 Good afternoon and welcome to this Saturday at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. My name is Nick Barley, I'm the director of the festival and it's my great pleasure and honour to welcome you to this special keynote event at the festival. Back in 1990, when the Berlin Wall fell and there were celebrations around the world, it felt I think that democracy was on the rise. Democracy was on the march and it seemed as though freedom of speech was about to take over across the world and look at where we've got to today, when all around us walls are being built and faith in democracy seems to be plummeting. This was the situation which I put to Yanis Varoufakis when I invited him to be a guest selector at this year's festival and I was so proud that he agreed to take up the challenge and ask whether globalisation is killing democracy. His hope is that together we can find ways that democracy doesn't die. He's part of a new political party called DM25, which he'll talk about today. But the first of his five series of discussions is with Pussy Riot's Masha Aliochina, who has gone through so much in the name of the right to speak out. This is a special event and I really want you to show how much it matters to Edinburgh and to the world. So please put your hands together and give the biggest round of applause for Masha Aliochina and Yanis Varoufakis. Well, thank you, Nick. Thank you, Edinburgh. Thank you all for being here. This is not about me. This is about Masha, I call Kimmer, a force of nature, a force of libertarian democratic musical energy. I'm very, very pleased to be here, sharing a stage with her. I think we should begin with a story. Let's sit down. Let's begin with how you got to be here. Because you're coming straight out of Zone Russia, as you put it in your book, and in a particular way that usually people come to Edinburgh to make a point. I think that Masha made the point even before she came to Edinburgh, in the manner in which she reached this fine city. So, Masha, how did you get here? On magic podium. So, shortly, I'm not, like officially, I'm not allowed to leave Russia, so I cannot, you know, take an airplane or train or something. And this ban happened after, so in April we made an action in the front of FSB service, which is former KGB, Russian security service. So, we were throwing colorful paper plans to the wall of FSB, main building. And that was a protest against, so FSB decided to crush the only free messenger in Russia, Telegram, because the head of this messenger refused to give FSB an option to read all our messages, so he's quite a brave guy. After that, FSB decided to just to destroy to ban this messenger. And the paper plan is a symbol of this messenger. So, we, about maybe 100 people, not so much, came to the building of FSB with colorful paper plans. In half an hour they arrested us, 48 hours in the cage in the police station, we spent 12 people. And after that, that was a court who gave me 100 hours of community service works. Which I refused to do, because I believe that our actions are better than, you know, community service works. You had already done the community service. Yeah, that's what I said to them. And made your service by protesting against the FSB. Yeah, so they made a decision to punish me, because I did not do their community service. So now I'm not allowed to leave the country. I cannot, you know, go to the airport, and I was quite surprised when I knew it, but I mean it happens. Russia is interesting, unpredictable country. You don't know what will happen tomorrow. And yeah. And in December we've been with Pussy Riot also in the front of FSB with, you know, I don't know how much do you know about FSB, but it's actually one of the, you know, ruling parties in Russia. What do you mean? I thought it was the state of Russia? Yes, this is, this is. So Putin used to be a KGB agent on 70s working in Germany. And we all know there's no ex KGB people. So now FSB. Like, you know, there's no such thing as an ex Goldman Sachs person. Yeah. So in, we have on 20, 20th of December, the official celebration of Cheka. It's, you know, Cheka. So it's like, it's looked like, like, you know, Oral's book, but in the main Russian channel, channel one, we have a huge concert in the biggest concert hall in Moscow celebration, like 1937, 2017. So these people are proud of what, what happened in 1937, when almost all the Russian culture was crushed. All my favorite poets, theatre directors, writers, they all were killed in concentration camps during 30s. So, and now we have in 21st century official celebration of Cheka, of the organ who, who actually killed all these people. So we, we, we front, we came to the front of FSB with a huge banner, happy birthday executors. That, that's why I was telling you the story. And after that, I also received this community service. So, and I've seen after that they arrested me and I've seen Lubyanka inside. That was first time. I've never, it's, well, it's quite unusual place. Yeah. So, and you ended up driving all the way through Belarus in order to get to Lithuania or something. Or something. Yeah, or something. Yes, yes. You see, look, I mean, most of those of us who pretend to be radicals, you know, we are armchair revolutionaries