Pussy Riot's Maria Alyokhina with Yanis Varoufakis (2018 Event)
'To back down an inch is to give up a mile,' says Maria Alyokhina in Riot Days, her account of Pussy Riot's extraordinary rise to infamy in 2012. Following an iconoclastic balaclava-clad performance in a Moscow cathedral, Alyokhina and two of her collaborators were arrested and sentenced to two years in a prison in the Urals. In this unmissable event, Yanis Varoufakis, DiEM25's co-founder, discusses with Maria Alyokhina the different varieties of totalitarianism that we are currently threatened with, her fight for free speech against the forces of Vladimir Putin's regime, her hunger strike protest while in prison, as well as the work she is now doing to help Russian prisoners at home. This event was recorded live at the 2018 Edinburgh International Book Festival.
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