Comradely Greetings: The Prison Letters of Nadya and Slavoj (Verso Books)

Four years ago, I visited Russia on a school organised trip. I was studying Russian history for my A Levels at the time, and I jumped at the chance to visit Moscow and St. Petersburg. We visited many landmarks in the two cities, including the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. I remember being so impressed by this looming structure set against a crisp blue sky, naive to the way it symbolised the hierarchical nature of the Orthodox Church and its ideological investment in the Kremlin leadership (Introduction, Michel Eltchaninoff). 

After I returned, I liked to smugly yell 'Been there!' at the TV every time the Kremlin came up on the news. Then Pussy Riot caused a storm in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in February 2012, and I yelled 'Been there!' again. 

Fast forward a few years and I've spent the last week getting trains back and forth from Nottingham to visit family before university lectures kick up again. My train reading this week has been Comradely Greetings: The Prison Letters of Nadya and Slavoj (2014), a slim volume of correspondence between Slovenian philosopher Žižek Slavoj and Nadya Tolokonnikova, a Pussy Riot member imprisoned for hooliganism following that performance in the cathedral. In spite of international protest, Tolokonnikova spent over a year in prison. 

Prior to the letters, Tolokonnikova's account of prison conditions, and her reasons for going on hunger strike because of these conditions, portrays the shocking realities of Russian prison for women. Forced to work in a sweatshop making police officers' uniform, female prisoners work sixteen to seventeen hours a day and live in constant fear of resisting the prison's orders. If you were to ask for more than four hours sleep per night, you would be humiliated by prison officers. There were times when prisoners were not allowed to go to the bathroom or eat and drink if a warden disagreed with one prisoner's request or behaviour. Worked to exhaustion, the female prisoners alongside Tolokonnikova were easily manipulated and would turn against each other. Before she arrived, Tolokonnikova mentions in the chapter, prisoners beat a fellow inmate and she later died in the prison's infimary.

With these horrific conditions in mind, it is amazing how Tolokonnikova could maintain such insightful levels of thought in her exchange of letters with Slavoj. Many of the letters give the reader an internal look at the philosophy behind Pussy Riot's protest and you get a sense that Slavoj acknowledges Tolokonnikova as his equal. He appears to admire her, for her actions outside of prison and her thoughts cast into letters from inside of prison. Slavoj appears to be truly caring towards her political cause and well-being, sometimes asking personal questions that Tolokonnikova leaves unanswered, choosing to not dwell on her condition but determined to write about what inspires her philosophy.

Despite the linguistic barriers set against these correspondents, this volume is touching and leaves the reader with an inspired sense of urgency.