Riot Days (Penguin)

Now in paperback, this is Alyokhina’s account of her time in jail, as part of the Pussy Riot Collective, after their anti-Putin protests. People who believe in freedom and democracy think it will exist forever. That is a mistake. What happened in Russia – what happened to me – could happen anywhere. When I was jailed for political protest, I learned that prison doesn’t just teach you to follow the rules. It teaches you to think that you can never break them. It’s inevitable that the prison gates will open at some point. But this doesn’t mean that you leave the ‘prisoner’ category and go straight into the category of ’the free’. Freedom does not exist unless you fight for it every day. This is the story about how I made a choice.