Trapped in Putin's Time Machine

Masha Gessen gives her take on Pussy Riot. She talks about what it's like to even listen to their songs:

I suddenly realized these texts sounded better in English than they do in Russian. It wasn’t that the translators had improved the quality of the writing: the originals, which I had read in Russian, had been clear and cogent and surprisingly erudite for three very young women—they range in ages from 22 to 30—who had been known for staging radical actions, not for writing political commentary. The problem with the writing in Russian was that the women were speaking the language of the modern world in a country that is rapidly traveling backward in time....Those of us who live in Russia often feel like we have been forced into a time machine. Now the rest of the world has seen it happen: three women shaped by 20th-century thought tried by a 17th-century court.

(Image: "Protestors gather outside the Russian Consulate General building during a demonstration of support for the female Russian female punk band Pussy Riot in Edinburgh, Scotland August 17, 2012. A Russian judge found three women from the punk band Pussy Riot guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred on Friday for staging an anti-Kremlin protest on the altar of Moscow's main Russian Orthodox church." David Moir / Reuters)