired by President Dmitri Medvedev from his post as mayor. A couple of weeks ago he read a lecture entitled “Socrates was always Socrates,” which television channel REN-TV reported “was reminiscent of the story of Luzhkov’s downfall.” Lomasko used the lecture as the basis for a comic response to the ban of their exhibit (translated by theotherrussia.org from the original):

Yerofeyev himself has at times been a target of censorship. Last June, Moscow’s Tagansky Court fined him and a fellow colleague a total of $11,400 for putting on the exhibit “Forbidden Art – 2006″ at the Andrei Sakharov Museum & Public Center. Their defense filed an appeal but lost in October 2010.

With Russia’s next presidential election less than a year away, political analysts are obsessing over every last statement by members of the ruling tandem. With eleven long months of intrigue yet ahead, the Communist Party clearly grasped the appeal of some electoral comic relief – as their more than 1.6 million YouTube views since March 30 attest.

On Tuesday, another user posted an English-subtitled version of the video:

During the concert, star rock critic Artemy Troitsky presented anti-awards to police officers (in absentia, of course) for epitomizing the very worst of their profession. Now, he’s facing up to two years in jail for just that.

As the Moscow Times reports:

The country’s most prominent music critic faces two years in jail for crossing into public activism and handing an “anti-prize” to a policeman he named the worst cop of the year.

Artemy Troitsky, who was also hit with a fine of 130,000 rubles ($4,600) on Wednesday, told The Moscow Times that he views the case as punishment for his activism but promised not to back down.

The case was opened on a complaint by former traffic policeman Nikolai Khovansky, who was the first to arrive at the site of a fatal road accident involving a LUKoil vice president in February 2010.

Khovansky was also the first to put the blame on the two women killed in the accident, Olga Sidelnikova and Vera Alexandrina, whose Citroen collided with the car of LUKoil vice president Anatoly Barkov on Moscow’s Leninsky Prospekt.

The case sparked much outrage, with media and many citizens accusing the police of covering up for Barkov and his driver. City police, nevertheless, ultimately cleared Barkov and his driver.

Troitsky targeted the police officer during a November show by the rock band DDT, naming him among the recipients of a prize for the worst police officers.

Interestingly, Khovansky’s daughter attended the show, during which DDT frontman Yury Shevchuk also named the year’s best cops.

Khovansky, who has since retired, filed a defamation lawsuit against Troitsky and won the case Wednesday in Moscow’s Gagarinsky District Court.

Troitsky also faces a separate criminal case for insult over the same incident, with a hearing scheduled for May 3, Interfax said. The offense is punishable with prison time.

The 55-year-old critic, known for his ties to Russian rock greats, did not attend the Wednesday hearing, saying he was ill, but he promised to appeal.

He said Khovansky was used by “puppeteers” who sought to punish him. “I believe they are people who don’t like my public activities,” he said by telephone, without elaborating on who might be behind the lawsuit.

“I am not a politician, but I am not the kind of guy who is going to surrender,” Troitsky added. “The more they pressure me, the more I will resist.”

In addition to the campaign against Barkov, Troitsky participated last year in protests against the partial destruction of the Moscow region’s Khimki forest, slated to go in order to make way for a state-backed highway. The protests ended in failure, with the government authorizing the road’s construction in December.

“The calendar is made up of 11 male students and Elmo – the famous puppet from the children’s program Sesame Street – photographed to represent the student who came up with this idea,” said Kommersant reporter Konstantin Andrianov. “In the captions, the creative students played with problematic topics in the city or tried to make fun of the governor.”

“You have a good roof, but ours leaks,” says first year journalism student Gosha on the page for February. “I can give you my laser for the battle against icicles,” says another, referring to the plight of falling icicles that kill multiple pedestrians every winter.

As “Elmo” told Kommersant, the students originally wanted to print hard copies of the calendar and deliver them to Smolny – St. Petersburg’s city hall – but “not a single print shop wanted to do this.” Instead, they posted it on LiveJournal.

SPbGU Journalism Department Dean Anatoly Puyu confirmed that the students in the calendar are indeed from the department. So far no reaction has been heard from either Smolny or Matviyenko herself, he said.

The Petersburg students follow in the footsteps of Moscow State University journalism students who caused a ruckus last November after shooting a provocative calendar for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s birthday. The next day, different students from the same department came out with an alternative calendar. As opposed to the original, these girls were fully clothed and posed questions such as “who killed Anna Politkovskaya?” and “how does inflation affect bribes?”

