Maria Alyokhina

Maria "Masha" Vladimirovna Alyokhina (1988) is a Russian political activist. She is a member of the anti-Putinist punk rock group Pussy Riot.

During her youth she hated the Russian education system and changed schools four times:

“They discourage people from thinking and asking questions, they only teach you to follow the rules and submit without explanation or, most importantly, reason... Obviously I didn’t like that. Who would?”

She studied journalism at the Institute of Journalism and Creative Writing in Moscow, where she participated in a sequence of literature workshops given by the poets Dmitry Vedenyapin and Alexey Kubrik.

On August 17, 2012, Alyokhina, together with fellow Pussy Riot members Nadya Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich, was convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" for a performance in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. She has been recognized as a political prisoner by the Union of Solidarity with Political Prisoners. Amnesty International named her a prisoner of conscience due to "the severity of the response of the Russian authorities."

In April 2022, Alyokhina fled Russia disguised as a delivery driver after officials announced she would be sentenced to time in a penal colony instead of remaining on house arrest. With assistance from friends, including Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson, Alyokhina travelled through Belarus and Lithuania to reach Iceland.

In 2017, she published a memoir on her trial and time in prison, titled "Riot Days". A live performance based on the book which accompanies the text with live music and projected video has toured internationally.