I heard about Pussy Riot at the time but had no idea they were jailed, much less what they went through. This short, punchy book shines a light on the shocking treatment of people in Russia as well as the bravery of Maria, who fought against the maltreatment of inmates.

In Riot Days Alyokhina leads readers down a a dark path, into the heart of Russia's corrupt prison system but somehow manages to leave them with a sense of hope.
Alyokhina informs us what she did that lead to her incarceration and how she took her 'political' prisoner label and put it to use, fighting for prisoners basic human rights. Alyokhina may have been found guilty, but she sure as shit was not going to take her sentence and waste it. Instead she kicked up the biggest fuss she could.
Her story shines a light on how inhumane the treatment of prisoners is in Russia and highlights how important it is to stand up and use your voice to help those around you get the basic level of human respect that should automatically be paid to them in the first place.

I really struggled with Riot Days at first, it's written in a stream of consciousness style that I am not quite used as it felt abrupt and choppy. However, once I got used to it I was sucked into Alyokhina's story, despite knowing nothing about Russia or it's political climate.
I know that Putin is president and I must admit that I have not done any research at all, I've steered quite clear of anything to do with him if I'm quite honest and the only reason I have is that when I look at him I get this visceral reaction that screams at me to run and stay as far away from this man as possible. I don't get that feeling often, especially not as strong as I have with Putin. After reading Riot Days though I think I may have to tune in to his name while looking into what is happening in the world.

Alyokhina has a way of pulling at your heart-strings in a way that has the reader not just feeling heartbroken at the treatment she received while incarcerated but also angry and ready for action.
Her sass and frank dialogue helped lift the mood just enough as to not feel depressed the whole way through but also showed just who Russia is dealing with here.
In the beginning of Alyokhina's story you get the feeling she really has no idea what she's getting herself into, that she in unprepared and that it is hard to believe she will make it out of the experience alive, and yet she proves time and time again that she may have been one of the best people they could have arrested because she refused to lay down and give up. She fought with everything in her, while malnourished and sick. She faced people who made her life excruciating, knowing that she is making things harder for herself. That it is best for her to be quiet. But Alyokhina will not be silenced. She is here to riot.

I just didn't like this book at all, sorry - it may have been lost in translation, but I just didn't feel anything or care about what happened. Sorry!

This book is activist Maria Alyokhina’s account of her experiences with Punk rock group Pussy Riot from its founding to the last day of her prison term in 2013. The writing and structure may be chaotic and off putting for some but in these times of political uprisings it's an important book that I will recommend to friends and family.

Maria Alyokhina briefly achieved worldwide fame as as the leader of the Russian punk performance art group, Pussy Riot, after performing for mere moments in a Russian church a song disrespecting Vladimir Putin. She was arrested as a political prisoner and disappeared not just from public consciousness, but literally to the Russian gulag as a dissident. Told unconventionally often in a stream of consciousness, this is her story. The beginning is a little confusing as it is filled with prose, lyrics, and disparate thoughts, but this chronicle is very much worth reading and a sharp lesson to those who claim the American government is fascist. This is what real political oppression looks like and not much has changed since the Soviet era. It's a very personal story as Maria gains her confidence and becomes a spokesperson fighting for the rights of political prisoners hidden away in Russian prisons in the Urals

A very gripping account about being part of one of the most infamous group of modern revolutionaries. Once you pick this up you won't want to put it down. A political memoir for the modern age.

A memoir of one bands protest in Russia. A tale that brings to light the modern Russian penal system and one woman's struggle against injustice and corruption.

Couldn't read on time due to a broken e reader. My sincere apologies to the author and publisher for this.

Most of the books in my winter round-up have been written by someone famous but without the balaclava, you probably wouldn't recognise Maria Alyokhina's name. You'll definitely know who Pussy Riot are though. This book isn't definitive account of the shortlived activist band but rather Maria's personal recollections of what it was like to live through this highly publicised time in her life: the plan, the protest, the arrest, the jail time. The book is only about 200 pages but it's powerful in its everydayness. Well, doing activism is pretty normal to me but maybe not so much for everyone - but still, you would imagine by the way that Russia treated these women that they'd tried to blow something up rather than sing a song in a church. One of the things I've always found so fascinating about Pussy Riot is how they went from the fringes of Russian society to international icons within a matter days, and what a huge struggle it was for them to adjust. This book is a nice window into that experience.