The newest calendar was timed to come out on April 1st, and while clearly driven by humor, the captions touch on seriously questionable actions by the governor. One page, which asks “can I play on the Aurora, too?” refers to a recent scandal in which the governor was caught partying aboard a decommissioned naval cruiser that had been turned into a museum. The museum director says he has no idea who sanctioned the event and state prosecutors are investigating the incident. Another that says “I, a homeless student, am prepared to shovel snow” refers to controversial statements by the governor this past winter that students and homeless people should be recruited to make up for the lack of municipal workers to clear the city’s sidewalks.

January. "Valentina Ivanovna, you're the governor with a capital G." Kolya, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 4th year

February. "Valentina Ivanovna, you have a good roof, but ours leaks." Gosha, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 1st year

March. "Valentina Ivanovna, I can give you my laser for the battle against icicles." Roma, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 3rd year

April. "Valentina Ivanovna, the second term is a lesson for us." Elmo, idea author

May. "Valentina Ivanovna, can I play on the Aurora, too?" Gosha, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 3rd year

June. "Valentina Ivanovna, I, a homeless student, am prepared to shovel snow." Yevgeny, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 3rd year

July. "Valentina Ivanovna, I want a dialogue with the city!" Yura, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 3rd year

August. "Valentina Ivanovna, Gazprom's dreams come true, but what about me?" Nikita, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 1st year

September. "Valentina Ivanovna, I put a grade on your Petersburg report card." Tima, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 4th year

October. "Valentina Ivanovna, they're reconstructing Aprashka. Will you answer for the bazaar?" Danil, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 4th year

November. "Valentina Ivanovna, you have UGG booties!" Anatol, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 4th year

December. "Valentina Ivanovna, an optimist thinks that the glass is half full; the pessimist - that it's half empty. I just like the glass." Vitalik, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 4th year

In the past, activists have proposed boycotting elections, turning in spoiled ballots, and raising awareness of the obvious fraud the government carries out. In one year of particularly blatant falsifications, deputies from the three parties besides United Russia that held seats in the State Duma walked out in dramatic protest. In the end, President Dmitri Medvedev brushed off all objections and claimed the election results “reflected voter preferences.”

With a new set of elections in Russia’s regions coming up in March, famous activist lawyer and blogger Alexei Navalny has proposed a new strategy for the opposition: get out the vote for any party besides United Russia. He explained his reasoning on a blog post on Thursday:

Election day is going to be in March. The “elections” are being held in ten regions.

Afterwards, at the end of 2011, there will be federal “elections” for the State Duma.

We all understand perfectly well that these aren’t real elections – it is simply an unlawful process that results in representatives from the Party of Swindlers and Thieves – United Russia informing us that “we’ve received 65% of the vote.”

What is to be done in this situation?

I am forced to admit that my most dearly beloved topic – boycotting elections – has failed. It just doesn’t work.

That is to say: nobody, of course, goes to the polls – not because they’re boycotting them, but because they simply don’t pay any attention to them.

I think that, for all the normal people in our country, the time has come to change political strategy.

Our new conception should be: GO TO THE POLLS AND VOTE AGAINST UNITED RUSSIA.

That is to say, for any other party – it makes no difference.

You don’t need to explain to me that A Just Russia is no different than United Russia, that Zhirik [LPDR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky - ed.] is awful, and that the Communist Party is ancient.

It makes no difference in the slightest. You are voting against the Party of Swindlers and Thieves.

We need to ruin United Russia’s monopoly over the government.

Why should we do this if they’re going to “draw in” 65% anyway?
Elections are, in any case, a source of stress for this vile government. Falsification is a difficult process that involves many thousands of people (members of the electoral commission, etc.).

Administrations in the regions where elections are going to be held in March will be doing basically nothing besides creating administrative falsifications. It’s hard enough to draw in 65% from the real 35%. Drawing 65% from 20% is going to be even harder. We need to exacerbate their stress.

Will this be successful in creating problems?
And how. Right now, 15-20% of the population actually goes to the polls. There’s a very large amount of absentee (read: fake) voting. That is to say, to put it simply, the vote for United Russia is the vote of 7-10% of voters. If we bring 1% of the population that didn’t go earlier to the polls, we create a big problem. If it’s 5% – a colossal one. If it’s 15%, then

How is this better than a boycott?
Because this kind of action will be supported by all activists of various parties and we won’t have to deal with the long, pointless ruckus of arguing with them over a boycott. We will actually get hundreds of thousands of supporters of our campaign right away.