really. I mean, we sit and we write and some of us even have fights with the European Union establishment. But in the end, we are more or less certain that we are going to go home to our beloved at night. But this person here doesn't know what's going to happen to her when she goes back home. Yeah, I don't know. And I think that really should humble the rest of us, the pseudo radicals. There is something quite interesting. I mean, this book, by the way, is a knockout. It's, you start reading the first page, you don't put it down until you end and then you want to read it again. It's a poem in 199 pages or something. And so read it. But for a number of reasons. Firstly, because it's a fantastic book. But secondly, because I think that with the Gathro to Russia, it brings out a sense of crashing continuity. On the one hand, you have, you know, Putin, who is this figure that creates or tries to create to draw a line of continuity from the Tsar to Stalin to himself, right? Somebody who revived the Communist National Anthem, who revives the spirit of the Soviet Union, while at the same time, being in cahoots with the Orthodox Church to restore a kind of Tsarist extreme right wing mentality. And then you have somebody like Russia. I was really moved when, in your book, you described the first time somebody said, congratulated you for what you were doing when you met a dissident who had been in a Soviet labour camp who said to you, you should be proud of what you did. And that continuity that you're creating is a fantastic opposition to the continuity that Putin is trying to create. And so tell me a bit more about the way in which, you know, you connected. I don't think you were intending to do it. It just happened with a long line of dissidents who challenged authoritarianism in your country. Well, this person whom you're talking about, Aleksandr Pedrobynig, he's my good friend. We became friends after this. And so he spent five years in the concentration camp in Gulag on 70s. And they put him there because he wrote a book about how the heads of the Soviet Union used psychiatric clinics for like prisons. We had in the Soviet Union not only classical Gulag, but also a psychiatric clinic. The Gulag of psychiatric clinics. Yes. And he wrote about this a book. So after that he've been arrested and sent for five years to Gulag. So the tradition of dissidents, there is no kind of, you know, tradition. But it started, I think, in the 60s, somehow when small groups of people started to actually come together to, you know, kitchen that was already, you know, a protest because in the Soviet Union people were not allowed to criticize the state even in the kitchen. So they printed books by themselves. They gave these books to people in 1968 when Soviet Union tanks went to Czechoslovakia. Eight people went, just imagine, huge Moscow and eight people went to the Red Square with a banner for freedom yours and mine. And after that all of them been arrested, sent for several years to different prisons. And one woman, Natalia Gorbanewska, she was sent to a psychiatric clinic. She, by the way, unfortunately she died two years ago, but she's, I knew her. She was an amazing person. So that's how it was that time. But now there is, of course, a difference. So how it works now in Russia. I don't know. I've never lived on the 70s, but I can tell you how it's working now. For example, you're writing a Facebook post, you know, everybody's doing it, with some funny memes about Russian Putin's state. And after some time they can open a criminal case against you and you can go to prison. So now what happened with me and with Pussy Riot what was described in this book and what was quite unusual and scandal six years ago. Now it became an everyday reality in Russia. And you even do not need to write a song and perform it. You can be arrested for like nothing. And I want to mention one man. He's a hero for my opinion. His name was Oleg Sinsof. He's a Ukrainian filmmaker. He was arrested during the annexation of Crimea in 2014. He was sent to Russian prison to the hardest region for 20 years. So now during the World Cup he announced a hunger strike. And he's on hunger strike now for 93 days. So he can die any moment. And well, he's an artist. And I'm sure you should know his name because he's, for my opinion, he's one of the bravest people I ever knew. Well, this is, in a sense, this book is not about a story that ended being told after a happy ending. This is a report from the Gulag. It's a report from the battlefield for democracy, for liberty. It's a war that has not been won. It is a war that we may lose. There's no guarantee. Nick, in his introduction, talked about democracy and how after 1991 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was this expectation of a democratic transition in the east and a merger between our democracies on both sides of what used to be the Iron Curtain. But we have to keep reminding ourselves that democracy is the most fragile of all. And it's being crushed almost everywhere. In my own country, we don't have a democracy at the moment. We have the semblance of an electoral process which is used to legitimise the fact that the demos has been taken out of democracy some time ago. And whenever it threatens to reassert