Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot were freed from Russian prisons on December 23rd, only a few months ahead of their scheduled release, because of a new amnesty law that, on paper, should free many incarcerated individuals. (The freed include 30 Greenpeace members who will avoid a trial and Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent ten years in a Siberian prison.) Many have speculated that the amnesty law was put in place to give Russia some positive press — and remove the possibility of continued negative press — in advance of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were imprisoned after the performance of their now infamous "punk prayer" at Moscow's Cathedral Of Christ The Savior in which they impored the Virigin Mary to "be a feminist" and asked god to "put Putin away." The two were sentenced to two years in prison for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred." Other members were not convicted.
The performance art group / band didn't stop causing problems for Putin once the two members were jailed, as they sent letters protesting prison conditions and went on hunger strike. Many of the letters were high profile and made their way into the press, including a correspondence between Tolokonnikova and critical theorist Slavoj Žižek.
Alyokhina, after being released on Monday, got to work immediately, meeting with the Committee Against Torture to discuss prison system reform in Russia. She also gave a brief interview to Rolling Stone.
Asked why she was released Alyokhina repied:
Simply because of Sochi. They wanted to make themselves more attractive before the Olympic games. That's why they decided to do the amnesty. But the amnesty is not general — it's a lie. I'm the only one who's been released [from camp] and that's the problem. They won't let anyone else out. Formally, it's a general amnesty, but it's a lie.
She also addressed whether Pussy Riot would continue to exist as it previously had:
I think it's best if we give more details when we appear together so there is no dissonance. We need to meet first. Everything needs to be talked about with Nadya. Whatever we do, will definitely be connected with that sort of action that we found effective. And on top of that, I would say that if a person is connected with art, it's forever. It's impossible to stop. It's something inside.
...
It'll be a human rights defense organization, but of a new kind. We're going to use the brightness and illumination of media resources to reveal problems, focusing on the camps, but also perhaps more generally. We're still deciding on the form, but me and her are unanimous about this.
Read the complete Rolling Stone inteview here. You can also watch Alyokhina give an interview from prison to NME here.