A blunt, honest look at the infamous Pussy Riot protests and the incarceration of the members. This is a raw, emotional memoir and I would recommend it highly

From activist, Pussy Riot member and freedom fighter Maria Alyokhina is a warts and all version of her arrest, trial and imprisonment in a penal colony in Russia. It is blunt and rather shocking at how the inmates are treated within the system. It made for an illuminating read.

This book was a real contradiction in many ways. The writing style could be random and disjointed and the prose often was simple and bare. However the raw emotion it generated cannot be described. I actually couldn't put this book down and all but read in one sitting

Riot Days is the story and memoirs of Pussy Riot's 'Masha' Alyokhina. Pussy Riot is a (now internationally famous) Russian all-girl punk protest and performance band, and Masha tells her tale in a gritty, dreamy, lyrical, Russian beat-poet way, with facts, politics, realism and charm, from the band's inception to the incarceration of two of its members, Alyokhina herself and band mate Tolokonnikova.

Masha is an ordinary, everyday girl (well, now a woman of almost thirty) who was willing to go to jail for what she believes in – which is equality and fairness, and idealism.

During the Snow Revolution, when many in Russia protested against claims of election fraud and other corruptions, Masha did what any politically-minded young woman might do – she formed a band and staged some guerrilla protest gigs – whipping out her guitar in a public place and belting out a few verses of their latest protest song. One day, she and her band mates sang a song, uninvited, in a cathedral. In the UK, they would have got a stern talking to and a suspended sentence, and some eye-rolling from a probation officer. In Russia, they got 2 years in a penal colony, the conditions of which have parallels with the gulags – which, in a particularly nice touch, Masha, from her prison cell, protested against, and won some desperately needed human rights for herself and her fellow inmates.

Without the arrests and subsequent prison sentences, the story of Pussy Riot could be the story of pretty much every other band that's ever put plectrum to string: countless hours spent practising in crumbling, freezing cold rehearsal spaces, usually an old warehouse with smashed-out windows, that smells of cats' wee; dreaming of changing the world and making a difference; and living hand-to-mouth.

The difference with Pussy Riot, of course, is that they live in Russia, where patriarchal attitudes still hold sway, and the Church is still in bed with the state, so the band's ill-thought-out 40-second guerrilla gig in that cathedral led not to the 15 days' in the cells they were expecting, but to two years locked up in appallingly harsh and freezing conditions.

Halfway through the book, Alyokhina is transferred from the remand prison in Moscow, where she was held whilst waiting to go to trial, to the penal colony in Perm. The journey was made by train, under guard, with other prisoners, and during the journey Alyokhina read Russian poets aloud to stay sane. The weight of her situation becomes very heavy and real to both her and the reader of this book on that train journey: there will be no state mercy, no last minute reprieve, though she is a young mother of a young child, and she is heading to one of the grimmest, coldest places on earth.

The book is written in a lyrical way, almost stream-of-consciousness, with repeating phrases that underline moments and events of absurdity and the brick wall of authoritarian deliberate misunderstanding. But there's a foundation seam of dark humour and humanity that keeps the book light and afloat. Alyhokhina's writing is generous and hopeful – she wants a better world, perhaps idealistically, and she is willing to keep protesting and fighting against all the odds until she gets it.

Alyokhina writes that the 'Snow Revolution' – a series of protests in Russia in 2011-2013 over the possibly flawed and potentially fraudulent electoral process in Russia, and Pussy Riot itself was motivated by immature and idealistic notions – but Alyokhina nonetheless stands by these notions of a better world – a world with fairness, equality, and respect.

Even after serving her sentence Alyokhina is unrepentantly idealistic, and staunch in her belief that protest and acts of protest can help turn the tide in Russia, and maybe the rest of the world: spotlighting corruption and routing it out, dispelling lack of equality and promoting respect for women and marginalised sectors of society – in fact, for everyone. And not just in Russia. She writes inclusively – her actions and the fight is for us all, she asserts, not just in Russia, but anywhere: anyone, she says, can be Pussy Riot – and should be.