itself and reinsert itself into our democracies, it gets crushed again and again. But of course it's done in a much more efficient way than in Russia. They don't need to use torture and prisons in the west anymore. But I wanted to concentrate on the word brave that you used to describe your friend because it's also a word that applies to you. You wouldn't say it, but we have to acknowledge it. Reading through these pages, the reader gets the sensation of a person that constantly fought against the specter of fear. Because not fighting against fear, not fighting against the prison guard who is demanding that you say that you sign on a dotted line and you acknowledge what they say, is the only way of maintaining your agency, maintaining your personhood. And in the end you were rewarded in rare moments in your cells, in your cell, in your isolation sometimes, by the sense that inside those walls you were freer that you would have been outside had you simply gone alone with the lies and the façade. Were there many moments when you felt truly free or freer inside those walls? Or were there few moments that were nevertheless enough to make you feel that it was all worth it? I think freedom is not about being inside prison or outside of prison. Freedom is not about prison at all. It's your own feeling of fighting for yourself and it doesn't matter in which conditions you are, I believe. Inside prison walls or, I don't know, in British school. You mean a public school, as they would say here, you know, Eton or something like that. Yeah, I mean firstly I wrote a book because I believe that this story should be told and heard. But you know when you are writing about how you said postmodern gulag, you, well, I didn't want to write something like Solzhenitsyn wrote because it's not so many people can read it. Yeah, I mean it's quite, so I just choose situations, like a lot of situations when I made a choice during the period from the first action to the last day of prison. And I believe that in each life, in each fate, so everybody has this choice. It's just different for everybody, but it's, well, it's often not easier. And the choice is usually to stay aside from what is going on or to do something. And this is for doing. It's a very practical guide for doing. It is a manual, a poem and an impressionistic text of the highest order. But through this impressionistic, energetic, activist text of yours, we get as readers a very concrete reality that hits us. And one of the interesting snippets that I got out of it this morning actually I was thinking about this, Masha in her book describes the difference between the so-called political, politicals that is prisoners who were in prison, clearly for political offences like she was, even though the state does not recognize that they were political prisoners. Well, the Maze prison in Northern Ireland was an example nearer to us. We call Mrs. Thatcher denying that the hunger strikers there were political prisoners, but nevertheless everybody treated them as political prisoners. Some were similar with you. But the feeling I get is that the criminals and the politicals, even though there was a difference and you were being treated differently and you recognized one another as a different category, nevertheless, and tell me if I'm wrong, it reminded me of another real and at the same time fake opposition between refugees and migrants. You know this debate now about how we should welcome refugees but we should not welcome migrants. But in the end they are exactly the same category of humanity. There are people that are running away from awful circumstances in their countries. And yet there is this hierarchy, a refugee is supposed to be more worthy than a migrant, an economic migrant. And in your gulag, in your colony as you call it in the book, there was this differentiation between political and criminal prisoners, but in the end those women were the victims of an authoritarian, sexist, patriarchal society. I mean you describe some of the women that were there because they killed partners that beat them, raped them, abused them. And the sensation I get as a reader is that you were different and similar. What is the question about... To what extent was this difference able to keep you separate, to keep you apart from your cellmates who were in there for murder, for drugs, for... I didn't keep myself away from them. I like to talk with people, I like people. It was very interesting for me to talk with anyone. The problem was in the first colony, they put me to solitary confinement and people who tried to talk with me in the so-called work, they invited them to their special room and said that if you will talk with Masha, you will get more three years in prison for disorganisation of the order. This is a problem, I mean... You should know a little bit more about, let's say, Russian women's prisons. Why it is Gulag? Because we have not prisons, so we do not have classical prisons. We have colonies, like strange villages, where all the prisoners should work. They work 12 hours per day minimum, six days a week, and they have about two or three dollars per month as a salary. So it's legal slavery, as you understand. And this work is a sewing, a uniform for Russian police and Russian army, and