Masha Gessen: Words Will Break Cement

Brodsky stood trial for the crime of “social parasitism” in Leningrad in 1964. His “so-called poetry” was judged not to be work and he served eighteen months in exile in the Far North.

Chekists were members of the Cheka, the first incarnation of the Soviet secret police. The term has become generic for secret-police officers.

This is an allusion to a line from Osip Mandelstam’s Stalin epigram, which is believed to have gotten the poet arrested and ultimately killed in prison. In the Mandelstam poem, Stalin enjoyed executions like one enjoys raspberries; in the Pussy Riot version, Putin had a bad taste in his mouth.

A peaceful march with tens of thousands of participants on May 6, 2012, the eve of Putin’s inauguration for his third term as president, turned into a riot after the marchers were attacked by police. Hundreds of people were detained that day and soon released, but by the time this song was written, more than a dozen were facing charges and likely prison time in connection with the clashes.

Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, once known as “the last dictator in Europe”—until Putin himself reached dictator status.

No one else came either, but the defense attorneys would have been virtually the only ones in a position to demand a meeting with Maria. It is not, however, standard practice for defense attorneys to visit their clients while they are in transit.

Merab Mamardashvili (1930–1990) was a Soviet Georgian philosopher.

Books are brought separately from the rest of the package because they must be seen by the censor. The censor disallows any books in a foreign language or books with any handwritten marks in the pages, as well as anything deemed subversive or likely to aid in organizing an escape.

Vladimir Gandelsman is a contemporary Russian poet.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

The Russian word for piping is kant , as in the philosopher, which may be why Maria thought it sounded great.

A reference to the way Russia was said to be governed during the four years Dmitry Medvedev held the office of president: believing the president was ineffectual and directed by Prime Minister Putin, political analysts referred to the regime as “the tandem.”

The “local” is a fenced-off passageway between two areas in the camp.

Throughout Russia, because of anomolously high temperatures.

Translated by Bela Shayevich and Thomas Campbell.