I didn't like this book, maybe because of the language used, or the short sentences, but it didn't appeal, and I didn't finish it because it frustrated me. I couldn't get into it. You might like it if you like the band, maybe it is biased more towards teenagers.

(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

From activist, Pussy Riot member and freedom fighter Maria Alyokhina, a raw, hallucinatory, passionate account of her arrest, trial and imprisonment in a penal colony in the Urals for standing up for what she believed in. Freedom doesn't exist unless you fight for it every day. Revolution is history. If we decided to fall out of it, to disappear, that would mean it would not be our history, but theirs. Not our country, but theirs. In this sense, we didn't take off our masks. We never left the church. On a T-shirt, I had written 'To Back Down an Inch is to Give Up a Mile'. I felt there was no sense in wearing a T-shirt with those words if you didn't hold yourself to them. We have the right to refuse. This is our right, yours and mine. You can't know all the laws by heart; you don't know what will happen if you refuse. But you have to try.

This was one surreal book to read. I am going to start by discounting the writing style - that is hardly relevant to me in this case. It isn't a novel that needs to follow style and structure rules. It is a memoir of a time Maria was a political prisoner in Russia for protesting - or hooliganism as I think it was called at the time - and her raw, uncensored telling of that time is shocking and confronting.

Also, this is a fascinating look at Russia - its politics, its legal system, its view of "undesirables" and their treatment of individuals whom they think are a risk. Certainly an eye-opening read!


Paul
ARH

Raw and honest account of a first-hand experience of the Russian penal system, exposing what Masha went through in order to improve the horrendous conditions and fight for basic human rights.

The book is an autobiography of a pussy rioter telling how the organisation started, of what she did and her resultant trial and imprisonment. It is a straightforward lyrical account which develops into a mix of prose and verse with cartoon illustrations. As she says they wanted to prick Putin’s arse. This they did by staging an unauthorised punk rock concert in a Moscow Cathedral with obscene lyrics insulting the establishment before being evicted. From the reaction by the authorities that resulted they certainly did as there was a show trial and a severe prison sentence give out. Even in prison she is able to upset the status quo by exposing the corruption and wrong doing of the prison regime and bring about change. The story is of a young lady with courage and an indomitable spirit that could not be suppressed despite a prison regime of humiliation and physical oppression from which she survives undaunted.

This book is Alyokhina's personal experiences of her activism, trial and imprisonment in the Urals.

She is an amazing young, bold, intellectual woman. I am in awe of her strength and ambition. The way she is treated by Vladimir Putin's authoritarian regime is eye-opening and deeply troubling.
I wanted more context though - I wanted to know what Alyokhina feels she is fighting against, what has happened in Russia to drive her to this point. However, this memoir is very inward-looking.

Overall the book is exhilarating and enlightening, but the writing is slightly erratic and poorly edited.

Riot days was one of those books that you want everyone to read. Mainly due to the fact that the book is superb but it ignites in you the feeling that we all should stand up for what is right. Not many books have the power to do that and I will buying copies to pass out it!!

Personal elements are kept to a minimum throughout Riot Days. In fact, the writing moves at such a pace that you don’t have time to get to know many of those around the activist. Peppered with references to a troupe of Russian protesters and dissidents who have inspired her, this is not a story of the individual, but a reminder to constantly fight for our freedom and history. Once injustice is normalised, atrocities no longer shocking, our lives are no longer our own. As Maria says to a guard asking her to end one of her many hunger strikes, “I protest wherever I can, wherever I need to. That’s my nature. I need to protest.”

From the absurdities of her trial, in which Maria and her fellow band member are placed in cages, to the horrifying conditions in prison, where sanitary towels are stuffed into gaps in the windows in an attempt to block out the bitter cold, this is a harrowing picture of human rights abuses in Russia. Towards the end of Maria’s book, she recounts a conversation with one of the friendlier guards in the colony. Irina Vasilievna, who has worked there for 40 years, exposes the reality that, “Nothing has changed. Look around you. Does it look like anything ever changes in this country?”

This lies at the heart of Riot Days, an urgent warning against the stasis not just gripping Russia, but waiting to creep in if we are not vigilant enough to stop it. This an important read at a time when Western headlines on Brexit and Trump are eclipsing stories around regimes giving less and less in the way of democracy.