Pussy Riot claims Masha, Nadya are no longer members of the collective

You might have seen the recently freed members of Pussy Riot around. The Russian feminist activists have made appearances on Russian television, The Colbert Report and were guests of honor at a recent Amnesty International concert. However, it appears that Masha Alyokhina and Nadya Tolokonnikova are no longer members of the collective. Pussy Riot proper released an open letter distancing themselves from the duo.

We are very pleased with Masha's and Nadya's release. We are proud of their resistance against harsh trials that fell to their lot, and their determination by all means to continue the struggle that they had started during their stay in the colonies.

Unfortunately for us, they are being so carried away with the problems in Russian prisons, that they completely forgot about the aspirations and ideals of our group--feminism, separatist resistance, fight against authoritarianism and personality cult, all of which, as a matter of fact, was the cause for their unjust punishment.

Moreover, instead of the names of Nadya and Masha, the poster of the [Amnesty International] event showed a man in a balaclava with electric guitar, under the name of Pussy Riot, while the organizers smartly called for people to buy expensive tickets. All this is an extreme contradiction to the very principles of Pussy Riot collective: We are all-female separatist collective--no man can represent us either on a poster or in reality. We belong to leftist anti-capitalist ideology--we charge no fees for viewing our art-work, all our videos are distributed freely on the web, the spectators to our performances are always spontaneous passers by, and we never sell tickets to our 'shows'.

Our performances are always 'illegal', staged only in unpredictable locations and public places not designed for traditional entertainment. The distribution of our clips is always through free and unrestricted media channels. We are anonymous, because we act against any personality cult, against hierarchies implied by appearance, age and other visible social attributes. We cover our heads, because we oppose the very idea of using female face as a trademark for promoting any sort of goods or services.

The mixing of the rebel feminist punk image with the image of institutionalised defenders of prisoners' rights, is harmful for us as collective, as well as it is harmful for the new role that Nadya and Masha have taken on.

(via)

This letter is a bit of a mixed bag, coming off as a combination of 8th graders yelling "Sellout!" and a genuine disagreement over direction with a dash of praise thrown in. Either way, it seems that you should know that the women who spent two years hunger-striking on and off in a Russian prison colony for the Pussy Riot collective are no longer considered members.