Russian prison guards. Yeah, quite cynical, I agree. But this rule of labour goes from the Soviet Union. If you will open the code, like the book with the code, rules, official rules, law of Soviet Union and Russia, it's totally the same. It's just they called Soviet Union before and now they call it Russian Federation, but words are totally similar. Women, whom you mentioned, it's about maybe 35-40% of all the population, it's crimes connected with domestic violence somehow, because in Russia we do not have any social mechanism for people who had domestic violence. So it's decriminalised now, and for example, if something like this is happening, women can call the police, but police will come and take this man for eight hours, and that's it, they will free him and he will come back, they have usually one house. And beat them up even more severely. Yeah, again and again, and no social, let's say, I don't know the English word. Social support mechanism. Yeah, no psychologists, no social workers, this always doesn't work in Russia. It just doesn't exist actually. So that's why these women usually kill this man, and I've heard a lot of stories like this. Or second, like big part of the population is so-called drug crimes, but it's usually, you know, it's not like selling of kilograms of heroin. You can go, I don't know, you can go to prison for several years for something which, when you start to describe Russian reality, you understand that you should, it's like a guide for absurd reality where you somehow should explain to people why they can go to prison for nothing, and it's quite hard. But it's just Russian reality because you just reminded me now of my mother, who was a feminist in the 1970s, and she was going around rural Greece with other women in buses that were usually stoned by local men with one aim, to tell women in the countryside that being beaten up by their husbands and being raped by their husbands was not okay because, you know, if you don't even succeed in doing that, then there's- Is cool initiative buses with like- The 1970s in Greece, it's not that long ago. So Russia is not that special case, you know. It's a good idea bus. But speaking of patriarchy, because this is what we're talking about, brutal patriarchy. In your book there is this fascinating moment when you describe, your guards were mostly women. Yes. However the commanders, the lieutenants above them treated them more or less like property as well, and there is this wonderful almost Hegelian moment in the book when Masha is describing her prison guards, women prison guards as prisoners because they wore a uniform, they wore ugly shoes, and they were on one side of barbed wire. No, not the same side. But they were walking up and down next to barbed wire and the men running the prison system treated them like property. So- Yeah, it's- Well, it maybe sounds strange, but it's awful work. I mean, they have almost no money and almost no choice to have another work usually. Because, you know, there are so many like small towns where there is no workplaces at all besides, you know, to work there. And if, for example, somebody of them is not agree with the system what is going on, that will be a hell for them. So they do not have workers' unions. It's not allowed in Russia. It sounds like a paradox, but yes. And, for example, if they don't want to obey this system which is totally unhuman, they will be just fired. Firstly, they will take off some of the stars, and secondly, they will be fired. So, sympathy for your prison guards is perhaps the most potent weapon you have against the prison system. I just understood- I was talking with them. I mean, I just understood that it's not, you know, usually they just afraid to change something because all their life were, you know, against these changes. And it's quite sad story. Well, I just- I don't know what to add because, you know, understanding of their human beings, it's one side. But on the second side, you understand that if that will be in order to punish you, to put you to certain confinement, they will just obey and put you. So you should fight with them with what you have, with your brains, because usually you don't have anything else. And you fought them. You fought them while you were in those colonies. You took them to court and you won cases against them. And in the end that improved massively the conditions of your fellow prisoners. It's improved conditions and some of these people were fired after our court. So I went to the court to gain prison guards because, well, because that was unfair of what they had done. They started to punish me again and again and again. And we together with my lawyer and other activists who came to this small city, which is like in Ural mountains. I don't know where is Ural mountains, but it's fucking far from here. So we went to the court against them and after two months we won. And after that the colony started to change. Yeah, so they start to reconstruct barracks, put up salaries a little bit. They fired several prison guards who was against the law. And after that they somehow pleased Moscow. And that was a special paper about me written to put me out from this penal colony to another one. So I've seen two colonies. Yes. In second penal colony quite similar