Speaking out and being ready

2013 Alexei Navalny
Leading protests against President Putin and speaking out against corruption …
You shouldn’t do it …
to express a view and show you exist, to threaten the
Authorities …
if you are not ready to go to jail,
or, simply, to be murdered.

1863 Prince Serguay G Volkonsky
Speaking out against serfdom and speaking out for
equality of rights …
You shouldn’t do it
to avoid having a burden of reproach on one’s
conscience …
if you are not ready for forced labour in Siberia
and a life of exile for thirty years.

1825 Alexander Pushkin
Writing political poetry and carousing with
revolutionaries …
You shouldn’t do it
to write the truth about Russia,
if you are not ready to live under the gaze of the Special
Police,
and be exiled to Odessa, and to have your
writing censored by the Tsar.

2012 Pussy Riot: Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria
Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29 –
or Nadia, Masha and Katya
Performing a ‘punk prayer’ called Holy Shit from the
altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour …
You shouldn’t do it …
to call for the Virgin Mary to throw out President Putin
and criticise corruption in the Orthodox Church …
if you are not ready
to be convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious
hatred or hostility
and put in prison for seven years.