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The Pussy Riot Case in Russia: Orthodox Canon Law and the Sentence of the Secular Court

The present article deals with the problem of Church canon law in its connection with secular law in modern Russia. This problem is analyzed using the example of the trial of the punk band Pussy Riot, whose members were sentenced to prison terms in 2012 on the charge of hooliganism for their performance in the main Russian Orthodox cathedral in Moscow. Their legal case relied, for the first time in modern Russian history, on the appeal of the secular court to the Orthodox Church canons of the first millennium AD. Scrutinizing the canon laws evoked by the prosecution, the author sheds light on the logic behind the interplay between secular justice and the ancient ecclesiastic rules in today’s Russia.