story happens. I have asked enough questions in the IOTA. We are going to take questions for the rest of the session. Three or four at the time. So I believe there are some roving and roaming microphones. So there is the lady over there. We begin with you. One, there is a hat being waved for effect. I should also send them. Third, can we have another woman? Another woman please. Okay, I am four. So begin. Hello, I would like to know more about your childhood and if it had any influence on your activism now. Let's take all of them first. I should stand also. So you wait. Can you repeat this first? Let's move to the second question now. Who is the second one? Can you stand up? Welcome to Edinburgh, you're a great inspiration to us. There were 27 deaths in police custody in the UK in the last year. So we are having some of the same problems with our police forces as you are having. There must be positives from your campaign and Pussy Riot's bravery in standing up to state oppression. What are some of those positives that we can learn from you? Thank you. Next one? Yours. Unfortunately I can't stand up so I'll just sit down. I'm not sure how the translation is going to work here. I'd just like to say that I'm in a mood. Okay, so let me explain. I read a couple of weeks ago that Pussy Riot has an art exhibition in Summer Hall. It's not an art exhibition. Yes, it's my book on the stage. It's quite a punk concert. It's not an exhibition. It's a performance. That the concert is, I can't get access to it, I was so disappointed. So given the fact that you're here in Scotland and you did a gig in Glasgow a year maybe two years ago, have you plans maybe to go to Glasgow while you're here in Scotland to do another gig? That's my question. The question about Glasgow. The fourth question from a lady? Yes. I'm very interested to know any possible effects on family that you may have back in Russia given that you've taken the steps that you have to be here, which I think is wonderful. But I'm concerned if you have family back there what they may feel and may think and what may happen to them as a result of your actions? My family, okay. So with what question we should start? I just, I mean I forgot the first one. Sorry. Where is my son? That was a question. I don't understand. Your childhood, about your childhood. My childhood. Yes. Oh my God. I've changed six schools. I was quite problematic person. So what? I love the music. Totally different, I don't know, from Radiohead and Spice Girls to bands whom you totally do not know because it's like Russian punk from 80s. Like Groshdanskaya Barona, maybe you will hear, I don't know. They are quite cool. They are also from, you know, from the Urals from almost Siberia. And it's amazing poetry. So if, I'm sure that was translated. Egor Letov, he's cool. And my last school was quite, you know, wealthy place where almost all the class knew what will happen with them next. What university they are going to, you know, go and whom they are going to be. That was quite strange for me. A bit like Eton knowing that he will go to Cambridge and then get a position in the Tory government. Maybe, I don't know. But I went by hitchhiking to the south of Russia and I was living in the tent. Almost all the summer in the beach near the sea. And, well, it's okay. It's not childhood already. What's about childhood? I love to do clumping on the trees on the very top. How? What effect did your child have on your activism? You were a very activist child from what? From kind of, yes. Climbing on trees. I already have a child and he's quite, you know, he's 11. So he's not a child anymore. So it's a strange question. I don't know. I'm not sure that I've grown up actually. Has he rebelled against you? Oh, yeah. He's rebelling against you. So that's your comeuppance. This is the price you have to pay. Now, what about the question that we had from the gentleman in the hat? Regarding the similarities with the prison system here and deaths in custody. In a Western liberal democracy. I don't know so much about prisons in Great Britain. I met just one organisation who was working with prisoners in London four years ago. So I don't know so much about this, but, well, I will be happy to know. What I was really, what is really strange for me that so, I mean, one second. I'm wondering why so many pages in the newspapers are dedicated to Royal Family. Because when my book was published, I spent some weeks in London. And it's really like you open the newspaper and it's like about lentils in the soup of this boy. It's strange. I mean, if you can change this, it will be great because. But I think it's Scotland. It's a pretty easy argument to make. Though not necessarily Edinburgh. Let's have another round of questions. The gentleman here in front of me in the glasses, the lady behind him since your next door to one another. Another lady here and the gentleman. That was a question about Glasgow. We've been in Glasgow but one day, just one day in November last year, it's totally different from Edinburgh. And I hope, I don't know, we will come back there or not, but I mean, I really love Scotland and I want to see more cities, not only Edinburgh and Glasgow. The lady was worried about your son and your beloved ones back in Russia