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Russian Pussy Riot Dissident Nadya Tolokonnikova has welcomed a pledge by Alexei Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya to carry on his fight for democracy, following his death in an Arctic penal colony last week.
Speaking just hours after Navalnaya released a video statement vowing to continue her late husband’s political campaign, Tolokonnikova said she would be “an amazing figure to unite Russian opposition.”
“Today Yulia Navalnaya came out with a really beautiful statement and I was hoping she was going to make this statement because in my mind she only had two choices to retreat into depression or to continue fighting,” Tolokonnikova told Deadline at the Cinema for Peace gala dinner in Berlin on Monday evening.
She attended the event in the company of Navalny’s lawyer Lyubov Sobol. The Cinema for Peace Foundation, which organized Navalny’s airlift from Russia in 2020, paid tribute to the late activist at the gala dinner.
Tolokonnikova, who is a co-founding member of the pro-democracy artist-activist collective Pussy Riot, spent time 16 months in a women’s penal colony before escaping the country, and was placed on Russia’s most wanted criminal list in May, 2023.
Now living in exile, she said that in the light of Navalny’s death it made most sense to continue the democracy battle from outside Russia.
“We spoke today with Lyubov Sobol from the Navalny team and we both agreed we do not need to see more political prisoners. I personally think if you have an opportunity to leave Russia and continue your fight abroad. That makes sense because I don’t think we want to see more deaths like that of Navalny,” she said.
“Wherever you are you can do plenty of things. You can talk. You can do actions, motivate people to unite, mobilize. It’s arguably more difficult to be open about your political views, if they happen to be opposition political views, if you stay in Russia.
“A lot of people are dissatisfied with Vladimir Putin but they’re not willing to talk for obvious reasons, it’s a military dictatorship, You got to jail for 15, 25 years like [Vladimir] Kara-Murza for simply calling war, war,” she said referring to the Russian-British activist and journalist who is now one of the most high profile political prisoners in Russia.
Asked what the cinema community could do to support pro-democracy activists, Tolokonnikova revealed that Navalny had understood the power of cinema.
“Navalny called it a good propaganda machine,” she said. “You have a powerful tool as a community of people telling stories and I think storytelling is a really amazing way to move people’s hearts. Look at the Navalny documentary. It won an Oscar last year and really propelled Navalny into being not just a Russian national hero but a world star, and now world martyr.”
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