The goal of the campaign is simple. Using online and offline methods to maximally promote two simple messages:

1. United Russia is a party of swindlers and thieves.
2. Go to the polls without fail and vote against United Russia. For any other party.

To promote the campaign, Navalny has begun a poster competition:

Strictly speaking, the coming elections and their results mean nothing for us.

And in general, all of this can be done without strain in an entertaining way that would be fun.

To start, I would propose holding a contest for a trash poster.

There are three requirements:

- Posters should be in a4 format, so that everyone can print them on a home (office) printer and hang them in entryways, elevators, next to desks in offices, in office cafeterias/bathrooms. Bring one to your grandmother and hang it on her door so the old lady remembers how to vote.

- The poster can show whatever, but it should clearly deliver two basic messages: 1) United Russia is a party of swindlers and thieves 2) Go to the polls and vote for any party, but against United Russia.

However the message gets through is unimportant. Whether it’s with pictograms or holograms.

You could, in fact, use verse from the poetry contest on Twitter. They can be found there under the #er tag.

Stuff like:

- Get your relatives a job in the Council of Directors!
Join the Party of Swindlers and Thieves!

- Not afraid to rob in front of the entire public?
We need you for the party of swindlers and thieves!

Navalny plans to eventually draw up a list of all the submissions and a corresponding poll, but for now, here are a few worth noting:

“United Russia – party of thieves and swindlers”

“He voted for United Russia. Shameful! Don’t repeat the mistake!”

“We’re eating Russia. Soon we’ll eat everything.”

“He always votes for United Russia. If ordered, he’ll also kick you in the face.”

“This is what the Great Wall of China would look like if it was built by specialists from the party United Russia”

“Method No. 34: Sell a third of all exported oil through your personal friend’s company. Learn more about this and other methods of sawing up Russia at rospil.info”

“Don’t rock the boat! Vote for United Russia!”

“Before they swipe your last pair of pants, vote against the party of swindlers and thieves! ‘United Russia’ ‘Any other party’”

As the Telegraph points out, the group has recently became much more officially deserving of that nefarious title: Nashi activists in Yaroslavl were found to have plagiarized the writings of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels to “inspire young Russians to greater patriotic heights.”

The full report:

Activists from the ‘Nashi’ youth group drew up a list of eight commandments meant to inspire young Russians to greater patriotic heights, a Kremlin priority.

Anti-Kremlin activists however spotted that the text was a lightly edited version of an infamous list of commandments that Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, composed to steer National Socialists in the right ideological direction.

The Nashi activists, who were based at a branch of the youth group in the town of Yaroslavl 150 miles east of Moscow, had removed Goebbels’ advice to beware Jews and punch anyone who insulted the motherland. But they otherwise seem to have substituted the word Russia for Germany.

“The enemies of Russia are your enemies,” they wrote mimicking Goebbels’ phrase “Germany’s enemies are your enemies; hate them with all your heart.”

Critics said they were not particularly shocked by the content of the new commandments but disturbed by what the act of plagiarism said about the activists.

“It is strange that they did not find any other way of expressing themselves other than copying fascists,” wrote Anton Orekh of the Ejednevny Jurnal news portal. “In order to copy it they had to find it. To find it, read it, and really get into it. And understand that to say it better than Goebbels is just not possible.”

Ruslan Maslov, the activist who penned the commandments, said he could not understand what was so bad about their content. Another activist, Artyom Kozlov, said the scandal was an attempt to blacken the group’s name. He said that not everything about Nazi Germany was bad.

“The roads in Nazi Germany were well built,” he told gazeta.ru. “But that does not mean they should be destroyed. The good things should be preserved.”

Nashi, which means ‘One of Us,’ enjoys support from the Kremlin. It has courted controversy in the past, however, by mounting an aggressive campaign of harassment against the former British ambassador to Russia and, more recently, by displaying the heads of its ‘enemies’ hewn from papier-mache on spikes donning Nazi caps.

“The Commandments of Honour”

1. Your fatherland is Russia. Love it above all others and in deed more than word.

2. The enemies of Russia are your enemies.

3. Every compatriot, even the lowliest, is part of Russia. Love him like you love yourself!

4. Demand only duties of yourself. Then Russia will regain justice.

5. Be proud of Russia! You must honour the fatherland for which millions gave their lives.

6. Remember, if someone takes away your rights, you have the right to say “NO!”

7. Uphold what you must without shame where Great Russia is concerned!

8. Believe in the future. Then you will become the victor!