now that you're here. Are you worried that the regime are going to target them? That's more or less it, isn't it? Well, I think it's the question not only about my son but about family because I have a father and father of my child with whom he is now. Well, I don't like all these ifs. What can happen with me if I will do this action, for example. If you will think like this, you will never do anything. Okay, so let's take the other questions. Thank you again for making the trip here and it sounds like the details should remain private. And I'm one of many who are inspired by your story and your activism. And you started to answer my question already, which is, do you get scared? And when you do, what do you do with your fear? Hold on to these thoughts. Are there any particularly good interventions or tactics from Pussy Riot that you think we should use in the Scottish independence movement? What? Are there any of the actions that Pussy Riot have utilized that they can use in the context of the Scottish independence movement? Are you familiar with the debate in Scotland as to whether they should be part of the UK or not? Yeah. Hold that. Because now I have another two. We have the gentleman. Hi there, I was wondering in terms of economic issues, if Pussy Riot have a particular economic perspective in terms of left wing, right wing, free market. And also if you know Janice's work, what do you think about it? That I will not allow as a question. It's not about me, it's about Masher. And lastly, the gentleman here. Oh, sorry. You will come later. Yes. Okay, so maybe we can have this question here. Do you believe ridicule, d'eturnamol, will ultimately damage and bring down Putin's regime? Do you believe humour and ridicule and d'eturnamol? D'eturnamol, ridicule. Pussy Riot use d'eturnamol. You know the French sense that you would understand the word. Maybe I just don't know that. Young women challenge Putin and his power. You don't do any damage. You're not terrorists, but he has to overreact to you with all the force of the state. So you basically ridicule him. You make him look... Allow me to phrase it using this. She says here on page four, we believe that if we pricked his ass with a pin, Putin would jump out of his presidential seat. Masher will answer your question properly afterwards. Okay, so. Do you remember the questions? Well, just say anything you want in reaction to what you remember of the questions. I forgot them. That's okay. You have it in your mind. Do you get scared and what do you do about it? Oh my God, it's a question about fear. We are in the motherland of Harry Potter. You remember what was about fears there? So you should just do not allow them to grow. And if they will grow, I mean these fear monsters, you should just make fun of them. What? What? I mean fear usually... I mean it's quite useless thing. I don't... I mean we all have totally different situations when we feel different feelings. It doesn't matter what you do, this matters. You can feel, you know, hundreds of different feelings. You should... The importance is to do, to overcome yourself. This is important, I think. And I don't know, I've never felt this about me. And if I felt something about somebody else, I'm just trying to do something for this person. So that combines this question with the last one about using ridicule in order to overcome fear. Ridicule is to laugh at somebody, to make them look ridiculous, to make them look stupid through humour and through satire. Correct? And performances. Yeah, I think... Well, I don't know why, but these people from Russian state, they somehow afraid of fun. It's not just a Russian state. Let me tell you that in Brussels, in the European Union, I experience exactly the same thing. A complete aversion to humour, on the one hand, and ironclad determination never to admit mistakes. This is what happens with big bureaucracies. This is what happens with authoritarian regimes. They load humour and any sense of self-criticism. Now, what about Scottish independence? Do you have a view about this? You can say no. What do you think? Okay, let's have a poll. Let's have a poll. If there were a referendum this afternoon, who would vote in favour of Scottish independence? Ohor. Okay, put your hand down. And who would vote in favour of staying together with Theresa May? Oh. So you have half. And Jeremy Corbyn. Okay, so we have a clear majority in favour of Scottish independence. I think we have half and half. She's more of a diplomat than I am. And there was this question about does Pussy Riot have a political economic manifesto for Russia? Yeah, more or less. Do you have a view about the... I understand the question. How you should run the economy, which is of course where all power comes from. Well, this question is... Well, you just should know Russian reality because, well, to have free market or to have more social government, this is a question for the country, which is not torturing people every day or killing oppositioners who just provide the independent position. And now we have regions in our country where women are killed because their husbands died. And women, for their opinion, should go to the grave with a husband and she cannot live if he died. And they, I don't know, they beat women with