Nadya & Masha respond to Pussy Riot's open letter

Nadya and Masha at The Spotted Pig last week (more by Gretchen Robinette)

Following an open letter from still-anonymous Pussy Riot members stating that Masha Alyokhina and Nadya Tolokonnikova (who just visited NYC) were no longer in the group, Masha and Nadya have finally given their response. From a new New York Times article:

The letter “doesn’t follow the ideology of Pussy Riot,” Ms. Tolokonnikova said in an interview on Sunday, in Russian. She also took issue with its claims that she and Ms. Alyokhina no longer speak to other members of the group. “The people we performed with in Moscow, we’re still in contact with,” she said, adding that she didn’t know who wrote the letter. It was signed by six anonymous individuals, some of whom used the same pseudonyms that she and Ms. Alyokhina once did.

Ms. Tolokonnikova and Ms. Alyokhina also disputed the idea that Pussy Riot was, as the letter states, a seemingly closed-off “all-female separatist collective.”

“Pussy Riot can be anyone, and no one can excluded from Pussy Riot,” Ms. Tolokonnikova said. “Pussy Riot can only grow.”

The article also mentions that Questlove, who was at the fundraiser at The Spotted Pig that Masha and Nadya appeared at, “didn’t even want to meet them — he didn’t want to ruin the mystique.” Read more at the NY Times.

A video of Pussy Riot speaking at the Amnesty concert below…

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