Comradely Greetings: The Prison Letters of Nadya and Slavoj

Authors

David S. Moon

Abstract

In October 2012, Nadezhda (Nadya) Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, both members of the punk-protest group Pussy Riot, were sent to separate Russian penal colonies, charged in relation to an anti-Putin performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour the previous February. During her time in the Mordovian Penal Colony No. 14— and briefly afterwards—Tolokonnikova engaged in the exchange of letters with philosopher Slavoj Žižek collected in Comradely Greetings, alongside Tolokonnikova’s open letter that details her harrowing experience in the camp and announced her hunger strike, just under a year into her sentence. The richness of Žižek and Tolokonnikova’s correspondences—and the nuance of the flow of their back-and-forth debate—cannot be adequately summarised in the few words here. Instead, this review seeks to provide a brief overview of the key debates and disagreements between the two regarding the central questions of global capitalism and resistance to it—in particular Pussy Riot’s resistance.

Recommended Citation

Moon, David S. (2015) "Comradely Greetings: The Prison Letters of Nadya and Slavoj," International Dialogue: Vol. 5, Article 24.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32873/uno.dc.ID.5.1.1113
Available at: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/id-journal/vol5/iss1/24