stones and it's not a joke. It's not like a sin from the film. And it's quite hard for me to imagine how it should be because we had 100 years, almost 100 years of totalitarian regime of Soviet Union. And only 10 years in 90s when I grown up of let's say freedom and democracy. And after that Putin became a president and he reconstruct this, I don't know how to, it's not a pure Soviet Union but it's almost. So I don't know how to, maybe in future I can write this kind of manifesto but when you see how people are dying you think firstly about saving life I would like to take one question because you don't have much time left from a young woman just to honour, yes, you. One young woman to another. Stand up. Hi Masha and hi Anas. I'd just like you to please describe when you decided to take action, the moments leading up to that and also what you think it would take more and more Russians to take action and to actually start a movement within Russia. What will it take Russian people to make a change? Well I think you should know that the protests which are going on now in different cities of Russia not only in Moscow, it's a teenagers protest. So there are students, girls and boys from last classes of school and mostly it's them who are protesting now. It started last year and now also for the free internet that was last action 10,000 people on the street and if you will look to the photos it's teenagers and for me one action you mean like a political gesture because before the Pussy Riot I was an ecological activist and I didn't plan to be any activist I just opened internet and read that some assholes wanted to build a villa in my favourite forest and I didn't know anyone, no Greenpeace, no WWF, nobody. Nobody, I was a girl with two years old son that's almost all who I knew. I just start to, oh my god, I start to do different things. I went to different organisations, I start to collect signatures, I start to make a group of people who are not indifferent about this situation and step by step that became a huge movement like 10,000 people around Russia in different cities who made actions and we stopped it. But what I learned that it doesn't matter who you are it doesn't matter from which country you are from if you want to do something just do and yes we are living in the country where you can be jailed for this but it's not, you know, it's not the end of the world so it's not, for me it's not a reason to stop and I do not count how many of us are thinking in this way but I'm happy that during the last six years after the action I met so many people who became an activist because of our case because they've seen that it's unfair and they've seen that they also can do something for support us. For example editor of this book Olga, she's my really good friend and she's very young like 23 years old girl so when six years ago she was a teenager and she's very naive she decided that she wanted to so she was a policeman she thought that justice existed in the police and she was working there for a year and a half and after that she was totally disappointed about this system she quit the police, she became an activist and in several months she met me and she edited this book and after we started to do actions together we came like 6000 km to Siberia to support Olyxins of which I mentioned and we shut down the Trump Tower for half an hour we went to Crimea which is like a nightmare and she was just a girl who decided to change something well in your book there is this magnificent quotation in which Masha says that well you're actually quoting some commander Marcus and you're saying that when one person dreams it's just a dream but when many people dream together it's a reality so thank you for making this a reality thank you for dreaming along with Masha and changing the world in a small but substantial way thank you thank you so much I think the involvement of her talking about her experience with the Russian state particularly with her son I thought it was quite interesting and obviously her stories about prison we're obviously both fascinating because we both just bought the book so we're going to go home and meet that right away I think it's very important for Zoe to experience the opportunity to meet people like and hear people like Masha speak I thought it was interesting that Masha didn't want to focus on the past she wanted to focus on the present and what we can do now to change things and she's very interested in drawing attention to cases like imprisoned filmmakers and writers who we can help to get out of prison I think it's important to have inspiring figures who remind you first how lucky you are and secondly that you're not as powerless as you think you might be and that there is always something that you can do however small she's someone who's at the forefront of really important actions and activism in a very urgent moment so a really important voice to hear in this year I think it's important to provide a platform for voices like Masha's because these are the voices that we need to be hearing not dusty old kind of blokes who've got it all like she provides a perspective on on revolution, on change that needs to happen and we need to support her and we need to be inspired by her to make those changes here