PUSSY RIOT: Sorceress Redux

The Flight of the Sorceress tells the story of a declining empire scrambling for an ideology that will motivate a skeptical population to restore the empire to its former greatness. Caesar choses Catholicism. Intellectualism is stifled. Women are increasingly oppressed. Dissent becomes heresy as the lines between church and state are increasingly obliterated. All for the sake of a renewed empire that will bring little benefit to anyone except the privileged few. 

Although The Flight of the Sorceress is fictionalized, the big picture is not made up. We have a thousand-year Dark Ages to show for it. During which, according to estimates, six million women were accused of witchcraft or sorcery and either burned or stoned to death. It was a millennium of ignorance, superstition and cruel human oppression.  Europe's knowledge of agriculture, engineering, manufacture and trade remained stagnant. Literally nothing of significance created in the arts or discovered in the sciences was permitted to flourish. And presiding over it all was an omnipotent religious organization.

Today, we have another toppled empire in Russia and a neo-czar, Putin, an heir to the Caesars. During his reign he has crushed all organized political opposition and jailed every serious challenger to his power, accusing each of the corruption that he has enabled and from which he profits. But in this latest gambit involving three women, Pussy Riot, his regime had revealed the next page in his game plan to restore Russia to its former imperialist stature. It is now state heresy to lampoon the Russian Orthodox Church. No sarcasm permitted. No ridicule. No hyperbole. Alles ist verboten. Heil Putin. Heil the Russian Othodox Church. Heil theocracy. Down with high-steppin on the pulpit. It’s got to be hatred. An attempt to stir up the masses against this pillar of state power.

And so now Russia has announced to the world that it has joined the ranks of the theocracies, where blasphemy remains a crime and you could lose your head if you dissent from orthodoxy. Certainly a substantial portion of the peasantry will rally around this comfortably familiar custom and practice, but most of them were serfs until 1861, and as a practical matter, up until the present. Having a base of power among those you have deliberately cultivated to remain backward can bring limited success when it comes to retaining power, but it certainly is no prescription for restoration of an empire’s greatness. And so Pussy Riot has become a reincarnation of the Sorceress.